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tqi

4,559 karma · joined February 5, 2013

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tqi··on Short sellers notch $8.7B profit as SpaceX shares dip to IPO price
hm but "fine" as in probably won't die?

my question was more whether the hardware would need extra redundancy or shielding in order to not have unacceptably high error rates

tqi··on Short sellers notch $8.7B profit as SpaceX shares dip to IPO price
Isn't the problem also that because of radiation, processors in space either need to have larger feature sizes OR additional shielding / redundancy? Seems like a pretty high price to pay for slightly cheaper energy...
tqi··on AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion
Has anyone received any proactive communication about this? I didn't see the email until about 9 hours after it was sent out, yet I still needed to seek out information as to a) whether this was real or phishing and b) whether the amount was correct.

Seems totally irresponsible not to send an immediate follow up email to make customers aware.

tqi··on Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)
Because journalists and their employers view tech as a competitor for ad dollars and threat to their professions.
tqi··on Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)
I think the real question is, if the big tech companies are so all knowing and all powerful, with so much control over media and messaging, then why is their PR so bad?
tqi··on Data centers have hiked electricity prices on the public by $23B
Mortgage rates have gone up 8% just since February.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US

tqi··on The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes
Yeah there were no shootings before the internet
tqi··on The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes
For one, compliance is compliance. For another, "You only need them if you're using them for something like tracking." yeah, sites want to track user behavior and the eu said if you want to do that you gotta have a banner. How is that "malicious"? Seems like the eu got exactly what they wanted?
tqi··on Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes Reality of Urban Surveillance
You know he was talking about taxes...
tqi··on SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth
Brendan Carr seems more interested in settling political scores
tqi··on US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections
Afaik two party consent rules don't apply in public settings
tqi··on US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections
This is an interesting configuration of justices
tqi··on US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections
> Observation: it is legal to listen to a conversation happening in public, and it is not typically legal to record it.

That doesn't seem accurate. Do you have an example of a law that prohibits filming on public property? Isn't the legality the whole premise of what those weirdo "first amendment auditors" on YouTube do?

tqi··on US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections
Tbh it feels quite performative, giving an air of rigor to the what often feels like post hoc reasoning and selective application of precidence and case law...
tqi··on Is sunscreen the new margarine? (2019)
I did[1], and would be curious if anyone is familiar with the underlying study. How did they attempt to control for other factors? (I assume that they did, and am interested to know how)

Also do you have to get a sunburn for sun damage to increase the risk of skin cancers? My understanding was accumulated sun exposure was the issue.

[1] Lindqvist tracked the sunbathing habits of nearly 30,000 women in Sweden over 20 years. Originally, he was studying blood clots, which he found occurred less frequently in women who spent more time in the sun—and less frequently during the summer... decided to look at overall mortality rates, and the results were shocking. Over the 20 years of the study, sun avoiders were twice as likely to die as sun worshippers.

tqi··on In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough
It's frustrating to see the NYT frame this as an AI vs everyone else story, pitting incumbent renters against newcomers, while landlords literally extract rent.
tqi··on Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
I agree with the sentiment, however I think the erosion of the honor system is inevitable given the rising cost of college. Somewhere in the last 20 years college became a luxury good, and with it a natural sense of entitlement from their customers.

Couple that with increased awareness that classroom instruction (delivered by tenured research facility who seem annoyed at the idea of teaching) often has little relevance to workplace skills, I think kids have correctly surmised that the smart thing to do is say fuck the code and focus on checking boxes.

tqi··on What Ozempic does to the gut-brain axis
Agree, same can be said of exercise.

I think people consciously or unconsciously consider being overweight a moral failing and so are quick to point out the flaws.

tqi··on What Ozempic does to the gut-brain axis
The former isnt something an individual can change on their own
tqi··on The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy
I think if you have to resort to making stuff up to convince people this is important, then maybe this isn't as important as you think?
tqi··on The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy
I think public perception is have already had numerous leaks (Equifax, yahoo, etc) without any real negative effects, so these warnings come off as alarmist.

It's a hard argument to win because a) its impossible to concretely attribute scams to a data leak and b) most people think they would be immune to scammers. Meanwhile, it's easy to point to the problems this would fix.

tqi··on The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy
> You’re not happy about it, but you hand over a photo of your passport and hope it doesn’t come back to haunt you.

I think for this argument to carry weight with voters, privacy advocates need to be much more specific about what "coming back to haunt you" looks like. They do a little bit of it later on[1], but I think most people do a rough cost benefit in their head and decide that the small benefit outweighs the small risk (to them).

[1] "And that creates a lot of risks for data breaches, overly broad data collection and retention, censorial legal demands for collected data, corporate and governmental malfeasance, pressure to self-censor, and perhaps blatant First Amendment violations. Every new layer and every new mandate brings more potential for risk. As we’ve unfortunately seen many times over the years, people including high-level government officials will maliciously seek to root out the identities of their critics, so the more layers of anonymity we can preserve in online speech, the better."

tqi··on Zombie unicorns are haunting Silicon Valley
> they've found their market, such as it is, but it's smaller, more competitive etc., than is needed for hypergrowth... so the company thrashes about trying to figure what else to do while trying to keep its business running

In a lot of cases I think it's even worse than that-- VCs advise their portcos to keep swinging for the fences, even if it means pivoting away from their modestly successful niche, since a single and a strikeout are effectively the same to them.

tqi··on Zombie unicorns are haunting Silicon Valley
> Of course the VC investment model is high risk. That's kinda the point. It's a bet on IPO or (valuable) acquisition. Most companies end up as neither.

Cynically, I wonder how much of the insane (even in the moment) valuations were driven by VC firms trying to commit capital so they could collect management fees?

tqi··on Zombie unicorns are haunting Silicon Valley
My impression is a lot of these companies raised mega rounds right before interest rates went up, and are now able to tread water by cutting headcount enough that their revenue + interest can sustain them. To what end? Who knows...
tqi··on Amazon drops Sam Altman movie after announcing OpenAI partnership
You should probably also take the opposing views of corporate media, especially a tabloid rag like the independent, and assume their intent is to foment the maximum amount of outrage possible in order to drive ad impressions.
tqi··on Providers, not insurers, are responsible for excess U.S. health care cost (2024)
It doesn't require collusion, just misaligned incentives.

"Perversely, with the MLR requirement capping profit margins and administrative costs, insurers are discouraged from containing health plans’ premium increases. Economists have noted that the MLR requirement effectively turns health insurers into “cost-plus” businesses: If insurers’ predicted premiums are less than the actual medical care spending on claims, it can lead to higher MLRs and less profits, within MLR restrictions. Professor Scott Harrington warned early on that MLR requirements could reduce insurers’ motivation to control premium increases. Prior research has found that the MLR requirement is associated with stronger financial performance for insurers, since they can raise premiums to cover higher claims and still comply with the MLR threshold."

tqi··on Providers, not insurers, are responsible for excess U.S. health care cost (2024)
They are not solely responsible, but of course they bear some responsibility. ACA has a Medical Loss Ratio that requires insurers to spend 80% or 85% of premium revenue on medical services "thereby limiting administrative costs and profits to the remaining 15-20 percent."[1] In other words the only way for them grow profits is to increase cost.

This guy is way out of his depth.

[1] https://www.rand.org/pubs/external_publications/EP71133.html

tqi··on Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
Yes that's why country clubs and the Greek system never caught on...
tqi··on Tech sell-off widens as South Korea index plunges
I wonder how the proposal for 24x5 trading would affect how international selloffs like this ripple through US markets.
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