leftbit (u/leftbit) - Readit News

leftbit commented on Investment Risk Is Highest for Nuclear Power Plants, Lowest for Solar bu.edu/igs/2025/05/19/inv... · Posted by u/doener

constantcrying · 10 months ago

The German government had (has?) a program where operators of powerplants have a guaranteed kilowatt price for their electricity, completely independent of the market price. Apparently these were some absolutely great investments, of course financed by tax payers.

leftbit · 10 months ago

Had. Now we have the "Merit Order Principle". Cheap energy (i.e. renewables) are used first but the price is determined by the most expensive energy source running. (See https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merit-Order)

So if you're running a solar park you have production costs of about 5ct/kWh. But if there's also a gas plant running you get maybe 20ct/kWh. Instaprofit.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromgestehungskosten

leftbit commented on AI will change the world but not in the way you think thomashunter.name/posts/2... · Posted by u/tlhunter

seydor · a year ago

There was a moment when google introduced autocomplete and it was a game changer.

LLMs are still waiting for their autocomplete moment: when they become an extension of the keyboard and complete our thoughts so fast, that i could write this article in 2 minutes. That will feel magical.

The speed is currently missing

leftbit · a year ago

But why should I put my time into reading and thinking about your article if you didn't think it worth your time to actually think about and write it?

Hope the Next Big Thing (TM) is the Electric Monk.

leftbit commented on Chinese researchers indicate diamonds can store data for millions of years readwrite.com/chinese-res... · Posted by u/ms7892

leftbit · a year ago

Makes me wonder how much information from prehistoric civilizations got lost by cutting up their libraries into wedding rings...

leftbit commented on Behaviors reveal sophisticated tool use and possible “pranking” among pachyderms science.org/content/artic... · Posted by u/isaacfrond

berkes · a year ago

(Human) Humor is a far broader spectrum than you describe here too. It can range from "ROFTL because someone accidentally stepped in poop" to deeply layered liguistic jokes like you describe.

leftbit · a year ago

One aspect of humor depends on cognitive flexibility. Puns work that way.

So if you're not able to make the right mental context switch at the right moment, you won't get the joke.

leftbit commented on Behaviors reveal sophisticated tool use and possible “pranking” among pachyderms science.org/content/artic... · Posted by u/isaacfrond

HPsquared · a year ago

Of course, animals are conscious and enjoy things and feel pain too. Just less intelligent and with less language ability than humans. Chimps and dogs certainly understand humour. I wouldn't be surprised if elephants do too, being social creatures.

leftbit · a year ago

It's difficult to reason about intelligence in this context.

Human intelligence is defined by behavior we humans value. Intelligence tests are geared to measuring these aspects.

Intelligence tests devised by animals would look totally different - and it's quite thinkable humans wouldn't do too well taking them.

Wouldn't assume that animals have less language ability than we humans, unless we totally figured out what other species are really talking about. Unless we do this is just an assumption.

leftbit commented on Behaviors reveal sophisticated tool use and possible “pranking” among pachyderms science.org/content/artic... · Posted by u/isaacfrond

leftbit · a year ago

And they are able to show insight and planning to get what they want...

Once a friend of our dog came visiting, grabbed his favorite stuffy and happily chewed it in the yard. Which our dog clearly resented.

So he cleaned up the yard and hid all other toys in the house. Usually that's our job - he never bothers to look after his toys.

Then he came out with an old tennis ball, pranced around, played with it, like "Dude, this is the BEST toy EVER invented. An it's mine."

His friend dropped the coveted stuffy and came over to investigate... our dog dropped the ball, grabbed the stuffy and hid it in the house.

His friend was left with a slimy, boring ball.

I really can't think of any other explanation - he knew how to get his stuffy, but also anticipated this trick wouldn't work twice. So the cleanup in advance.

leftbit · a year ago

Yes, that was clever.

But he showed real intelligence by never doing anything like this in front of us ever again. ;)

leftbit commented on Behaviors reveal sophisticated tool use and possible “pranking” among pachyderms science.org/content/artic... · Posted by u/isaacfrond

0xbadcafebee · a year ago

Dude. Even dogs get jealous of other dogs. How are we still in a time where we think animals don't have an inner life?

leftbit · a year ago

And they are able to show insight and planning to get what they want...

Once a friend of our dog came visiting, grabbed his favorite stuffy and happily chewed it in the yard. Which our dog clearly resented.

So he cleaned up the yard and hid all other toys in the house. Usually that's our job - he never bothers to look after his toys.

Then he came out with an old tennis ball, pranced around, played with it, like "Dude, this is the BEST toy EVER invented. An it's mine."

His friend dropped the coveted stuffy and came over to investigate... our dog dropped the ball, grabbed the stuffy and hid it in the house.

His friend was left with a slimy, boring ball.

I really can't think of any other explanation - he knew how to get his stuffy, but also anticipated this trick wouldn't work twice. So the cleanup in advance.

Deleted Comment

leftbit commented on Transcribing bird sound as human speech daily.jstor.org/what-it-s... · Posted by u/tintinnabula

leftbit · 3 years ago

Reminded me of this interesting bird song visualization project:

https://github.com/soundshader/soundshader.github.io/tree/ma...

Less information than a spectrogram, but really visually appealing. :)

leftbit commented on The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere jonathanhaidt.substack.co... · Posted by u/paulpauper

leftbit · 3 years ago

Wondering if pesticides, especially neonicotinoids play a role in this epidemic. Neonicotinoids are neurotoxic and have effects on mammals...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid#Harms_to_Mammali...

u/leftbit

KarmaCake day72December 20, 2021

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