Greg's recent activity
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Comment on We economists have done the maths: ‘growth’ is a doomed strategy – there is a better way in ~finance
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Comment on Virgin Galactic wants your help naming its new Delta class spaceship in ~space
Greg Link ParentFrom a company where the CEO’s turned up in drag for more than one major event, built a very silly looking statue of Godzilla with his hairstyle, and flown a blimp with “BA can’t get it up” on the...From a company where the CEO’s turned up in drag for more than one major event, built a very silly looking statue of Godzilla with his hairstyle, and flown a blimp with “BA can’t get it up” on the side when they were having technical problems with the London Eye, I was genuinely expecting Spacey McSpaceface to be an approved option.
[Edit] Or an option to just call it Steve. That feels oddly appropriate too, cheers @JXM.
I suppose either of those are a bit too dry British humour for the specific brand of breathless Bay Area investors they’ll be courting to go up against SpaceX, though…
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Comment on AI data center developers begin suing local jurisdictions behind bans and moratoriums — claims range from officials exceeding authority to violations of due process and equal protection laws in ~tech
Greg Link ParentThat feels like it’d be a result of a poorly written law if that were the case being brought, though. “We ban datacenters” is dumb (as legal drafting, anyway; it’s good PR), and would probably...That feels like it’d be a result of a poorly written law if that were the case being brought, though. “We ban datacenters” is dumb (as legal drafting, anyway; it’s good PR), and would probably fail to do the practical job the community actually wants here even if it did stand up to legal scrutiny. Tightening noise and vibration requirements, power draw limitations, water requirements, etc is the way to do it; it stops someone from filling the space with a non-datacenter business that turns out to be just as bad, and if someone does manage to build a datacenter that complies then problem solved.
For clarity, I haven’t actually checked the legal wording - not sure if it was bad or if the plaintiffs are just chancing it - but it seems like there is a sensible way to write that law.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Greg Link ParentI appreciate the chat, it’s interesting and all too rare to discuss this kind of genuinely principled disagreement in good faith. I think all I really have to add is that the CEO explicitly chose...I appreciate the chat, it’s interesting and all too rare to discuss this kind of genuinely principled disagreement in good faith.
I think all I really have to add is that the CEO explicitly chose to take the duties and the enormous monetary rewards of that position, with full knowledge of what it entailed. I try not to blame the subsistence level worker for the job the system imposes upon them under pain of homelessness; I absolutely do blame the multimillionaire CEO for the consequences of the job they freely chose to take on. Whatever your thoughts on what happened to him as a result, I do think he bears the moral weight of choosing that specific way to participate in the capitalist system imposed on us all.
For what it’s worth fiduciary duty is also a little more nuanced than people often think. But to me the stronger case is still his choice to accept the duty, however it was understood.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Greg (edited )Link ParentHard to say, and I’ll be honest here and admit that I’d been remembering anecdotal evidence as stronger than it was. There are a decent amount of anecdotes, there are some suspiciously timed...- Exemplary
Did that actually happen?
Hard to say, and I’ll be honest here and admit that I’d been remembering anecdotal evidence as stronger than it was. There are a decent amount of anecdotes, there are some suspiciously timed u-turns, and there’s an industry wide change for the better a year after it happened. But those are circumstantial, it looks to be too early for real statistical research to have been done, and I was probably overconfident on the assertion.
Under most frameworks, murdering someone is not justifiable even if it does directly save the lives of others
Really? This doesn’t match what I see: I mentioned the “shoot the person who’s shooting others in order to stop them” example for a reason, because from what I see it is widely considered morally acceptable to do so in the real world.
The organ donor example flips the ethical question (killing an ostensibly innocent party to save others, vs killing a guilty one to prevent them enacting further harm on others). Should that distinction flip the ethical view? Personally I think yes, intent matters a lot, but we’re back into classic trolley problem variants again now, and utilitarian purists might disagree with the importance of that nuance.
However, this argument falls apart pretty quickly.
I’m sorry, but I absolutely, vehemently disagree with you on this. Systems like the NHS specifically and explicitly allocate their fixed budget between priorities with the goal of maximising quality adjusted years of life among their population of patients; they deny some to save others. For-profit companies maximise profit regardless of the impact on human life; they deny some to keep the money. The fact they both sometimes deny care is absolutely in no way an equivalence.
