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zizee

3,217 karma · joined February 18, 2010

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zizee··on Bank failures come in waves
From what I understand, when someone takes out a loan, a bank doesn't lend out depositors' money. Instead money is "created" by the bank (on behalf of the fed), and the bank needs to pay the fed interest. The bank also needs to pay the loan back by an agreed uppn time (which destroys the money).

Why can we not have a similar system for deposits? A bank takes a deposit, the fed "destroys" the money, but pays interest to the bank. When the depositor wants to withdraw their money, the fed/bank recreates the money.

I guess this is sort of what happens with banks buying bonds from various government bodies, but the banks are managing a mix of bond maturity durations.

If bank runs are a worry, why not do away with this flexibility for the banks?

zizee··on Run 100B+ language models at home, BitTorrent‑style
It's a movie reference. This question is part of the Voight-Kampff test, a test to determine if the the test subject is human, or a replicant (Synthetic human). It appears in the movie Bladerunner.

(I can't remember if it is also part of the book).

zizee··on Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine
> what it believes the requirements are

It will have to describe these requirements in a way that a human can understand, and verify. The language will have to be unambiguous and structured. A human will need to be able to read that language, build up a mental model, and understand it is correct, or know the way to make corrections. Who do you think that person will be? Hint: it will be a specialist that knows how to think in a structured, logical way.

zizee··on Crab crisis in Bering Sea a sign of ‘borealization’
> I'd much rather governments ban net-positive carbon emissions by the major offenders entirely and force all further major offenders to shut down, but that doesn't make our government officials rich does it?

What do you think happens if governments do this? On one hand you are saying most people don't have the option to change, but then quickly followup with saying governments should force massive change.

> you expect them to shoulder all of the burden that the manufacturing and oil industries are causing

Ultimately, the issue is that industry is not bearing costs of their activity. We want them to pay for the externalities, so that someone can be paid to cleanup after them, or more likely that they change behaviour to some alternative that has become cost effective.

But these costs will be passed onto the general population. Now instead of having the unrecognised costs loaded onto people through climate change, we will do it explicity. This will be the oil companies, or via whatever replaces that industry. I think that is a good thing, because it will make people vote with their wallets, to change their consumption patterns.

But they'll still have to pay, or change their behaviour. They'll end up eating less meat, more plants. They'll drive smaller cars, buy electric, take public transport, live in smaller houses, fly less.

I agree with needing to do this for us. Externalities should never be unaccounted for, it distorts everything. What I am saying is that it is hypocritical for an individual to campaign for governments to step in and force everyone to adapt enmasse, if they're not prepared to proactively change their behaviour to match the world that they are wanting everyone else to live in.

zizee··on Crab crisis in Bering Sea a sign of ‘borealization’
They don't have a choice to eat more plant based protein? They don't have a choice to drive smaller cars?

I get that change needs to happen at government/ industry levels to see the level of change required, but individuals can (and should) be the change they want to see.

To not make changes to your own life whilst wanting government to force the same changes on all of society seems pretty hypocritical.

zizee··on Living the writing life means living with failure
Seconded.
zizee··on Chemicals released during wildfires in Australia damaged the ozone layer
Sure, if you can somehow get all producers on board, that would be the simplest. If you cannot get all producers to play by the same rules, you are going to have to examine the consumption side as well.

So far the nations of the world have not shown such a unified stance.

Most realistic and effective solution will be to get the biggest producers and consumers to all agree to join the system, whilst at the same time agreeing to place tarrifs on trade with those that won't join.

zizee··on $22B project to provide 8% of UK energy via undersea cable from North Africa
Bullshit. The Australian example best demonstrates that selling off production and networks to private companies, whilst trying to create an artificial market that constrains a monopoly chokehold on a product with inelastic demand is very difficult to pull off.
zizee··on $22B project to provide 8% of UK energy via undersea cable from North Africa
> Perhaps they're going to use those instead of all the rare earth complexity that is photovoltaics.

Photovoltaics (aka Solar panels) do not use a lot of rare earth materials.

From one of the links below:

> Unlike the wind power and EV sectors, the solar PV industry isn’t reliant on rare earth materials. Instead, solar cells use a range of minor metals including silicon, indium, gallium, selenium, cadmium, and tellurium.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/11/28/are-rare-earths-used-...

https://ratedpower.com/blog/rare-metals-photovoltaic/

zizee··on Chemicals released during wildfires in Australia damaged the ozone layer
Coal consumption will not go down if Australia stops exporting coal. It's a fungible commodity. Whoever uses Australia coal would just move to another source if prices are increased to pay for the unreleased carbon.

If you cannot ensure a consumer is affected, it won't change consumption (which is what we want).

zizee··on Chemicals released during wildfires in Australia damaged the ozone layer
Both of you have good points. The world needs cheap energy to function. Renewables are becoming more capable by the day, and can/will be that source of cheap reliable energy.

