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LarryMullinson ArxivGPT: Chrome extension that summarizes arxived research papers using ChatGPT

Without the opportunity to live in the real world, these LLMs have no ground-truth. They can only guess at truth by following consensus.

LarryMullinson Ohio catastrophe is ‘wake-up call’ to dangers of deadly train derailments

Stop being dismissive of other people's lives. Go live in that town yourself if you're so certain it's safe.

LarryMullinson Go claims telemetry objectors arguing in bad faith and violating Code of Conduct

This is the purpose of "Code of Conducts", to silence dissent. They are sold to you by people who say they'll only silence the bad sort of dissent, but lo and behold the definition of 'bad' isn't locked to the seemingly reasonable scenarios with which CoCs are promoted. Try to oppose the CoC now that you see what it's really for, and the CoC will be used to silence you as well.

LarryMullinson Ohio catastrophe is ‘wake-up call’ to dangers of deadly train derailments

Suspicious? If it makes you suspect anything, it should be the suspicion that the rail workers were right about it being dangerous to overwork rail workers.

Imagine a truck driver complains about being worked too hard, then a week later he falls asleep at the wheel and crashes his truck. Is there a connection??? Gee, I wonder.

LarryMullinson Ohio catastrophe is ‘wake-up call’ to dangers of deadly train derailments

Hell yes, and burning it is sure to create dioxins which are carcinogenic too.

LarryMullinson Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

> No longer supplying means that they get geopolitical flack for 'using hydrocarbons as a weapon'.

They've already invaded a nation. What you're suggesting here is like a violent machine-gun toting bank robber in ski mask making sure to pay his parking bill before driving off, because he's worried about what other people might think of him.

Using international trade to coerce nations is a far lesser crime than invading them and leveling their cities with artillery.

LarryMullinson Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

> But ukraine is unable to do it by themselves,

They're pretty good at improvisation. Odds are good that they could pull off such a thing if they were so inclined. You don't need a traditional submarine fleet to do something like this.

They're not at the top of my suspects list though.

LarryMullinson Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

Besides the train, there is the ever-present danger posed by Ohio itself: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ohio-vs-the-world

LarryMullinson Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...

Nuclear powers play by whatever rules they choose to play by.

LarryMullinson Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

You're right of course, but in the context of China and the US this doesn't really seem relevant. Being invaded by UN blue helmets isn't something that happens to any member of the UN Security Council, which both China and the US are. When it comes to relations between these two countries, the UN is "just a forum".

LarryMullinson Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

It can be done with highly eccentric and inclined geo-syncronized (not geostationary) orbits. For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-Zenith_Satellite_System#...

LarryMullinson PC CPU Shipments See Steepest Decline in 30 Years

I was thinking more about playing with new AI toys. TBH a 10 year old CPU and GPU are still fine for most games, latest AAA releases perhaps notwithstanding.

LarryMullinson Discovery of 3M-year-old stone tools sparks prehistoric whodunnit

Eventually sure, but think about all the dino fossils, 100+ million years old, that we find in sedimentary rock today. I expect that eventually, beer bottles lost in the mud at the bottom of lakes and rivers may become inclusions in sedimentary rock, permanently preserved for as long as it takes that part of continental crust to get recycled in the mantle.

LarryMullinson PC CPU Shipments See Steepest Decline in 30 Years

A CPU a few years old is still good enough. If you have a limited budget and want the most bang for your buck, then stick with your old CPU and get a new GPU instead.

LarryMullinson Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

Once in KSP Iinstalled MechJeb (a modded autopilot component) upsidedown and my rocket failed in precisely this way, trying to make a u-turn right off the launch pad. Pretty funny to see it happen IRL, since nobody got hurt.

LarryMullinson Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

Sabotage might also be performed by a disgruntled / disturbed worker, not working for either 'side'.

LarryMullinson Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

As far as I can tell, the evidence for the hole being drilled then epoxied on Earth amounts to nobody wanting to believe the alternative (that it was drilled while in orbit.)

Here is the hole. Personally, I don't see any trace of epoxy in or around this hole: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Hole_in_...

(To be clear, it's the small hole, not the big one next to it. The small hole next to the paint marred by a slipping drill bit.)

LarryMullinson Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

It was about the financial industry getting bailouts while the common man suffered from economic conditions caused by the financial industry being so reckless. But then the corporate media got their hands on it and the narrative became 'these loony hippies think that people should be ranked by privilege'. Most Americans had never heard of the "Progressive stack" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_stack ) before, and this alienated the movement. In essence, the corporate media promoted intra-class war to preempt inter-class war.

