squillion

The Iranian government is responsible of all sorts of human rights violations, and also for the drought (at least partly), but the economic collapse was triggered by the US.

Bessent said so at Davos:

"President Trump ordered our Treasury and our OFAC division (Office of Foreign Asset Control) to put maximum pressure on Iran. And it's worked, because in December, their economy collapsed. [...] So this is why people took to the street. This is economic statecraft". https://youtu.be/VQQXLnXlWqY?t=1722

Is this how America helps dissidents? Make them so miserable they can't bear it anymore? Anyways, it never works. It just makes civilians more miserable and the government more repressive. Look at Cuba or North Korea.

I think we’re talking about bank reserves, which is a fraction (in the order of 1%) of the total amount of money held in the customers’ transaction accounts. Reserves are convertible into cash. Not that any bank would suddenly want to do that, unless there’s a bank run, in which case it’s the customers who want the entirety of their accounts (100x the reserves) converted into cash, which is impossible not because the fed refuses to convert the money, but because the bank doesn’t have enough reserves.

I'd only entertain the possibility that it was tongue-in-cheek if it came from someone critical of the World Bank and laissez-faire economics in general, for instance Joseph Stiglitz, who has also been chief economist at the World Bank and was critical of it. But if you're fine with structural adjustment – which many see as basically tear-down-orphanage-to-build-mall – you don't get to make that kind of jokes. It's too close to home.

Let's not forget that time he advocated for dumping toxic waste in poor countries.

"I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summers_memo

I lost him when he rounded the orders of magnitude.

I think your assumption that Dutch politicians defend the interests of Dutch citizens, if only for winning votes, is wrong. European politician respond first (or only?) to the US. As a EU citizen, I take no pleasure in saying this.

Well, I simplified.

I said "no calorie counting", not "eat as much as you please". And by "right proportions" in those books they mean something specific: roughly 50% fat, 25% proteins, 25% carbs, plus a balanced mix of different fats, slow carbs, etc.

The laws of thermodynamics obviously hold for nutrition as for any other phenomena. In order to lose wait you have to eat less, no question about that. But the idea is that it's much easier to directly control what you eat than how much you eat. And by following those diets it's allegedly easier to eat the right amount.

I absolutely believe your method works. As for me, I've experienced that since I changed my diet as per the above recommendations, I'm not hungry two hours after each meal anymore.

tayo42 asked for something less tedious than counting calories, so I suggested they take a look at an alternative approach which has benefited me, and in my opinion is well argued.

Take a look at these books:

- David Ludwig, Always Hungry?

- Mark Hyman, The Blood Sugar Solution

The first one is very accessible, the second one very posh. But the underlying approach is the same: no calorie counting, just good food in the right proportions.

I also read that counting calories is so inaccurate that you may die of starvation or become obese, on the same diet. That is, if you exclusively ate what you measured, and all of it.

Counting calories presumably works (when it does) because it’s combined with more nutritious, regular meals, better awareness, etc. It’s also possible that the measurement errors even out over time, but I suspect the timescale is too long (if you’ve undereaten for two days you’ll end up eating something out of the diet).

Exactly!

> this assumes models can achieve strict prompt adherence

What does strict adherence to an ambiguous prompt even mean? It’s like those people asking Babbage if his machine would give the right answer when given the wrong figures. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a proposition.

I’m not a native English speaker, can someone point me to a definition of “commiserate” that matches the usage in this article? It seems to have a different meaning according to the dictionaries.

I can’t even.

Sources for the charts, via reverse image search:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-working-hours-ac...

https://www.epi.org/publication/as-union-membership-has-fall...

https://www.bls.gov/wsp/factsheets/summary-of-work-stoppages...

https://justicepolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/justicepolicy/d...

Warning: abuse of this technique may cause the model to go blind.

Have you tried an air filter? A friend of mine has a bad hay fever but since he's put an air filter in his bedroom he can sleep soundly again.

Gatsby never made sense to me. Weird design decisions I couldn’t find any plausible reason for. As soon as Next.js became capable of doing SSG I convinced my team to abandon Gatsby. Definitely a minus, sorry.

