bazooka_penguin (u/bazooka_penguin)

bazooka_penguin commented on Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64 thecentersquare.com/india... · Posted by u/wsc981

erdewit · 4 years ago

Here in the Netherlands there's also a sharp increase in the excess mortality that can't be explained by COVID deaths.

https://www.rivm.nl/monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland

bazooka_penguin · 4 years ago

Lockdown/wfh related perhaps? I would definitely say I've become significantly more sedentary, likewise for many of my friends and coworkers, given we're all in tech.

bazooka_penguin commented on An Epic future for SPJ discourse.haskell.org/t/a... · Posted by u/Smaug123

zemo · 4 years ago

On slide 57 he takes the following position:

    Memory model
    – Garbage collection should be the only option

an interesting position to see Sweeney take up, since so many people in games reflexively say that garbage collection is totally non-viable whenever it comes up.

but he also says:

    By 2009, game developers will face...
    CPU’s with:
    –20+ cores

MacBook Pros, Razer Blades, the XBox Series X, and the PS5 all use 8-core CPUs, so the prediction of an ever-escalating number of CPU cores seems to have not really panned out. One thing that has been majorly outside of these predictions is the dedicated ML chips like the M1's Neural Engine.

The presentation isn't explicitly dated, but since the sample game is Gears of War, which came out in 2006, later on he says "by 2009" as if it was not-yet 2009, and the file name is "sweeney06games.pdf", gonna say this is almost certainly a presentation given in 2006. At the time this was given, the iPhone hadn't even come out yet.

It's an interesting presentation. I wonder what Sweeney would say today about this presentation, about how much of it still rings true, and about which things he would second-guess nowadays.

bazooka_penguin · 4 years ago

Pretty sure unreal engine 4 and 5 have garbage collection built into the runtime

bazooka_penguin commented on U.S. house prices are rising exponentially faster than income realestatewitch.com/house... · Posted by u/MrWiffles

arcticbull · 4 years ago

Yes you're absolutely right, housing cannot be both a good investment and affordable by definition. Time to give up the narrative. It doesn't make sense.

I've mentioned this before but it's worth saying again: 1 square foot of housing is approximately the same price - adjusted for inflation - as it was in the 1970s, on average. [1] There's a few caveats however.

(1) New houses are 2x bigger on average than they were back then, and the average American family is smaller [1].

(2) City councils, and by extension zoning rules, in major metros preclude construction meaning that supply cannot meet demand. This benefits existing landowners to the detriment of both the next generation and renters. San Francisco is a prime example [2] - SF needed to build 6X as many houses as it did between just 2012 and 2016 just to meet the job growth in the area. This pushes the price per square foot inside metros up way above what they would otherwise be.

(3) Zoning rules outside of major metros, including setback rules and minimum size rules, parking rules, etc, make houses outside metros much bigger. Also, expectations have shifted. This pushes the square footage of suburban homes up - and with it the total price.

(4) This applies mostly in the last few years - but lower interest rates make houses that are more expensive much more affordable on a monthly basis, which is totally fine as most folks end up with a 30 year fixed rate mortgage. A drop from 3% to 2% makes a house about 25% more expensive cost the same amount per month. Yes, it increases down payments, but down payments tend to be up to 20% of the price - so an increase not of 25% but 4%.

So what can we do? Easiest thing is state-wide or federal zoning rules. Build up. Allow smaller homes. [edit](Stop with the mandatory parking.) In Japan, supply and demand meet, and a new 3 bedroom house in Tokyo is like 400K USD [edited for current data] - right around the cost of construction. This is thanks to their federal zoning rules. [3]

[1] https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-squa...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage

[3] https://marketurbanism.com/2019/03/19/why-is-japanese-zoning...

bazooka_penguin · 4 years ago

I'm inclined to think a lot of people only live near cities because 1) they work in it and have no choice but to live nearby, otherwise suffer a nightmarish commute and 2) it's the only city near them. Why isn't building new, smaller cities a viable option? Surely building something from scratch also comes with advantages, like being able to plan and build infrastructure optimally from the start, rather than trying to retroactively update ancient infrastructure piecemeal. If we're going to go with a state or federal level approach anyway why funnel the money into existing cities?

bazooka_penguin commented on Child suicides in Japan hit record high www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/e... · Posted by u/Markoff

ashtonkem · 4 years ago

Last time I looked into it, Japan’s suicide numbers were not as high as I’d been primed to expect. Japans suicide rate is less than America’s (14.5 vs 12.2 per 100k), and roughly equivalent to Sweden 12.4) and Norway (11.8). Still relatively elevated for OECD countries, but Japan’s reputation as an extremely high suicide rate country appears to be unearned. Countries like South Korea (21.2), Russia (21.6), Lithuania (20.2), and Ukraine (17.7) should generally get more attention on this matter than Japan does.

bazooka_penguin · 4 years ago

Japan has been framed as weird and backwards since the 80s and 90s when the US took issue with their rising economy and encroachment on western industries

bazooka_penguin commented on Samsung Foundry Forum announcements news.samsung.com/global/s... · Posted by u/ittan

dragonelite · 4 years ago

gates/mmsq seems a way more usuable metric then the nm marketing stuff?

bazooka_penguin · 4 years ago

It's a better ballpark, but it's still an ideal number measured by the manufacturer using their own tests. Problem is, companies rarely if ever source the exact same design to multiple foundries, so it's not easy to compare in practice.

bazooka_penguin commented on Google Drops Plan to Offer Bank Accounts seekingalpha.com/news/374... · Posted by u/infodocket

a9h74j · 4 years ago

See if it discusses how IIRC Religionists and progressives together gave the US its prohibition on alcohol.

bazooka_penguin · 4 years ago

I think this is it: https://www.newsweek.com/why-visa-mastercard-being-blamed-on...

