flavius29663 (u/flavius29663)

flavius29663 commented on OpenAI says it has evidence DeepSeek used its model to train competitor ft.com/content/a0dfedd1-5... · Posted by u/timsuchanek

onlyrealcuzzo · a year ago

You don't need a moat when you're in first place.

Their moat is >1B people are already using ChatGPT monthly.

They aren't going to switch unless something is substantially better.

flavius29663 · a year ago

just for the chatbot, it's trivial to switch, create a new account and start asking questions from deepseek instead. There is nothing holding the users in chatgpt.

flavius29663 commented on The Origins of Wokeness paulgraham.com/woke.html... · Posted by u/crbelaus

omikun · a year ago

This is how to lie with statistics. Two things can be true without contradiction. Does a black gang member randomly killing an innocent white person cancel a white cop randomly killing an innocent black man?

flavius29663 · a year ago

The original comment made it sound like minorities are just hunted down by random whites, lynching style.

But even if you look at police murders on civilians, they are killing more whites than blacks. You might argue that whites are 5x more than blacks, but police has more interaction with blacks than with whites. https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

flavius29663 commented on The Origins of Wokeness paulgraham.com/woke.html... · Posted by u/crbelaus

justinrstout · a year ago

This article never takes up the cause of the minorities who are being harassed and killed on a daily basis, but spends a lot of time whining about having to show even a modicum of empathy by using more inclusive language. For this reason it reeks of self-centered willful ignorance.

flavius29663 · a year ago

If you look how many white people are killed by blacks versus blacks killed by white people, you will have a shock. Even when you account for whites being a few times more than blacks in the general population.

I really don't buy this "minorities" are being killed story.

flavius29663 commented on Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model about.fb.com/news/2025/01... · Posted by u/impish9208

ramblenode · a year ago

> If there are no positive feedback loops, it would only warm up 1C maximum, no matter how much more CO2 we will emit.

GHG emissions are still increasing. If we assume that temperature increase is only linear in the amount of atmospheric GHGs, that means temperature will continue to increase, not remain flat.

flavius29663 · a year ago

Little known fact (I am still amazed how people don't know the mechanics of global warming...): CO2 effect in the atmosphere is logarithmic, increasing with concentration. That is because CO2 can only block one band of light, so at one point, you're approaching asymptotic effect. That's why we keep talking about "doubling of CO2", because it's a logarithmic function....

But yes, the temperature will increase slightly because of CO2 emissions. That triggers more warming due to feedback effects though, and those are hard to quantify, and more scary.

flavius29663 commented on Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model about.fb.com/news/2025/01... · Posted by u/impish9208

gruez · a year ago

???

Aside from maybe "whether crime is up or down" (because of under-reporting), everything else can be objectively measured. The measurements might not fit with everyone's specific circumstance (eg. earth is warming as a whole but it's unseasonably cold where you live), but that's not a reason to throw up our hands and say "those things are actually not verifiable measurable facts within any useful definition".

flavius29663 · a year ago

> - whether the earth is warming or not

The Earth is warming, but how much of it is caused by humans is under debate. The Earth is still coming out of an ice age, so it would be warming even without humans.

Also, the more important question is: how much will it accelerate based on our emissions? If there are no positive feedback loops, it would only warm up 1C maximum, no matter how much more CO2 we will emit. But because of the positive feedback loops (warmer earth -> more water evaporating -> more warming), this warming can trigger a 4-5C further warming. The feedback loops are just theoretical(you can't measure them empirically) and the quality of the estimations is based on our understanding and modelling of the climate.

flavius29663 commented on The Engineering of Landfills practical.engineering/blo... · Posted by u/impish9208

gruez · a year ago

>Sorting through that whole mess of "recyclables" was more expensive than shipping it to China and letting them just burn or bury it.

I thought they didn't bother and just buried it if it wasn't profitable.

>GONZALEZ: Whoa. Oh, I've been doing that one wrong. So the city of Nogales went around to everyone's house this morning and picked up their recyclables. [...] And they brought them here. And where is all this going to go?

>GALLEGO: Trash.

>GONZALEZ: The recycling is going into the trash. I am watching pristine beer bottles and juice cartons and cardboard boxes get smushed into a pile of wet, gooey, dripping food waste and soggy diapers.

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/741283641

flavius29663 · a year ago

> I thought they didn't bother and just buried it if it wasn't profitable.

In my county, they are obliged by the contract to NOT bury the mixed recyclables. So they used to offload it to some companies that would then also promise not to bury them (pinky promise), and ship them to China. Contracts in China are then not so easy to follow and enforce and voila, problem is now somewhere else.

flavius29663 commented on The Engineering of Landfills practical.engineering/blo... · Posted by u/impish9208

ngruhn · a year ago

I’ve heard, shipping a lot of garbage to China was quite common until the Chinese banned it. That was economically viable because China exports so much and many container ships would otherwise return empty to China.

flavius29663 · a year ago

It was viable only because we were shipping "recyclables" that had to be "recycled" by contract, not pure garbage that could have just been buried. Sorting through that whole mess of "recyclables" was more expensive than shipping it to China and letting them just burn or bury it.

flavius29663 commented on The Engineering of Landfills practical.engineering/blo... · Posted by u/impish9208

AnotherGoodName · a year ago

To get really controversial the highest environmental priority is atmospheric co2 and landfill space doesn’t have a scratch on it in terms of harm.

Plastics and other carbon containing substances buried underground sounds terrible at face value but the thing that should really make you worry is the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. Atmospheric pollution can often coincide with the amount of trash you create but in general if your focus is on landfill rather than atmosphere you’re focusing on something that doesn’t have a scratch in levels of importance.

In fact if we can find a way to landfill co2 rapidly in a net co2 negative way that may be our best hope right now (repeatedly growing and burying large amounts of biomass for example).

flavius29663 · a year ago

Loss of biodiversity and microplastics pollution are even higher in my opinion.

flavius29663 commented on The guidance system and computer of the Minuteman III nuclear missile righto.com/2024/08/minute... · Posted by u/magnat

kevin_thibedeau · a year ago

That is how all self-guided weapons systems worked before GPS was viable. Many still retain that capability as a fallback. Notably, the Tomahawks fired during Desert Storm had to transit over Iranian airspace because they needed the mountainous terrain to correct for their inertial drift before turning toward their targets over the flat Iraqi plains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERCOM

flavius29663 · a year ago

> before GPS was viable

GPS can be jammed (see Russia-UKraine war), so inertial systems are still very important for rockets, for example some HIMARS rockets start with GPS and then rely only on inertial while getting close to target.

flavius29663 commented on Basic Mechanisms In Fire Control Computers (1953) [video] youtube.com/watch?v=gwf5m... · Posted by u/teqsun

pmcf · a year ago

In 1989 I was a data systems tech on a Destroyer going through some overhaul at the shipyard in Pascagoula Mississippi. Moored right next to us was the battleship Wisconsin. Huge relic from WW2 but still going through modernization. A bunch of us that worked on combat systems got invited for a tour of their fire control systems.

Wow. Just wow. All mechanical computers calculating fire control solutions for the big 16 inch guns. The guys giving the tour were well beyond the age for regular military retirement. Come to find out, they were all reactivated because practical knowledge of the mechanical computers had since left the navy. That was a very cool day.

flavius29663 · a year ago

I remember seeing one of those computers on Wisconsin, but I only saw it after decommission, as a museum piece. Those computers are truly mind boggling, if you're reading this and you're close to Norfolk you should visit battleship Wisconsin.