What you say is true, and I agree on self-determination in the abstract. But I simply can't believe the U.S. is in Taiwan to defend its people, rather than contain and weaken mainland China. The U.S. has demonstrated time and again it will gladly throw an ally under the bus in order to weaken an adversary ("it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal"). To go back to the OP, moving TSMC to the U.S. looks a lot like preparation for scorched earth in Taiwan. [1]

[1] https://asiatimes.com/2022/12/us-mulls-scorched-earth-strate...

> Taiwan is not China

Taiwan might be considered a de facto independent country, but according to most institutions it's officially part of China.

1. Taiwan's official name is Republic of China (ROC): it regards itself as part of China, and the sole legitimate seat of China's government. It's true however that "it has not formally renounced its claim to the mainland, but ROC government publications have increasingly downplayed this historical claim". [1]

2. In 1971, the UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 "recognized the People's Republic of China (PRC) as 'the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations'". [2]

3. Only 11 (tiny) countries officially recognize Taiwan as an independent country, i.e. maintain full diplomatic relations. [3]

4. The U.S. official position is that "The United States has a longstanding one China policy", and "we not support Taiwan independence". [4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan#Foreign_relations_and_i... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Taiwan#Fu... [4] https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-taiwan/

This is all very good advice. Frankly, it’s common sense, but it’s good to have some data to support it.

I have several issues with the framing, though. (I understand the authors might be intentionally gloss over the problematic aspects).

- There’s nothing “small” or “micro” about these acts. Most of the people I’ve worked with would have a hard time doing any of this. Most managers/leaders I’ve known are simply unable to behave this way. Maybe after a few years of psychotherapy…

- These practices tend to weaken authority and hierarchy. Organizations will always resist adopting something so radical.

- This approach might have the same goals as DEI, but it’s not DEI by any stretch. The methods are basically the opposite of DEI’s. It reminds me of Egoless Engineering, for instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42311069

Very cool! That’s hypnosis, if we want to insist with the psychological metaphors.

> If you run on the conversation the right way, you can become their internal monologue.

That’s what hypnosis in people is about, according to some: taking over someone else’s monologue.

I think you misunderstood my point...

There are so many things in programming that are hard to grasp at a deep level, but don't look scary to beginners (who misuse them without realizing). Monads look scary so they take all the blame. I'm not really proposing this, but I guess if monads were called something like "flatmappable", the focus would perhaps shift to the more difficult parts of Haskell: at the root, immutability and purity, and on top of that, the deluge of abstractions and ways to compose them. It wouldn't make Haskell any easier... it would just save the poor monad all the bad rap.

If they were called "flatmappable" (which is essentially what they are), people wouldn't complain so much about monads. But in Haskell you have to bend over backwards just to set a variable you think should be in scope, or to log something to the console, and monads are involved in achieving that kind of things.

Haskell is hard - monads in themselves not really.

> You need someone in the system to say that treatment is too expensive, you cant have it.

That'd be triage, and I don't think it's the insurers' business – or even the doctors', unless they're in a field hospital in a war zone.

The article argues that prices are too high, because of monopoly power. Get prices down and triage won't be necessary anymore.

I was never convinced by the argument that patients and doctors can't be trusted to request the care they need, and would overconsume healthcare unless strictly constrained. I mean, it will definitely happen (I know some hypochondriaques), but to what extent? On one hand, "overcared" patients would likely avoid serious illness through prevention, so it's not obvious costs would explode. And on the other hand, there's a limit to how many useless treatments you can push onto patients. However, there seems to be no limit to consolidation and price gouging...

I'm glad this article provides real data and solid analysis to back my intuition.

It's funny that his recommendations - organize code in modules etc. - are nothing AI-specific, it's what you'd do if you had to handover your project to an external team, or simply make it maintainable in the long term. So the best strategy for collaborating with AI turns out to be the same as for collaborating with humans.

I completely agree. That's why my stance is to wait and see, and in the meanwhile get our shit together, as in make our code maintainable by any intelligent being, human or not.

COVID is airborne, it doesn’t spread via droplets. It’s not clear whether this spray can also block airborne viruses or it only works on droplets.