[Edit] And yes, I know, private insurers also prioritise quality adjusted return on treatment cost. Doesn’t change the fact that they deliberately reduce the overall pool of money spent on care in order to pay shareholders.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Greg Link ParentYou’re right, I’ve never found a belief system that purist that actually survives contact with messy reality and I was mostly talking it through conceptually, although I do find a fair amount to...You’re right, I’ve never found a belief system that purist that actually survives contact with messy reality and I was mostly talking it through conceptually, although I do find a fair amount to like in utilitarian philosophy.
But I also think you’re kinda doing what I alluded to at the end and underestimating the many thousands of lifetimes of potentially-lived years the healthcare industry is willingly and knowingly choosing to trade for profit. I would’ve loved to see real reform and I agree that we didn’t, but even the few weeks of “ah shit, just approve anything even remotely borderline” after it happened was already more than enough to put Mangione’s lives saved/lives taken ratio well up there in the double or even triple digits, alongside people widely thought of as heroes.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Greg Link ParentGoing on pure utilitarianism, he’s almost certainly saved more lives by acting than by doing nothing. Trolley problem goes here. The nuance in the utilitarian argument comes down to the question...Going on pure utilitarianism, he’s almost certainly saved more lives by acting than by doing nothing. Trolley problem goes here.
The nuance in the utilitarian argument comes down to the question of whether acceptance of his actions does or doesn’t constitute a wider unacceptable risk (justification of vigilantism, normalisation of political violence, etc), because his actions taken in isolation helped more people than they harmed by a pretty significant margin.
It’s vanishingly rare for a genuine good guy with a gun who kills a mass shooter to receive anything other than accolades and adoration. The cause and effect is clear and direct, and people applaud them for it, even though there are plenty of injuries and deaths attributed to mistaken identity or straightforward inaccuracy from people trying to be a good guy with a gun. Even so, the ones who get it right are treated as heroes.
So I don’t think the arguments against Mangione’s alleged actions are really because of the things it could encourage. I think they’re because the widespread killing perpetrated by an insurance CEO choosing to dial in profit margin against patient care is so indirect, so well insulated, it isn’t thought of as “real” killing at all. And in a system where consciously choosing to curtail thousands of person-years of life not only isn’t condemned but is actively rewarded, is it really that hard to empathise with someone who decides to take direct action, even if you ultimately come down on the side of it being unjustifiable?
Wow, this sure does dovetail nicely with another conversation I was just having…
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Comment on Elon Musk on tomatoes in ~food
Greg Link ParentIncentives are hard, and honestly if we got enough people debating the nuances of their alignment the pragmatist in me would probably consider that roughly as good as finding a beautifully elegant...Incentives are hard, and honestly if we got enough people debating the nuances of their alignment the pragmatist in me would probably consider that roughly as good as finding a beautifully elegant and perfectly aligned system of governance!
Like you say, we do have a few examples of genuinely well aligned systems, but at this point I’d be happy if people would just stop going all Patrick Star when discussing the system we currently have.
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Comment on Elon Musk on tomatoes in ~food
Greg Link ParentWhich can also be reframed as: our current system explicitly incentivises and rewards sociopaths and people emulating their behaviours. We all know the “reward for hard work” rhetoric is largely...Which can also be reframed as: our current system explicitly incentivises and rewards sociopaths and people emulating their behaviours.
We all know the “reward for hard work” rhetoric is largely bullshit, but I don’t think enough people take that next step through to “reward for actively harming people” being the observable reality. It’s not a natural law that allows sociopaths to win, it’s the choices we as a collective have made and now refuse to back out of.
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Comment on The magic is in the language in ~tech
Greg Link ParentMCP servers are pretty much this, just a REST API and a standardised JSON file that tells the model how to traverse it. Assuming you hook it up to a reliable data source you get more or less that...MCP servers are pretty much this, just a REST API and a standardised JSON file that tells the model how to traverse it. Assuming you hook it up to a reliable data source you get more or less that exact behaviour (not 100% perfect because there’s still that bit of nondeterminism in how it presents the data it parses from the API, but pretty damn close on anything that’s available in a clear way via whatever data sources you’re using).
I was actually thinking of exactly that when I said even Microsoft does a respectable job! If it’s properly set up on a corporate plan it’ll pull in data from Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, etc by default and has one click plugins to do the same with JIRA, Confluence, GitHub, and a bunch of others. It’s feels less like Star Trek when you’re asking it to find mundane procedural info that’s scattered across 15 different corporate docs within a sea of 10,000 others, but it is extremely useful, and we can comfort ourselves by thinking the Enterprise crew had to spend time looking up Federation HR policies and whatever else offscreen too! It very much wouldn’t be able to do that on data encoded into the weights alone.
