its_ethan

Is it bullshit?

If you're using your 2a rights to fight against the government (tyrannical or not), it does not free you from facing the consequences if you don't "win", or prevent the government from fighting back (in self defense, or otherwise).

It's an incredibly serious thing to say "the government is so tyrannical that we need to use violence to overthrow it" (see: history).

We are already massively investing into renewable energy... to the tune of about $1trillion since 2020 in the US. In 2024, 95%+ of all new electricity capacity was solar/wind/batteries.

Seems like you believe the current system is not conducive to clean/sustainable infrastructure, but the world I think you want is actually the one we're already in.

The example I gave is for sports. Not politics. My point is specifically that the politics side of twitter is probably giving people a weird/not fully accurate view of the site as a whole.

Is it dead? I feel like this is more of a "you" thing than you might realize. At least for sports, twitter is 100% still the dominant medium for reporting.

I'm looking at the same post on a players status for this weekend from 2 hours ago on 3 platforms:

- Threads: 5 likes, 2 comments, 15 shares

- BlueSky: 19 likes, 3 comments, 3 shares

- Twitter: 1500 likes, 105 comments, 281 shares

Doesn't really seem like twitter is the one that's almost dead...

Not a huge fan of the sentiment in this article, and the very cynical way it was communicated, but the references to the library of babel reminded me of this fun site.

https://libraryofbabel.info

"cre-" is a latin root meaning (more or less) "make" which is where we get "create" - both are likely drawing inspiration from that (as would be the case for Creo, a common CAD software).

> If I just add a few more parameters to my model I can make it fit anything!

Dealing with people wanting to do this is story of my current professional life lol I would love to get them onto the same page that chasing down a final <1% improvement isn't (always) worth it

"All models are wrong, some are useful" - this is what I was trying to say, I was just being a bit snarky/pedantic because the commenter above seemed to be trying to pull a "gotcha" saying that the "truth" of something overrides the utility of it.

I mean to be completely accurate the Earth doesn't strictly orbit the Sun. Both the Sun and Earth orbit each other around a point at their "combined" center of mass, the barycenter - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycenter_(astronomy). This is something you need to take into account for all the planets in the solar system and as a result, the "center" of the whole system is constantly moving. The solar system's barycenter is often not even inside the Sun.

I think that sort of proves the point that the OP was making, which is that you can create a functional model around any arbitrary location and it can be valid (as long as valid means: it can make useful predictions). When you put the center of the Sun at the center of the model, you still need your models to account for the "orbital wobble" happening as a result of the Sun doing a little dance with Jupiter (and all the other masses that orbit it) in the equations for the determining the relative positions of the Sun and Earth.

Using the Sun as the center versus the solar systems barycenter are both somewhat "arbitrary" in that way, and depend on what you're trying to do with the information - how accurate you need it to be, and how complicated you're willing to make the calculations to hit higher accuracies.

This reminds me of a TIME article by former Governor of Indiana, Eric Holcomb

https://time.com/7346751/ai-impact-american-manufacturing/

Thanks for doubling down on being facetious and making me feel better that I didn't just jump to conclusions about you, and that I made the right assumptions lol

This is the mindset I'd expect from a toddler - "it hasn't happened to me yet so it's not a problem and people who think it is are overreacting".

Should we also treat drinking and driving a no-big-deal thing since you haven't been affected by that either? Can you let us know what else your fellow countrymen are doing wrong in your estimation, based on your own narrow slice of lived experiences?

Can you really not put yourself in the shoes of, say, a young woman walking home in the dark feeling intimidated by a group of men wearing masks? Like it takes half a second of self-reflection and critical thinking to come up with a very believable, commonly occurring scenario that would lead to someone thinking differently than you. Give it a try sometime.

Another user a level up in this thread has also linked articles to 2 hospitalizations and a dead dog that are the result of e-bikes being used in places they're prohibited, so clearly it's an issue that needs addressing. Being smarmy and self-aggrandizing about it is a really bad look for you.

My "we can't do that with the sun" statement was re: being able to use diplomacy to avoid it, not that there aren't theoretical (albeit far fetched) solutions. We can't create the conditions where the sun doesn't "want" to solar flare us - it's random chance and uncorrelated to anything we do. We can influence the "odds" for something like an EMP (or LEO nuke detonation) happening.

