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ecosystem commented on Amazon delivery drone strikes North Texas apartment, causing minor damage   expressnews.com/news/texa... · Posted by u/robotnikman
cmiles8 · 6 days ago
This is the latest in a string of accidents with these drones crashing into things. Not good.

The earlier ones hit a crane which one could argue was an edge case as a temporary structure. This just hit a building which suggests something much more fundamentally wrong with the tech.

ecosystem · 6 days ago
I wonder what the acceptable collisions/delivery needs to be for it to match last mile truck safety level (ie UPS trucks are big and run into things with non-zero frequency)
ecosystem commented on Web Browsers have stopped blocking pop-ups   smokingonabike.com/2025/1... · Posted by u/coldpie
afavour · a month ago
ecosystem · a month ago
Throwing up hands and saying: internalizing the externalized cost is "ridiculously expensive" is not proof it doesn't work.

The examples of the a la carte exercise brands referenced (SoulCycle, etc) are quite ineffective arguments -- those are successful businesses with loyal, high retention users because they provide specific, high value products to the users.

ecosystem commented on Web Browsers have stopped blocking pop-ups   smokingonabike.com/2025/1... · Posted by u/coldpie
DeusExMachina · a month ago
> I understand that some companies depend on ads, but this is not my problem

It is their problem, though, and they have figured out that pop-ups work. It is not their problem, however, if you decide to never go to their website again. They likely do not want you to go anymore to their website if you are never going to contribute anything.

ecosystem · a month ago
Short-term thinking is how hegemonies end.
ecosystem commented on Web Browsers have stopped blocking pop-ups   smokingonabike.com/2025/1... · Posted by u/coldpie
rustystump · a month ago
Burner emails work but they usually send it so you need to receive it. Assuming they use a generic code searching works but often they generate the code for single use at the time the email is sent. Promo code logic can get complex.

Best way i found is to buy when there is some xyz site wide sale but even then they can be sketch and jack up prices. Philips does this with their hue lights every time. Hilarious in how obvious it is.

ecosystem · a month ago
Burner email services like AnonAddy, iCloud "Hide my email", et al work well for actual receipt but also provide isolation.
ecosystem commented on Approaching 50 Years of String Theory   math.columbia.edu/~woit/w... · Posted by u/jjgreen
PunchyHamster · 2 months ago
Might as well fund someone researching whether quantum theory run on little gnomes, if there is no serious path to verification after 50 years, why not quantum gnomes?
ecosystem · 2 months ago
On this topic (parallel postulate), it took ~2000 years from Euclid and then 3 people all came to the same conclusion independently within ~10-20 years.

Progress is weird.

ecosystem commented on Approaching 50 Years of String Theory   math.columbia.edu/~woit/w... · Posted by u/jjgreen
cess11 · 2 months ago
I imagine that elliptic geometry had some use before modern physics.
ecosystem · 2 months ago
The specific controversy was whether without the parallel/5th postulate, there existed a logical contradiction, i.e. proving the parallel postulate
ecosystem commented on Approaching 50 Years of String Theory   math.columbia.edu/~woit/w... · Posted by u/jjgreen
emil-lp · 2 months ago
In the 1700s, perhaps. But we have come a long way since that.
ecosystem · 2 months ago
Yet, OP is repeating the same logical fallacy: the absence of a result is not a result of absence.
ecosystem commented on Approaching 50 Years of String Theory   math.columbia.edu/~woit/w... · Posted by u/jjgreen
constantcrying · 2 months ago
>Non-Euclidean geometry (geometric axioms in which one postulate is rejected such that the 3 angles of a triangle are not exactly 180 degrees) was considered a meaningless word game and fundamental mistruth.

This is just a lie though. Non-Euclidean geometry is a mathematical model of how distances behave on non-linear spaces. Nobody ever believed it to be a "fundamental mistruth", even suggesting it would look ridiculous. It would be akin to denying linear algebra, even the meaning is unclear.

That the physical reality of space is not linear was a shocking revelation, since all human experience and basically every experiment done up until that point indicated otherwise.

ecosystem · 2 months ago
This is a generally known part of the history of mathematics.

> Nobody ever believed it to be a "fundamental mistruth"

https://math.libretexts.org/Courses/College_of_the_Canyons/M...

"Lobachevsky [mathematician contemporary of Gauss, who claimed parallel postulate was unnecessary] was relentlessly criticized, mocked, and rejected by the academic world. His new “imaginary” geometry represented the “shamelessness of false new inventions”"

Further, many claimed premature success in finding logical contridictions in geometry lacking parallel (Euclid's 5th) postulate; which meant they believed a 4-postulate geometry to be fundamentally false.

ecosystem commented on Approaching 50 Years of String Theory   math.columbia.edu/~woit/w... · Posted by u/jjgreen
atakan_gurkan · 2 months ago
To make this valuable, it should produce a limited set including standard model. If you produce pretty much everything one can dream of, that does not carry predictive power.

What does string theory predict that (1) is within experimental reach in, say, 5 years (2) if not found, would prove it wrong. Was there ever anything satisfying these two simultaneously? AFAIK,the answer is "no".

ecosystem · 2 months ago
Making a hard, arbitrary deadline is a pretty extreme thing to do. ie Higgs Boson was a lot longer between theory and experiment than this.
ecosystem commented on Approaching 50 Years of String Theory   math.columbia.edu/~woit/w... · Posted by u/jjgreen
PunchyHamster · 2 months ago
So the grift can continue
ecosystem · 2 months ago
Non-Euclidean geometry (geometric axioms in which one postulate is rejected such that the 3 angles of a triangle are not exactly 180 degrees) was considered a meaningless word game and fundamental mistruth.

Later, non-Euclidean geometry was actually essential to modern physics.

It's intellectually sketchy to judge future value by the present.

u/ecosystem

KarmaCake day442April 24, 2022View Original