Readit News logoReadit News
avs733 commented on Why Romania excels in international Olympiads   palladiummag.com/2025/08/... · Posted by u/collate
_alternator_ · 5 hours ago
The general vibe of this magazine: support mainstreaming of eugenics ideas (and now eigenicists), the ubermensch / great man theory of history, and other ideas that we’ve largely shied away from for the last 75 years.
avs733 · 5 hours ago
And cloak it in layers of language so that a quick read doesn’t catch it. It’s like human prompt poisoning.
avs733 commented on Why Romania excels in international Olympiads   palladiummag.com/2025/08/... · Posted by u/collate
pierrec · 5 hours ago
This definitely adds a grain of salt, but as far as I can tell, none of that shows in the article, especially in the final paragraphs explaining how the elitist system is overall bad for the country. But it does make me wonder about possible hidden flaws in the methodology (I'm still confused at some of the earlier statistics contradicting the claims made later)
avs733 · 5 hours ago
> Yet another possibility is that Romania has an undersampled ethnic group that overperforms, but whose schools aren’t tested very well. The only group this might be is Romanian Jews and using them as an explanation is problematic for two reasons. The first is that there are too few to realistically explain Romanian Olympiad performance. The second is that we know the identities of Olympiad participants from Romania, and they don’t seem to be Jewish.

This struck me as…odd…before I even saw the parent comment.

avs733 commented on F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash   cnn.com/2025/08/27/us/ala... · Posted by u/Michelangelo11
jasonlotito · 3 days ago
> If you want to harp on CNN for accuracy, I'm sure there are plenty of opportunities but this feels pedantic. It is like saying 'the astronauts weren't talking to mission control, they were talking to the capcom. Only the capcom talked to mission control'.

Um, actually, they were talking to a mic. And the mic converted the noise... /s

But yeah, excellent comment here.

avs733 · 2 days ago
I’m sorry but it’s not noise its an electrical signal

(This argument also failed to convince my mom my teenage band didn’t suck)

avs733 commented on F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash   cnn.com/2025/08/27/us/ala... · Posted by u/Michelangelo11
dfox · 3 days ago
The article is somewhat sensationalistic. If you read the actual report you will find out that:

The pilot was not part of the conference call!

What froze was not hydraulic fluid for actuators (in some hydraulic line), but hydraulic fluid in the shock absorbers.

The last paragraph of the article and seems to be missing a few words and reads as the investigators blaming the people directly involved, which is essentially a complete opposite of what conclusions of the report say.

avs733 · 3 days ago
To clarify because everyone is confused here. The report is a little vague and information is buried in a couple places. Using PDF page numbers

> "The MP responded “14.5” ... and then opined a “conference hotel” was appropriate for this situation (Tab N-12)." (pg. 13)

> "The MP, utilizing the on-duty supervisor of flying (SOF) in the air traffic control (ATC) tower, initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin (LM)" (pg. 8)

> "The SOF informed the MP he was on the phone with the conference hotel and Lockheed Martin were getting the LG subject matter experts (SME) on the line ...no transcript is available because the call was made on a personal phone rather than the legal voice recorder in the air traffic control tower" (pg. 13)

in the last statement, he means that the SOF was informing the MP that the SOF was on the conference call and would relay information. The mishap pilot (MP) was speaking to the supervisor of flying (SOF), almost certainly via radio. He asked the SOF, in the control tower to set up a conference call. For reasons, maybe of expediency or technical failure, or norms or something, the SOF made that call on his personal cell phone. The MP was not 'on the phone' but the SOF would have primaily functioned as a relay between radio and phone. The purpose of the call was to get information from the pilot to the engineers and from the engineers to the pilot. Aviate, Navigate, Communicate* means he doesn't need to cognitive load of actually listening as the SOF and engineers think through what to do and decide on a plan. He needs to fly the plane and provide information necessary to help figure out how to aviate.

If you want to harp on CNN for accuracy, I'm sure there are plenty of opportunities but this feels pedantic. It is like saying 'the astronauts weren't talking to mission control, they were talking to the capcom. Only the capcom talked to mission control'.

I suspect that in the non-public version of this report there is more discussion of the decision and alternatives to doing that call on a personal cell phone for two reasons. (1) As noted in the report it means that conference isn't recorded and a transcript is not available to the investigators (thats shocking to me). (2) Detailed aircraft systems information, which is highly controlled, is being discussed on an open line.