If you want the “personal database” kind of behaviour, I’d prime it with the ability to query Wikipedia (bonus points for using an offline dump and a local model), and then tie it into your note taking app of choice as well so you have a channel to add personal data too. You can even just give it access to a Google Drive directory and put whatever you like in there.
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Comment on Instantly peeling a potato (with extremely high pressure steam) in ~food
Greg Link ParentSpecifically, one of the first 15 employees at what became a 1000 person, billion dollar company. That’s a very good way to end up with a couple of million when your stock options vest (the hard...The guy was a lead engineer at Formlabs for a while
Specifically, one of the first 15 employees at what became a 1000 person, billion dollar company. That’s a very good way to end up with a couple of million when your stock options vest (the hard part obviously being picking the one that becomes a billion dollar company at all…).
A 5m subscriber YouTube channel is no small income stream either, but given the pace of video releases and the general vibe, I always got the impression that it’s essentially his retirement project too!
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Comment on The first website was launched thirty-five years ago in ~tech
Greg Link ParentThe NeXTCube Tim Berners-Lee built/hosted it on used to be on display in the lobby there, complete with handwritten “This machine is a server DO NOT POWER DOWN!!” sticker, which always made me laugh.The NeXTCube Tim Berners-Lee built/hosted it on used to be on display in the lobby there, complete with handwritten “This machine is a server DO NOT POWER DOWN!!” sticker, which always made me laugh.
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Comment on The magic is in the language in ~tech
Greg Link ParentI was thinking recently that we’ve already caught up with the ship’s computer from Star Trek, but honestly we’ve probably surpassed it. Doing exactly what we often see in the show is almost...I was thinking recently that we’ve already caught up with the ship’s computer from Star Trek, but honestly we’ve probably surpassed it. Doing exactly what we often see in the show is almost mundane already: asking freeform questions about some topic that involves summarising a huge chunk of data that just came in and then cross referencing that with all the existing data across whatever systems the computer’s plugged into, regardless of format or consistency. Fucking Microsoft even does a respectable job of it as part of O365, the least exciting software suite in history!
But in reality I don’t even need to make the requests… computery sounding like they do in the show. No “search all databases for…” because that’s usually implicit; no slightly altering requests that sound suspiciously like boolean searches until the computer stops saying “no results found”; not even that many drill down questions or explicit calls for clarification. Often enough I’ll get a proactive “oh by the way, you might want to look out for X potential problem” on the end of a response that I genuinely hadn’t previously considered and may well have missed.
Ethics and overuse and hype and marketing bullshit and environmental impact and the rest are all real, serious problems. But for a baseline definition of “helps out at a level similar to a decent coworker, not a traditional computer program”, this tech works in a way that I would’ve called laughably implausible a decade ago. And I was already a decently experienced programmer with a background in machine learning a decade ago!
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Comment on The apples and oranges tribunal in ~society
Greg Link ParentI’m passingly familiar with this one, and there are a few things going on; first and foremost, it’s being brought as a gender inequality case due to the overall gender skew between warehouse...I’m passingly familiar with this one, and there are a few things going on; first and foremost, it’s being brought as a gender inequality case due to the overall gender skew between warehouse workers and store workers. That’s what then raises the legal question “are these jobs of equivalent value?”, because if they are it’s possible to put the difference down to discrimination against the store workers - and in turn to suggest the gender split as a reason for that discrimination - whereas if they aren’t it’s simply a case of different pay for different work.
As I understand it, Tesco have been revealed in many ways throughout the case to be your fairly standard megacorp with all of the broad structures to put profit above workers wherever possible. I don’t think they’re the worst of the worst, but they’re by no means the good guys here.
That said, I don’t really think the premise of the case appears to be particularly fair either. I’ve seen pretty broad agreement from staff not involved in the case that warehouse work is, in fact, some combination of harder and more unpleasant than store work.