If we had an unlimited budget to prioritize science fiction projects like this, then sure man, I guess there's solutions that could exist that shield the planet entirely lol

True. It would admittedly be a much different and more challenging problem to stop something coming back in from Space as opposed to an ICBM - you're right there.

But yea the mutually assured misery that it might cause in LEO for everyone would make this only likely form a truly rogue state. Maybe NK, but trying to identify who the threat would be changes this from a solar flare risk/mitigation discussion fully to a geopolitical theory one ;)

That's a valid point. I guess in my mind an EMP is an act of aggression that has viable ways of being stopped (as opposed to mitigated) whereas a solar storm is agnostic to anything happening on Earth. Even if the mechanism is similar, they are different problems with different solutions.

I believe the US already tracks (or attempts to track) anything resembling a missile headed our way, and there are systems that can take these down before they detonate and cause problems. You can't exactly "stop" a solar flare from hitting Earth. Additionally, we can also use diplomacy to create the conditions where China (or anyone else) won't want to EMP us (or at least won't benefit from doing it, even if they do want to), but we can't do that with the Sun.

And that's where my point on prioritization comes into play. We're more likely to invest in technology like Israel's Iron Dome to prevent an EMP from another nation than we would a full scale re-build of the grid to mitigate what amounts to an act of God from the sun.

Not sure that I can speak to everything, but I did take a course specifically on space weather + its impacts on Earth and have some context I can maybe share. For your first point, you are correct it is a national security concern. There are standards already in place that aim to address/mitigate potential disruptions from solar storms/ space weather, but the concern is/would be if these standards are sufficient for an extreme event like Carrington or this 1840s example. From a national security perspective, it's also not a risk that comes from an adversary, it's not something Russia/China/Iran/[insert country] can do to us, it's just an environmental consideration, and could happen to anyone (and if any one country is effected in a significant want, it's likely that others would be facing some consequences of the storm as well - especially w.r.t. satellites). From a strategy perspective, it's similar to if an earthquake destroyed the 3 gorges dam - it's obviously a risk but it's categorized a bit differently. It's more about how quickly can you re-establish normal operations rather than how do you fully prevent it. Obviously mitigation is part of that, but it changes where it gets prioritized.

And to segue into your later points, the reason it's unknown if the current standards would be sufficient is because these sort of events, and how they interact with a continent-sized electrical/ transmission systems (the grid), is a pretty complex problem. It's also one that we can't exactly test in a lab or controlled environment beforehand with a super high degree of confidence given the scale that the phenomenon takes place at (the whole planet). EMI testing that occurs for most tech products today isn't super focussed on the currents induced by a solar storm, which are low frequency/quasi-DC/much less predictable (the effects vary geographically and in time-scales/patterns that "typical" EMI/EMC does not).

Some googling lead me to a NOAA doc that says GIC's "quasi-DC ... currents flow through transmission lines and enter/exit the power grid through grounded transformer neutrals" which to me reads that simply having a neutral line isn't sufficient, but I'm not an EE and could be misunderstanding what you're saying and what this doc is speaking to.

The good news is that events like this are relatively rare, confined (generally) to certain parts of the 11-year solar cycle.

and followed up with a classic "I know you are but what am I" by you lol

this thread looks like it's folding in on itself

You'll be thrilled to learn that you can sort any product on Amazon by average customer rating and "most popular" (total number of sales) in order to find exactly that product.

Customers are real humans with autonomy that need to bear responsibility for their own purchases ;)

It's possible we're not on the same page on what you meant, but after your clarifying, it still requires defining what a "bad product" is, and that's not as easy as it feels like you're suggesting. A cheap product can be both good value and a bad product, depending on the type of product/intended use/customer expectations/etc. But it's up to the customer to decide that.

The main point I'm trying to make there is that customers are unpredictable (and irrational) and they have autonomy, and they need to bear at least some responsibility in making sure what they are buying meets their needs/wants, regardless of what Amazon was paid to suggest to them. This is true everywhere, like at a grocery store - it would be a silly article if it complained about more expensive or store-brand products being placed at eye-level when a "better deal" might be 3 shelves down. That's essentially what Amazon is doing and what the complaint is.

> you implied that there was no knowable standard for good value

This is something I stand by (see above), but you would have to take it to an absurd extreme to conclude that it means I think people are happy being scammed.