LarryMullinson US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

Large controllable balloons could probably be 'recalled' by instructing them to crash into the ocean. If any more big ones like the first balloon show up, it's probably on purpose.

LarryMullinson Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

The last time this sort of class-awareness trend got started in America was Occupy Wall Street, and the corporate media killed it by platforming and showcasing the looniest most alienating fringes of that movement, starting the descent into the 'racist' style of progressive activism which most of the public find alienating (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/25/most-americ...)

I think they'll do it again. If this movement finds legs and makes itself hard to ignore, then the corporate media will once again use their editorial powers to shift the conversation away from the class narrative, probably again in the direction of divisive race politics.

LarryMullinson US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

By all accounts I have read, the defection of Viktor Belenko with a Mig-25 really did change the way NATO understood the Mig-25.

LarryMullinson Discovery of 3M-year-old stone tools sparks prehistoric whodunnit

Glass and pottery fragments both last "forever" if they're left someplace relatively dry, or get buried, or otherwise protected from physical and chemical weathering. A glass bottle thrown away on the beach will be eroded to nothing in mere years to decades, but a glass bottle thrown aside and buried by some soil can stay there for millions of years easily. Stone artifacts are similarly robust. These relatively permanent traces get left behind long before a civilization gets "industrial". Pottery and glass predate our own industrial revolution by thousands of years.

For such a civilization to develop and go unnoticed to historians, their influence must have been very small, they must have been geographically limited. For instance maybe they lived in low-lands and rising sea levels erased all trace, but this would still require that their artifacts rarely if ever got carried up hills where they might have been untouched by the rising oceans. It seems deeply implausible.

Certainly there was nothing even remotely like our civilization in the past. There are glass beer bottles laying around on virtually every corner of the planet, on mountain tops, in caves, in landfills. Just everywhere really. It will take longer than a mere few million years to erase all these.

LarryMullinson US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

Jurassic Park taught me that heavy things are expensive. It stands to reason that light things must be cheap.

LarryMullinson US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

> How this can be true, I have no clue.

Careful re-analysis of old radar data, perhaps.

LarryMullinson US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

It needs to be said; the list of Iranian terrorist attacks against America is very short. The list of Iranian terrorist attacks in America is even shorter. Most of the antagonism against Iran in America is motivated by Iran's relationship with other countries (Israel), not things they've done to America. I can't say that I feel any personal animosity towards Iran, I wish America would let Israelis handle Israeli affairs and stop getting into grudge matches with other countries on their behalf.

LarryMullinson US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

> it seems like there are cheaper ways to cause the US to spend gobs of cash.

Yeah, the Mig-25 / F-15 thing comes to mind. Soviets develop a super secret jet, very big, very fast.. it must be very impressive fighter jet! America is spooked so tons of resources are poured into the F-15 to make the absolute best possible air superiority fighter jet they can, to counter this new Soviet threat.

Except then it turns out that the Mig-25 was never a fighter jet, it was an interceptor that was very fast in a straight line but not much more. So the US built an incredible air superiority fighter to counter a phantom of a jet that never really existed in the way America thought.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle#F...

Come to think of it, maybe China is going low-tech with balloons to avoid this dynamic?

LarryMullinson US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

Maybe they think it's funny. Maybe it's to confuse their adversaries, or a ploy for more funding from Congress. Maybe they're allowing some pranksters to have their fun because they want to encourage an environment of open reporting where pilots aren't afraid to report strange things.

LarryMullinson US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

Counter-battery radar that can track artillery shells or ballistic rockets back to their point of origin have been around for many years now; the Israelis surely know exactly where the rockets are being fired from. I think they (usually) avoid firing back because they know there would be civilian casualties and want to avoid some of that bad PR.

One such system operated by Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EL/M-2084

LarryMullinson US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

> It does not explain why these were observed on radar as well.

The lens flare was caused by the camera looking at the ass end of another jet. The radar saw the other jet.

For even one of these videos to have a mundane explanation that should have been obvious to the Navy upon investigation, I think that discredits the lot. Either the Navy couldn't figure it out themselves (which seems highly improbable), or for some reason the Navy is deliberately misleading the public, or at the very least allowing some of their personnel to mislead the public and playing coy about it. I think this is what's happening.

LarryMullinson US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

Yeah, a $50k missile to save even a single unoccupied house is a missile that paid for itself. And if it saves a few human lives then it was positively cheap.

If bankrupting Israel by forcing them to expend Iron Dome interceptors is Hezbollah's plan, it obviously isn't working.