But the transition is not going to be instantaneous. If renewables are as cheaper/reliable/better as fossil fuel (and continually improving) the economic incentives will effectively push the transition as fast as is possible. The transition is supply constrained as much as anything. Production of solar, wind is rapidly growing, but it can only grow so quickly.

zizee··on Chemicals released during wildfires in Australia damaged the ozone layer
> No, depriving people of energe now is only a temporary inconvenience.

Wow. This is so incredibly out of touch. The world consists of more than just wealthy people driving large cars, living in large houses, flying for vacation and work.

Even poorer people in rich/developed countries people die due to lack of cheap energy through heatstroke or freezing. And that is just at a micro level. At a macro level a huge amount of the world's food production relies on cheap energy. Take it away and there will be disastrous consequences.

zizee··on Who owns private home security footage, and who can get access to it?
It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence.

...

You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.

1984, George Orwell

zizee··on Bee and butterfly numbers are falling, even in undisturbed forests
I don't know the answer to that, but I can say that you and I are likely to be long gone before any explosion in biodiversity will occur. It won't happen for many tens of thousands of years (probably many millions).

People often seem to think the whole climate change is worrying about the earth and all the animal life. The earth will be fine, individual animals will hardly notice (they have much more immediate concerns most of the time, like being eaten).

It's humanity that is going to suffer, with the risk of many of our highly optimised systems becoming unsuited to task (think many cities and food production needing to shift, leading to starvation/conflict).

zizee··on Ask HN: How to prevent a company from taking my domain name?
I'm not an expert, this is not expert advice.

AFAIK Trademarks are not automatically an international thing. A business would need to make an effort to register in multiple countries. Trademarks are also not all industries, all at once. McDonald's wouldn't like it, but if my last name was McDonald, and I wanted to setup a lawnmowing business called McDonald's Lawnmowing, they cannot stop me (although you can bet they'd try to scare me off).

I am not sure of your financial position, but it might be economical to register a business name, and even a trademark in your country. This will will give you one more level of protection. They would need to challenge your trademark first. Now, protecting a trademark is not necessarily cheap. It could be a matter of sending a few "piss off" letters in response to their inflated threats, but it could escalate. That said, the same escalation could happen regardless of you having a trademark. Depending on your country, people can (and do) sue other people with no legal standing, and use costs of defending oneself as a cudgel to get what they want.

zizee··on Argonne: Lithium-Air battery 1200 wh/kg, 1000 cycles
I was just looking at energy consumption per km travelled, and used this as a source:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transpo...

It's important to note that I'm just talking about an average situation. If a car is a massive gas guzzling thing, it's a much different equation from a micro-electric.

I hadn't thought about the differences in high altitude emmissions vs low. If you'd asked me before today if there would be a vig difference, i would have guessed that eventually it all just mixes evenly throughout the atmosphere, regardless of wjere it was emmitted. But after what you wrote, I learnt that this might not be the case (the science is still investigating):

https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/9818/why-do...

And there are a few other potential issues with other pollution aircraft emit at higher levels.

zizee··on Argonne: Lithium-Air battery 1200 wh/kg, 1000 cycles
I think it is interesting that per km travelled, it is actually more energy efficient to travel by plane, than by car. This is mostly because most people tend to drive solo, so they are moving around a lot of vehicle for just a single passenger.

Of course people tend to travel much further/faster by plane. So prehaps it is not plane travel that you would like to see as a thing of the past, but traveling long distances? Or perhaps you class car ownership/driving in the same class of things that should go away.

zizee··on The toxic tide of ship breaking
Oh right, sorry! Ironically I misunderstood what you were saying :facepalm:
zizee··on Valve bans 40k Dota 2 accounts using honeypot patch
Could you just match-up players to similarly skilled opponents?

I'm not a player, but I assume people access Dota using the same account each time they play? Their win/loss record should produce a decent "skill" ranking. Those that are cheating will un/naturally do better, and eventually they'll just be playing each other.

It would be sort of like a shadow-banning. They still get to play, but real people don't have to come in contact with them.

Who cares if the cheaters play other cheaters? Perhaps it's a drain on the company resources? But if they're paying participants, does it matter?

zizee··on The toxic tide of ship breaking
This is not what the grandparent is saying. The typical situation is not that people are forced to do the work. We're not talking about slavery* here.

They are doing it because they see it as their "best option". By stopping it, the result is their "best option" is taken away from them, and they have to go do the next "best option". You could keep saying "this is inhuman, let's stop it from happening", but the effect is just making it worse and worse. Instead, better options should be provided. That's the real solution, but it's a whole lot harder to implement than the knee jerk response of stopping an activity.

edit to preempt ridiculous interpretations of my words: This is assuming slavery is not the case. If slavery is involved, it is a different situation to what i am talking about.

zizee··on I Broke into a Bank Account with an AI-Generated Voice
How long until people start recieving voicemails from scammers in their boss's voice? How long until we can filter voices in real time to convert anyone to sound like anyone else?