* Funny enough, the third time the report defines SOF, they have a typo "supervisor of lying" (pg. 36)

avs733 commented on US Intel   stratechery.com/2025/u-s-... · Posted by u/maguay
georgeburdell · 4 days ago
If I may add my view as a formerly high-achieving semiconductor worker that Intel would benefit greatly from having right now, a lot of us pivoted to software and machine learning to earn more money. My first 2 years as a software engineer earned me more RSUs than a decade in semiconductors. Semiconductors is not prestigious work in the U.S., despite the strategic importance. By contrast, it is highly respected and relatively well remunerated in the countries doing well in it.

From this lens, the silver lining of the software layoffs going on may be to stem the bleeding of semiconductor workers to the field. If Intel were really smart, they’d be hiring more right now the people they couldn’t get or retain 3-5 years ago

avs733 · 4 days ago
same - left the industry after 2 years. Made more as a startup founder while working better hours.

It's not just the pay, a fab operates 24x7x365 and how management turns that into work practices and life for employees.

I once interviewed at a fab that offered 'better work life balance'...and what they meant was you weren't allowed to access any email or information off site so they couldn't bug you as much. In reality, it just meant you had to actually go in to the plant if anythign went wrong.

avs733 commented on Bluesky Goes Dark in Mississippi over Age Verification Law   wired.com/story/bluesky-g... · Posted by u/BallsInIt
shadowgovt · 7 days ago
Mississippi would have a hell of a time convincing every ISP in the US to put up a firewall too.

They could try, but not even China could build an impregnable firewall.

avs733 · 7 days ago
six months ago I would have said the same thing about US universities.
avs733 commented on Newsmax agrees to pay $67M in defamation case over bogus 2020 election claims   apnews.com/article/domini... · Posted by u/throw0101a
virgildotcodes · 11 days ago
How on Earth are we able to have a global digital financial system that is able to keep track of trillions in transactions per year but running a seasonal election with < 100 million participants through a digital system seems too hard?
avs733 · 11 days ago
Because this isn’t based on logic it’s based on feels and intuition.
avs733 commented on Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy   washingtonpost.com/nation... · Posted by u/reaperducer
kylecazar · 16 days ago
"One news report found an AI-powered therapist chatbot recommended “a small hit of meth to get through this week” to a fictional former addict."

Not at all surprising. I don't understand why seemingly bright people think this is a good idea, despite knowing the mechanism behind language models.

Hopefully more states follow, because it shouldn't be formally legal in provider settings. Informally, people will continue to use these models for whatever they want -- some will die, but it'll be harder to measure an overall impact. Language models are not ready for this use-case.

avs733 · 16 days ago
> seemingly bright people think this is a good idea, despite knowing the mechanism behind language models

Nobel Disease (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease)

avs733 commented on GPT-5   openai.com/gpt-5/... · Posted by u/rd
kybernetikos · 23 days ago
The wrongness is germane to someone who is doing their physics homework (the example given here). It's actually difficult for me to imagine a situation where someone would ask ChatGPT 5 for information about this and it not be germane if ChatGPT 5 gave an incorrect explanation.
avs733 · 22 days ago
The predicate for that is you know it is wrong, that wrongness is visible and identifiable. With knowledge that is intuitive but incorrect you multiply risk.
avs733 commented on GPT-5   openai.com/gpt-5/... · Posted by u/rd
timr · 23 days ago
Except it isn't "completely wrong". The article the OP links to says it explicitly:

> “What actually causes lift is introducing a shape into the airflow, which curves the streamlines and introduces pressure changes – lower pressure on the upper surface and higher pressure on the lower surface,” clarified Babinsky, from the Department of Engineering. “This is why a flat surface like a sail is able to cause lift – here the distance on each side is the same but it is slightly curved when it is rigged and so it acts as an aerofoil. In other words, it’s the curvature that creates lift, not the distance.”

The meta-point that "it's the curvature that creates the lift, not the distance" is incredibly subtle for a lay audience. So it may be completely wrong for you, but not for 99.9% of the population. The pressure differential is important, and the curvature does create lift, although not via speed differential.

I am far from an AI hypebeast, but this subthread feels like people reaching for a criticism.

avs733 · 23 days ago
the wrongness isn't germane to most people but it is a specific typology of how LLMs get technica lthings wrong that is critically important to progressing them. It gets subtle things wrongby being biased towards lay understandings that introduce vagueness because greater precision isn't useful.

That doesn't matter for lay audieces and doesn't really matter at all until we try and use them for technical things.

u/avs733

KarmaCake day5487October 6, 2015
About
ex semiconductor engineer, social science researcher, entrepreneurship researcher, quantitative geek, serial founder, engineering professor.
View Original