Being scammed on Amazon a separate problem, with other avenues of recourse (filing complaints directly to Amazon/requesting refunds, legal system for counterfeits or misleading advertising, etc.), and Amazon is financially incentivized to avoid it to keep customers happy/returning.

I appreciate your response and perspective, and I apologize that my reply had been more snarky than it needed to be.

I'm not here just to defend Amazon, it has it's issues, but it has also provided a lot of value to it's customers, all things considered (building out the largest most efficient supply/distribution chain ever, increasing convenience, reducing cost, and giving access to wide range of product choices). I just think it's important to take full stock of what the benefits are as well as to understand if harms are actually harms or just assumed harms. Basically, just to understand what the tradeoffs are, and that there's likely something positive to be found. I try to apply this thinking to more than just Amazon- like I said, I'm not here just to defend it.

Thanks again for the levelheaded response, I'll leave this feeling like I understand the point you were making better.

> I think deficient or faulty products exist and amazon often sells them.

So nothing I said disagrees with this. I agree that "pseudo-scam" products and counterfeits exist on Amazon, but if something is risky/dangerous for someone to buy, Amazon is at least partially liable for this - I got a product recall from Amazon for a water kettle (that Amazon doesn't make) that had some defect that could lead to scalding.

While it's a problem, Amazon is incentivized to make sure that the customer would want to keep returning to Amazon for future purchases. If they develop a reputation of giving suggestions for junk/scam/counterfeit products that people end up buying, people will stop using Amazon - at both the individual, and word of mouth levels. Your concern is "naturally" regulated in that way. Amazon wants to keep it's customers happy so it can keep selling them things, and selling them crap is a bad way to keep them happy.

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> when someone tries to buy a brand-name product and receives a counterfeit knockoff instead, that some proportion of those customers prefer to pay brand-name prices for knock offs

What did I say that would imply this? No, I am not suggesting that at all. I am suggesting that some people want to pay less ($100 vs $450) for a cheaper product (barebones version) and that's what represents good value to them - not something at the same price that's fake, I really don't know where you think I implied that lol.

> there are a lot of cheap air fryers that are not worth buying over a one or more "good value" alternatives

OK, but the customer is the only person who gets to decide what that means. "Reversing the idea" is just making the same (imo faulty) assumption that the author is, which is that there is some known "good value" product that everyone should be buying. What you perceive to be "good value" might be "overpaying for useless features" to someone else.

If anything, allowing for ads like Amazon does is probably more likely to match a customer to the product that's "good value" for them. If someone consistently buys products after sorting price low>high, then you know something about their purchasing habits - giving them a recommendation to buy a $450 air fryer because it's "good value" (decided by who?) isn't helpful when they really just want something barebones for $100.

"Nuance isn't relevant here because I've already assumed what they're doing is strictly bad" is what I'm haering.

Engaging with the nuance means engaging with the fact that rent-seeking can only exist where value (real or perceived) actually exists. Amazon is only able to sell these ads because sellers get value out of them through increasing sales using the infrastructure that Amazon built. The fact that they capitalize on that by creating a market for those ad-buyers to compete in (rent-seeking, as you'd call it) is not remotely surprising, they should be able to profit using the systems they built up. This is akin to paying more to rent a "better" booth to sell at at a trading card convention; or for ads costing more during the Superbowl halftime than at 2am on local news. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with any of that.

As far as a conflict of interest, Amazon is still incentivized to get a potential customer to make a purchase, and (more importantly) to make sure that the customer would want to keep returning to Amazon for future purchases. If Amazon develops a reputation of giving suggestions for junk products that people end up buying, people will stop using Amazon. It's "naturally" regulated in that way. Gibing some governing body the power to regulate what companies are/aren't allowed to suggest to their customers feels like it's only relevant if this was a true monopoly.

Re: monopolies- Amazon is not hiding alternative products to those in the ads; customers are people with the autonomy to find the product that best suites their needs, and they still have full capability of doing that. There are also plenty of other ways to purchase products, I'd guess that 95%+ of products available on Amazon can be sold/purchased elsewhere, it's just that Amazon is the most convenient way (for both buyers and sellers).

You raise a very good counter to what feels like the main thrust of the guys article. It put to words something that felt "off" to me while reading it, that there was an assumption made that was never stated and was also incorrect - so thanks for putting that to words.

