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acdha commented on Evolution of car door handles over the decades   newatlas.com/automotive/e... · Posted by u/andsoitis
AlotOfReading · 2 days ago
They're not, but range rover actually published an aerodynamic study in SAE mobilus recently. They mention the door handles as part of the product design vision and offhandedly mention it's one of multiple changes that help ensure the flows coming off the front arches don't break up as they move down. They don't bother to single it out though, or even give numbers for the effect of the group (unlike more significant improvements).
acdha · 14 hours ago
They’re also selling a massive vehicle which was designed for macho aesthetics rather than performance. Bragging about minor aerodynamic tweaks is how they convince buyers that it’s okay to spend even more money to take the edge off of that fashion decision. It’s like the places which brag about their single use plastic using some recycled material because they don’t want to say it’d be even better if you bought something which could be reused many times instead.
acdha commented on OpenClaw is changing my life   reorx.com/blog/openclaw-i... · Posted by u/novoreorx
i-blis · 15 hours ago
I have always failed to understand the obsessive dream of many engineers to become managers. It seems not to have to do merely with an increase in revenue.

Is it really to escape from "getting bogged down in the specifics" and being able to "focus on the higher-level, abstract work", to quote OP's words? I thought naively that engineering always has been about dealing with the specifics and the joy of problem solving. My guess is that the drive is toward power. Which is rather natural, if you think about it.

Science and the academic world

I have always failed to understand the obsessive dream of many engineers to become managers. It seems not to be merely about an increase in revenue.

Is it to escape from "getting bogged down in the specifics" and being able to "focus on the higher-level, abstract work", to quote OP's words? I thought naively that engineering has always been about dealing with the specifics and the joy of problem-solving. My guess is that the drive is towards power, which is rather natural, if you think about it.

Science and the academic world suffer a comparable plague.

acdha · 14 hours ago
It’s more that there’s a career ceiling and ageism is a looming threat. There are far more management jobs than high-level IC and for decades there’s been this thought that older engineers will be replaced with younger ones more aggressively than managers, although the big tech layoffs raise questions about whether that’s still true. I know multiple people who moved into management not because they were enthusiastic about it but because that was the best path for their career.
acdha commented on Slop Terrifies Me   ezhik.jp/ai-slop-terrifie... · Posted by u/Ezhik
shimman · 15 hours ago
This might be true once in the past but even the "quality" brands are garbage today. It's all being made from the same factories with the same materials, with the same business magnates forcing worse quality at higher costs.
acdha · 14 hours ago
Some brands have definitely devalued themselves but it’s definitely not “same factories with the same materials”. If I buy a pair of jeans at Walmart and Costco, the latter ones will last years longer.
acdha commented on Don't rent the cloud, own instead   blog.comma.ai/datacenter/... · Posted by u/Torq_boi
Symbiote · 2 days ago
You are welcome to criticise my DB cluster comparison: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46910521
acdha · 2 days ago
That leaves out staffing, backups, development and testing of a multi-location failover mechanism as robust as the RDS one, and a bunch of security compliance work if that’s relevant.

It’s totally possible to beat AWS and volume is the way to do it–your admin’s salary doesn’t scale be linearly with storage–but every time I’ve tried to account for all of the costs it’s been close enough that it’s made sense to put people on things which can’t be outsourced.

acdha commented on Bitcoin tumbles below $70k, wiping out gains since Trump 2024 win   reuters.com/business/bitc... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross
sph · 2 days ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-mover_advantage

Sure, you can create a new blockchain, but you probably won't overtake the first and most popular, however good your tech is. Also, your comment suggests, as it is often the case, that new blockchains are created not because they are better than all other cryptocurrencies, but rather as a pump-and-dump scheme, and that's the primary reason the whole field has such a terrible reputation.

In any case, first-mover advantage is another reason why it's highly likely Bitcoin will remain the cryptocurrency with the largest market cap.

acdha · 2 days ago
First mover advantage still requires some reason to stick, especially when it costs more. Almost nobody _needs_ Bitcoin – most people don’t use it at all so they have no reason to pay more for it and there’s almost no situation where that would be the only option. The only reason to buy in is hoping that there will be more demand in the future, and that can evaporate quickly as we’ve seen because a fiat currency like Bitcoin is valued on the strength of its backers and it doesn’t have anything like a country or large industry driving demand.
acdha commented on "The Stanford scam proves America is becoming a nation of grifters"   thetimes.com/us/news-toda... · Posted by u/cwwc
pfannkuchen · 2 days ago
I don’t like Trump, but he’s the first guy in a long long time to actually do things and not just talk about doing things. I don’t think that’s what institutional rot usually looks like? Now mind you I don’t think he’s going to fix anything and I’m also not sure he isn’t controlled opposition, but that would be some adversary and not institutional rot.
acdha · 2 days ago
> he’s the first guy in a long long time to actually do things and not just talk about doing things

The problem is that the things he’s doing are using his office to become an actual billionaire and tearing down protections against abuse and fraud. You don’t fight “institutional rot” by enshrining the principle that loyalty trumps following the law or that policy outcomes can be purchased on the blockchain. Lying about the law and actions by his predecessors similar is building, not lowering, institutional rot by encouraging the idea that cheating is okay as long as you win (c.f. continued lying about election integrity or awarding government funds and jobs based on political affiliation).

acdha commented on "The Stanford scam proves America is becoming a nation of grifters"   thetimes.com/us/news-toda... · Posted by u/cwwc
kingstnap · 2 days ago
When you are know a doctor and overhear conversations with some ranting doctor friends you learn.