It seems the feminist angle was more of a general anti-porn thing observed by a lawyer in the field. NCOSE, an evangelical group, apparently took credit for onlyfans's porn ban saying "The announcement made by OnlyFans that it will prohibit creators from posting material with sexually explicit conduct on its website comes after much advocacy from NCOSE, survivors and allies." They, along with Exodus Cry (another evangelical group) also lobbied Master Card to change their policies on porn

bazooka_penguin commented on Samsung Foundry Forum announcements news.samsung.com/global/s... · Posted by u/ittan

nabaraz · 4 years ago

I can never remember what xnm means as it varies between companies.

In this case,

Samsung's 3nm = Intel's 7nm

I am still waiting for a standard based on transistor density numbers!

bazooka_penguin · 4 years ago

It should be ahead of Intel 4 ("4nm"). Samsung 5nm density is approximately 127M gates/mmsq on paper. Samsung 4nm will scale to around 0.75x area according to their China conference earlier this year, to a transistor density of around 168M gates/mmsq. They had another conference the other day detailing 3nm, which will scale down another 25%, to around 224M gates/mmsq.

Intel 4 was estimated to be up to 200M gates/mmsq. I don't think we have exact numbers since Intel only released numbers for their previous 10nm plan, which were heavily revised for Tigerlake iirc. I think Intel 3 is a variant of Intel 4 so 3GAA will presumably be similar to Intel 3.

edit: slides of the 3nm conference yesterday https://twitter.com/stshank/status/1445924295121592321/photo...

bazooka_penguin commented on Google Drops Plan to Offer Bank Accounts seekingalpha.com/news/374... · Posted by u/infodocket

scohesc · 4 years ago

Banks heavily regulate _themselves_ now in a lot of aspects.

I believe since the PATRIOT act was passed, the onus of fraud prevention was put on the financial companies, not the government.

This has caused a big rift in the "freedom to exchange currency with whoever whenever" crowd since the banks now have the authority (and are actively using it!) to push private companies into following their bidding.

A large part of Pornhub moving from an "anybody uploads" to "premium content only" was because the credit card processors didn't want to risk doing financial transactions with a company that could _POTENTIALLY_ be (meaning: unproven) hosting CSAM materials on their website... [1]

This was part of the reason OnlyFans was going to forbid adult content on their platform, because of issues with banks and payment processors. They were able to find one with more acceptable terms (although with higher transaction fees on the part of onlyfans) and were able to go back to providing paid adult content. (again, we'll never know the true reason why, but it's been the modus operandi of payment processors to axe anybody who they don't want on their platform.) [2]

Fun fact, credit card payment processors add individuals to their list of "people they don't want to do business with" - which is then shared with other payment processors [3] - a large one that's used by the majority of payment processors is the MATCH list ran by Mastercard.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/10/22168240/mastercard-endi...

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/27/22641095/onlyfans-sex-wor...

[3] https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/mastercard-match-list-a...

bazooka_penguin · 4 years ago

Iirc onlyfans was actually because Christian special interests and feminists pressured financial institutions to drop them. I'll try to find the article that discussed it

bazooka_penguin commented on What Does Evergrande Meltdown Mean for China? carnegieendowment.org/chi... · Posted by u/mooreds

simonh · 4 years ago

The risk here is that China will follow in the footsteps of Japan.

Throughout the 70s and 80s it looked like Japan was the future. They made all the latest cool gadgets, and were buying up forgegin assets. Cyberpunk novels were set in the high tech mega-hub of Chiba City, a district of Tokyo famous for it's gadget shops.

The massive real estate collapse in the 90s ended all that, and when I visited Chiba around 2000 for work the bit I went to was a drab business park. Two decades later Japan is still mired in debt. Japanese nation debt is 234% of GDP. China's is 270% of GDP. The USA has 100% of GDP.

As long as China's growth rate offers a chance of growing out of that debt hole all looks rosy. If growth slows significantly, or if debt keep pace with growth until that happens, they could find themselves in deep trouble for a very long time.

bazooka_penguin · 4 years ago

Japan also had to sign the Plaza Accord which inflated the yen against the dollar. Pretty sure china is continuing to do the opposite and shows no signs of stopping.

bazooka_penguin commented on Hospitals lift curtain on prices, revealing giant swings in pricing by procedure healthcaredive.com/news/h... · Posted by u/paulpauper

kindle-dev · 4 years ago

But someone told me insurance companies are bad and are stiffing those poor, struggling doctors and hospitals.

bazooka_penguin · 4 years ago

Everyone says that. But it's pretty clear that healthcare services themselves just cost an obscene amount of money no matter who's paying.