Video is also not that far away. Will I be able to send my AI doppleganger to videocall standups?

It will be interesting to see if we have to take extra steps to verify we are on any non-physically present communications. Email is already suspect. Phone calls are next.

On the plus side, it will help enable things like proper double blind interviews, to allow for gender bias free interviews. It will also help anonymity, or people with disabilities.

zizee··on I Broke into a Bank Account with an AI-Generated Voice
I watched to again just a couple of nights ago. It still holds up! What a great cast.

When I watched the "voice is my passport" sequence, I still enjoyed it, but I immediately thought of our recent ability to mimic a voice speaking any sentence, just by supplying a few minutes of training data.

How long until people start recieving voicemails from scammers in their boss's voice? How long until we can filter voices in real time to convert anyone to sound like anyone else? Video is also not that far away. Will I be able to send my AI doppleganger to videocall standups?

On the plus side, it will help enable things like proper double blind interviews, to allow for gender bias free interviews. It will also help anonymity, or people with disabilities.

In an unrelated note, I had forgotten that President Roslin was in it and was such a fox (I'll probably say that about Battlestar in another twenty years after I have aged past her, like I have now caught up to her in Sneakers :-p

zizee··on Sci-fi becomes real as renowned magazine closes submissions due to AI writers
On one hand, I want to say that good story is a good story, it shouldn't matter how it was authored.

On the other hand, I think people should have the right to know the origin of the info. We do it with the food we consume, perhaps we should start doing it with information? "Guaranteed 78% human generated content", "single origin, certified human"...

zizee··on Sci-fi becomes real as renowned magazine closes submissions due to AI writers
Yes, the effect of the DDOS is the increase in cost to the review step in their curation process.

At the risk of stating the obvious: If costs go up, they really only have four ways to react:

* find a way to reduce those costs (e.g. automated detection, crowd moderation, allow everything through, allow only trusted authors through);

* absorb the costs (keep the same process, employ more people/spend more time);

* pass on the costs e.g. pay to submit, pay more for the publication;

* Close shop.

What I think will be most interesting to see play out is how much people are willing to pay for quality curation. If the rise of GPT and friends means infinite media, trusted curation become ever more valuable.

zizee··on Sci-fi becomes real as renowned magazine closes submissions due to AI writers
Is the problem that they don't want AI generated stories? Or that AI generated stories are increasing the costs of their curating?

A publishers entire value add is curation of content for their readers, and possibly increased exposure/recognition for writers. AI generated content has skewed their costs of providing their base service. They either need to find a way to make their curation/review cheaper, or pass on the costs to either the readers/writers.

If we find ourselves in a world with infinite mediocre content, we'll see the true value people place on content curation, in the amount that they can charge the consumer.

zizee··on Police say GPS tag darts can eliminate need for dangerous high-speed chases
Perhaps a high speed drone could do this. The trick would be to deploy something like this safely. That said, I'm not looking forward to the day where drones and AI are part of the standard kit used by police forces. The ability to cheaply surveil people clandestinely as they go about their business does not sound like a future to look forward to.
zizee··on I changed my mind about nuclear waste
It's an often (deliberately?) overlooked aspect of nuclear waste discussions. People will loudly say "radioactive waste needs to be stored for thousands of years", and "you go near some radioactive waste, you will surely die from radiation exposure". This gets combined into something like "This highly dangerous stuff, that you cannot approach stays highly dangerous and unapproachable for 10k years". Then people say "how can we possibly hope to store this incredibly dangerous stuff for 10k years, it's such a hard problem to solve, better not create this stuff in the first place, no more nuclear!".

But the stuff that lasts 10k years is a very different beast from the stuff that kills you quickly from just being near it. The supremely radioactive stuff tends to have a very short half-life. We can think about storage methods in very human time-frames, it's much more achievable. The other, long half life stuff needn't be stored with nearly the same extremly stringent standards, because it just isn't so extremely dangerous.

zizee··on The Black Ships Shock: A Historic Encounter That Changed Japan
> If this were in the US or UK, Perry would likely be hated for whatever and his statue torn down

I'm not much of a history buff, but the UK has been subject to invasions/colonialism multiple tines in tbeir history, and there are statues and events to commemotate these events.

I haven't much time, but here is an example, commemorating the Battle of Hastings:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-37649912

I'm sure there are many other and better examples to be found.

zizee··on As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena
Anti-gravity doesn't have working demonstrations available: https://www.google.com/search?q=tangible+holographic+plasma
zizee··on Spotify is first music streaming service to surpass 200M paid subscribers
Perhaps it is more about ensuring advert supported competitors do not have an uncontested market. Better that Spotify gets a little bit of money, and that users that find Spotify via existing marketing, do not have to go elsewhere, which could result in a competitor growing into a sizable threat.
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