It's not a small problem in Canada. Funny was this patient who got rear ended like 8 times in a few years and needed time off and massage treatment every time.

Shameless grifters are everywhere my dude. This victimhood grifiting in the article above has been obvious for over a decade. If you listened to those anecdotes and vibes you would have known this well in advanced.

Anecdotal stuff / vibes are actually really useful. The "scientific" stuff isn't as formal as you might imagine. Going to conferences is a good way to learn that the vibes are what you are going to learn.

You'd think science is supposed to be this amazing rigorous way to do things. But the way you collect the data and the way you do the analysis and the reports you choose to write is anything but. Ultimately because, well, grifters are everywhere.

acdha · 2 days ago
> It's not a small problem in Canada. Funny was this patient who got rear ended like 8 times in a few years and needed time off and massage treatment every time.

This seems … reasonable? Car crashes are the leading cause of life-altering injuries in North America and back pain is notoriously hard to prove to the point that a hostile audience can’t say they’re overstated. If you look at case studies from the American opioid crisis, a disturbing number of them start with someone getting in a road or workplace accident and not having a full pain management regimen.

acdha commented on Bitcoin tumbles below $70k, wiping out gains since Trump 2024 win   reuters.com/business/bitc... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross
bodiekane · 3 days ago
Seems like the main reason it's gone up all these years is "Early adopters successfully evangelized to get more mainstream bigger-fools to buy from them at elevated prices".

At this point, Bitcoin is fully mainstream and the biggest fools have bought in. People hoped that the Trump election would mean a new giant pot of dumb money (government/tax dollars) would buy bitcoin, but now that they've realized Trump will just issue his own crypto memecoins that bet is unwinding.

I don't see where the buying is going to come from in the future. Every cab driver and retiree and stay-at-home-mom already knows about bitcoin. Maybe Tether prints another imaginary 10 billion dollars to buy bitcoin and prop up the price though, so it could still maintain for a while.

acdha · 3 days ago
The other thing I see is that only existing holders have much loyalty to that particular blockchain. Nobody else has a vested interest in using their funds to re-inflate the net worth of people who bought Bitcoin before them, and it’s easy to create a new blockchain where you’re not buying at a disadvantage.
acdha commented on AI bot gives customer 80% discount, supplier can't deliver   old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdv... · Posted by u/shaman1
powera · 3 days ago
There's a difference between the chatbot "advertising" something and an hour-long manipulative conversation getting the chatbot to make up a fake discount code. Based on the OP's comments, if it was a human employee who gave the fake code they could plausibly claim duress.
acdha · 3 days ago
Think about if this happened in the real world. Like if I ran a book store, I’d expect some scammer to try to schmooze a discount but I’d also expect the staff to say no, refuse service, and call the police if they refused to leave. If the manager eventually said “okay, we’ll give you a discount” ultimately they would likely personally be on the hook for breaking company policy and taking a loss, but I wouldn’t be able to say that my employee didn’t represent my company when that’s their job.

Replacing the employee with a rental robot doesn’t change that: the business is expected to handle training and recover losses due to not following that training under their rental contract. If the robot can’t be trained and the manufacturer won’t indemnify the user for losses, then it’s simply not fit for purpose.

This is the fundamental problem blocking adoption of LLMs in many areas: they can’t reason and prompt injection is an unsolved problem. Until there are some theoretical breakthroughs, they’re unsafe to put into adversarial contexts where their output isn’t closely reviewed by a human who can be held accountable. Companies might be able to avoid paying damages in court if a chatbot is very clearly labeled as not not to be trusted, but that’s most of the market because companies want to lay off customer service reps. There’s very little demand for purely entertainment chatbots, especially since even there you have reputational risks if someone can get it to make a racist joke or something similarly offensive.

acdha commented on Bitcoin tumbles below $70k, wiping out gains since Trump 2024 win   reuters.com/business/bitc... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross
sph · 3 days ago
Figure out why it has gone up and up all these years while being a “pure fiat currency with limited real-world adoption”, and you’ll have your answer.
acdha · 3 days ago
Why don’t you tell us, focusing on what will be sticky? For example, will wealthy Chinese people evading capital controls or Russians avoiding sanctions stick with Bitcoin at a loss?

u/acdha

KarmaCake day40776April 11, 2008
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