He seems to assume that there is 1 air fryer that everyone on Earth should be getting, and all others are strictly inferior. There are probably no products that exists where that logic is true. There is so much variation in cost vs quality, or entire feature-sets like you pointed out.

This bleeds over into incredibly "messy" areas too, like societal signaling. Someone might specifically want a more expensive version of something simply because it's more expensive. The author doesn't seem to account for any of this complexity, even the "simple" complexity of cost/quality/features.

The value that these types of ads can add is that Amazon can build up models that can "learn" and get better at matching every unique persons criteria and provide a way for vendors to get "matched" with that buyer. Obviously you can still critique this model, but to assume it's strictly bad feels like it lacks nuance/critical thinking.

ORD to MKE is a 60-90 minute drive depending on traffic. When you account for going through ORD security, boarding, taxiing at ORD, etc. I'm not so sure that it's a win for travel time. Depends on where you're starting from in the Chicago area, I suppose.

Your DEN to COS suggestion would probably be quite popular for skiers coming in that want to avoid renting a car and would enjoy the electric hop to avoid a 2hr drive.

The real winning route would be two airports separated by ~100miles that still have a 3+hr drive, or two small regional airports where security time is negligible (that's certainly NOT O'hare, in my experience at least lol) Flights leaving GRB to northern Michigan would be perfect for this though since the alternative is to drive around Lake Michigan.

I gotta be honest, I don't really think these immigrant groups see or care what Trump/RFK are saying. If anything they see them as an "enemy" who they should not trust.. This is an incredibly left-leaning city where the majority of public health information (or any other messaging) being disseminated is counter to what the current federal admin is saying (as a rule, it seems).

So to answer your question, I don't personally think it helps or hurts in any significant amount relative to other cultural drivers.

I am very prepared to get downvoted for bringing this up - but I'm not convinced that the "anti-vax movement" most people think of is truly to blame (that is, crazy people who think it gives you autism or whatever).

At least in my area, there are pockets of (relatively) new immigrants that have MMR vaccination rates at around 30% (that's very low, much lower than the anti-vaxxer population could account for imo), and the reasons for that have nothing to do with MAGA/MAHA as far as I can tell.

It's an entirely different problem (that needs solving), and pretending that this is simply the by-product of uneducated crazies on the internet feels like it's over indexing on a loud and flashy but ultimately small part of the problem.

I think they are saying that it's difficult to "maintain manners" for hundreds of thousands to millions of diverse "I, the individual" 's. It's great that you don't struggle with that yourself, but your manners can be made entirely irrelevant by 1 person in a public place who has anti-social behaviors (doesn't share the same set of "required" values for that society).

OP hadn't been responding to any claims about being "truly life changing" he was addressing the point regarding what parts of his day are now reliant on AI such that his work would be more difficult without it.

You're the one holding him to a standard that it be "truly life changing" when that was never what he was addressing in his comment. (You're also the one adding emphasis that increases the requirements to overcome the authors, and your own, doubt). And who are you to say that these things didn't truly change the OP comments life? Not having to look up implementation details could be a time save for them on the order of hours per week. That could free up time for him to develop a new hobby, start working out, or any other manner of things that could literally change his life. You're not the only one who gets to decide what life changing means.

Also, it really is worth reflecting on the fact that we are where we are as a society because of a bunch of cumulative "I'm X% better at my job" advancements. That's literally one of the main through-lines in technological advancement since the stone age. Another through-line is that technology (even "truly life changing" technology) is frequently over-hyped. There's really nothing new going on here.

What I'm gathering here is that your argument simply boils down to that it's your personal preference (in this example) that rotating 90 degrees should have no associated animation.

> The actual job is not "feel" it is "do".

According to.. you? And subject to your expectations? If I click a button to rotate an image 90degrees on my phone's image editor, I personally expect (and want) it to have rotation animation.

So who's right? You, because you speak in absolutes?

It feels a little disingenuous to ignore the second half of his final sentence/conclusion. Feels like you're trying to do some kind of "gotcha".

The main thrust of what he was saying is in the second half: "a road sweeper could also do theirs if the sweeping trucks went away too" - you could do your job tomorrow without an IDE auto-completing common syntax, but it's a useful tool for many people. OP is saying that AI, for him, is similarly a very useful tool that he considers to be close to "critical in [his] day".

Why not actually address that instead of playing word games?