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waveBidder

812 karma · joined February 4, 2020

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waveBidder··on FDA authorizes first wearable device that monitors ketone and blood sugar levels
ketone monitoring is pretty unusual
waveBidder··on Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says
it's a specific claim, they want to set up the process to be so onerous that immigrants self-deport
waveBidder··on Lotka–Volterra Equations
on the one hand, yes ecology and math bio is cool. On the other, the demographic transition does not fall out of these models whatsoever. Humans decided to do something very weird for whatever reason.
waveBidder··on Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water
aca di. implement a market, it's just that most people buy through their job, because if that's legal you obviously want to be part of a larger bargaining pool for buying.
waveBidder··on Skynet won and destroyed humanity
Kids are extremely expensive when you have to raise them to 18 with no return. We should have social security, but for the young.
waveBidder··on Skynet won and destroyed humanity
reminds me of this article https://scholars-stage.org/uber-is-a-poor-replacement-for-ut...
waveBidder··on Jeff Bezos exerts more control of Washington Post opinion
One example of market power abuse they engage in is requiring the price listed on their website to be the lowest offer that a merchant can list. You can't list a product on their page and then have a discount for that product on your own page.
waveBidder··on Jeff Bezos exerts more control of Washington Post opinion
Hard to take calls for endorsing the free market seriously from someone so clearly trying to form a monopoly on online shopping.
waveBidder··on Fans are better than tech at organizing information online (2019)
if no one has ever pointed you at Seeing like a State, it's about the political and economic implications of this fact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State

There's also Bit's About Money describing this effect in banks https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/seeing-like-a-bank/

waveBidder··on Removing Jeff Bezos from my bed
> Perhaps the rigor that Medtronic and similar device companies are subjected to would apply, but I'm not sure those regulations cover information security and privacy.

As someone on an insulin pump they do. Iirc they have reps showing up at hacker conferences looking for red teams.

Definitely agree with your worries generally though.

waveBidder··on Reviewing the cryptography used by Signal
Good thing the US doesn't have an administration that will happily criminalize any opposition
waveBidder··on Reviewing the Cryptography Used by Signal
I've seen a pretty massive uptick in usage among my non-techie friends in the past couple of months.
waveBidder··on America's "First Car-Free Neighborhood" Is Going Pretty Good, Actually?
Kind of orthogonal to the point. It isn't a planned city in the same way that Paris is a planned city.

Also, most of the worst parts of American development have happened since 1945.

waveBidder··on America's "First Car-Free Neighborhood" Is Going Pretty Good, Actually?
Tokyo is an example of incrementalism making a beautiful resilient city, while still maintaining safety standards.
waveBidder··on What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
USAid has been abolished
waveBidder··on What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
the Congress. the president doesn't have the authority to unilaterally shut down entire departments
waveBidder··on String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'
like, treatments of it I've seen are explicitly discussed in that context? It's also described as Pascal's mugging.
waveBidder··on String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'
the term you're looking for is pascal's mugging, and it originates from within rationalism
waveBidder··on Nvidia Shares Resume Fall
I can't help but wonder what fraction of this is import tariffs on Taiwan. Also the initial drop, can't help but wonder if someone leaked that info to some private traders.
waveBidder··on OpenAI says it has evidence DeepSeek used its model to train competitor
> Although to be honest all this aggressive scraping is noticeable but for people who understand that which is not majority of people.

When you say noticeable, do you mean in like, traffic statistics? Or in what the model knows that it clearly shouldn't if it wasn't trained in legally dubious ways?

waveBidder··on Freeze on grant funding temporarily halted by federal judge
I'm hoping a result of this shitshow is a curtailing the power of the executive. We've been slow-walking our way towards this by congress abrogating their responsibility under both parties. Probably requires actual restructuring of congressional elections and seniority systems though, which is... well going to be hard.
waveBidder··on Using generative AI as part of historical research: three case studies
might work for say post the 1800's in literate countries, but for e.g. Rome our sources are so sparse and so far removed from the time they're writing about that it would be worse than nothing.
waveBidder··on Weierstrass's Monster
honestly less terrible than I was expecting
waveBidder··on Lightcell: An engine that uses light to make electricity
Just be careful or you might make a Kugelblitz
waveBidder··on Is the world becoming uninsurable?
This is mostly a probability nitpick:

Most disasters follow power laws and other fat tail which don't have the same effects in the tail as a Gaussian. If you shift 1/x^a by c, you "only" get a polynomial increase.

But also, if you shift the mean of a Gaussian, the increase isn't exponential, it's super exponential (e^(x^2) to be specific).

> Insurance is based on statistics. The math they use assumes stationary distributions. Insurance companies can't deal with shifting distributions well so they take the losses and then exit markets.

Sure they can, that's why they hire statisticians. They routinely deal with insurance of much rarer events where we have much worse models than climate change. They're just banned from charging the actual rates, because it's politically unacceptable.

waveBidder··on Road signs to help people limit radiation exposure in contaminated areas
You put the sign far enough outside the zone, you wear ppe, and you decontaminate afterwards.
waveBidder··on If You Ever See This Speed Sign, You're Probably Going to Die
China has a no first strike policy for now, so yes. Doesn't mean we'd have a good time though.
waveBidder··on Road signs to help people limit radiation exposure in contaminated areas
You don't oppose someone recklessly gambling mass death by recklessly gambling mass death yourself, you just call their bluffs and maintain clear no-go lines.
waveBidder··on Longtime Aspen ski executive thinks corporate sustainability is a scam
Well, if there's no snow they have no business model (or more realistically shorter seasons), so they have a pretty strong case for caring.
waveBidder··on Longtime Aspen ski executive thinks corporate sustainability is a scam
The nice thing about being a massive market like the US is that you can impose regulations that producers in other countries need to follow to be able to participate in the market. It does make enforcement harder, but as long as you have the political will its definitely feasible. O/c having the political will is an entirely different thing.
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