warbaker

Most dentists aren't scammers.

Dentistry is just hard.

21 years ago today, Nick Bostrom published The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant: https://nickbostrom.com/papers/the-fable-of-the-dragon-tyran...

This is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard.

The real with prediction markets problem is that people can make bets, then alter outcomes to match those bets. This is a well-known issue in sports betting (e.g. taking a fall), and I don't see how we're going to prevent it for things that matter a whole lot more than sports.

Non-paywalled version: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-3326102/v1

One of the authors is a retired general, so he probably knows a bit more than us internet randos. Still, the last paragraph says: "The lesson of the Iran campaign is that the F-35 performed superbly in exactly the kind of fight it was built for." I feel like it's hard to gainsay the utility of the F-35 when it's useful in a real war we're actually in.

The author's main argument against the F-35 is that it can be easily destroyed on runways now, as drones and missile developments have outpaced missile defense, leaving the US and US allies vulnerable to a preemptive strike by China.

That might be true, but it's also strategically valuable to diminish the military capabilities of allies of China (e.g. the Iranian theocracy), which may make up for the tactical weaknesses of the F-35 against China in a direct confrontation. It's also possible that drone/missile defense will catch up (e.g. lasers), but that's hard to say at this point.

I am extremely pro-abortion. I think that "pro life" laws infringe on the basic human right to bodily autonomy, and threaten to criminalize miscarriage.

I am also aware that many people don't agree with me on this issue, but may agree with me on the importance of digital civil liberties.

When listing three example reasonable uses of social media, I feel EFF chose a needlessly divisive example, due the misguided notion that every good organization should support every good cause.

I want religious conservatives to support digital civil liberties, but if we insist on making it a "package deal" with stuff they don't support, we drive them away.

And downvoted to pieces. HN is such a cool place for dialogue!

I wish this announcement weren't infused with intersectionality.

"Your abortion fund uses TikTok to spread crucial information" is listed as one of three sample reasons you might use social media.

I support reproductive rights! But I don't want EFF to do that, and I don't want EFF to push conservatives out of the movement. I want EFF to appeal to everyone who cares about digital civil liberties, including people who disagree with me on other issues.

You can locate an aluminum plant pretty much anywhere you want, as the energy required to make aluminum is large compared to the cost of mining/shipping bauxite. This solves the main problem with geothermal, which is that it's in random locations around the world that don't necessarily have many people living there.

Any place with significant volcanic activity (e.g. Hawaii) could probably do geothermal power if they wanted to.

On aluminum, the author says:

> “renewables” cannot provide the stable current and carbon atoms needed to make the process possible

This is untrue. Iceland has a huge aluminum industry, using mainly geothermal power: https://energytransition.org/2023/03/geothermal-iceland-this...

Iceland alone accounts for 1/10th of global aluminum production! https://www.riotinto.com/en/operations/iceland/isal

You do need constant, reliable power, as even a brief interruption makes a huge mess when the aluminum/slag freezes in the processor.

Unfortunate that JG is the fall guy for Siri. He was very successful at Google (e.g. BERT was published just after he left), but it looks like he wasn't able to save Apple from itself.

Is anyone willing to explain to me how Google is a monopolist in advertising? There are other online advertising platforms, and publishers can and do sell adds directly to advertisers.

See https://www.reddit.com/r/liberalgunowners/

...except that he is definitely wrong about the targeting aspect as well. Almost all of the people hit by the pager explosions were legit military targets. In the videos of the explosions, you can see people unharmed who were standing within meters of the targets. It was one of the most well-targeted anti-terrorist strikes in history.

I just want to say: thank you. It is hard to overstate how much Pytorch has accelerated ML/AI development, across the board.