If there’s a discrimination claim to be brought, it seems to my non-lawyer eye that questioning the gender split of the two job types would be appropriate (but that could perhaps be defended by Tesco if the applicant split matched the employee split, which presumably is why that wasn’t the legal approach taken). Questioning the pay itself between the two jobs just seems to be reaching a bit; it looks like the store workers trying to enrich themselves. Which I don’t entirely blame them for, corporations are screwing basically everyone and this is their attempt to fight back, but in a bigger picture sense it doesn’t look like a just argument to me - it looks like a utilitarian attempt to rebalance power against the corporation by mildly unjust means, using a law that was put in place without enough forethought about how to quantify situations like this. So, y’know, not the good guys either, but we all know the corporation uses legal exploits to do worse, so I don’t know where that really leaves us.
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Comment on What’s a must-buy item you get when traveling internationally? in ~travel
Greg Link ParentYou’re right, it is absurd that some jobs arbitrarily expect extra wages from customers, that creates some horrible incentives ;) But also I love your approach and taking a little time to do...Also, makes no sense to me why someone whose jobs is many hours of service gets 0 tips when the fast food clerk expects 15% minimum
You’re right, it is absurd that some jobs arbitrarily expect extra wages from customers, that creates some horrible incentives ;)
But also I love your approach and taking a little time to do something nice for the FAs is a great idea! Any public facing job is tough and often kinda thankless, let alone one where you’re also responsible for critical safety measures alongside the service, all while being locked in a metal tube with said public for hours on end. Fun snacks for the crew has got to make their day!
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Comment on Swedish nonprofit owner of Viking ship used in The Odyssey says studio has not paid bill for damage in ~movies
Greg LinkI know this is beside the point, but… guys. You already did them a massive favour by lending them the boat. Charge the goddamn labour too. You don’t need to stoop to their level and gouge them,...“We are only charging for the material cost, not the labour,” he said. “Of course Universal can afford this $6,000. We feel forgotten.”
I know this is beside the point, but… guys. You already did them a massive favour by lending them the boat. Charge the goddamn labour too. You don’t need to stoop to their level and gouge them, but you also don’t gain anything from being extra super nice to the faceless megacorp - as this outcome clearly shows.
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Comment on Unreleased OpenAI model escapes containment and hacks into Hugging Face in ~tech
Greg Link ParentThe funnier part is it’s not even that they’re promising doom if you don’t buy their product - they’re promising doom if you do, because it’s just that powerful. “Pest control so good it’ll leave...The funnier part is it’s not even that they’re promising doom if you don’t buy their product - they’re promising doom if you do, because it’s just that powerful.
“Pest control so good it’ll leave your home an irradiated sterile wasteland, not to be seen by human survivors for 10,000 years”
“Our wiring channels so much electricity it just detonated all your appliances”
“Food you just can’t resist! You’ll be dead from heart failure in a year or your money back!”
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Comment on AI companies are buying tons of old books because they're free of AI slop in ~books
Greg Link ParentThey definitely already did - as well as already consuming the easy digital copies, I’m guessing they’re now begrudgingly paying for paper copies because they don’t want to push their luck on the...They definitely already did - as well as already consuming the easy digital copies, I’m guessing they’re now begrudgingly paying for paper copies because they don’t want to push their luck on the traditional copyright side of things and jeopardise the “training is fair use” part of that ruling that really matters to them
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Comment on Help me choose a HiDPI monitor for work in ~tech
Greg Link ParentI’m definitely way more sensitive to pixel density and general image quality, always have been, so if it comes to it that’s what I’ll prioritise (hence looking at 220dpi only, and probably going...I’m definitely way more sensitive to pixel density and general image quality, always have been, so if it comes to it that’s what I’ll prioritise (hence looking at 220dpi only, and probably going for the BenQ).
Buuuut I definitely don’t think that higher refresh is a waste either - it absolutely is noticeable to me, just as a better, smoother, higher quality overall feel when using a display. I’d be interested to know if you’ve tried daily driving a faster display for a couple of weeks, actually? I don’t explicitly notice “this is bad” on 60Hz (I absolutely do at 100dpi, for comparison), but stepping up and then back down does make it clear to me that 120Hz is worth it if it’s an option.
But yeah, 60-70Hz not a dealbreaker, more just a shame it’s not yet table stakes when we’re talking £1,000+ monitors. Like I said, I’d literally pay the baseline Studio Display price if it were 120Hz, but it feels galling to be getting into that price range and making compromises even if they’re comparatively small ones.
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Comment on Help me choose a HiDPI monitor for work in ~tech
Greg Link ParentThat’s a good point, thank you! Tends to be a solid signal for how much the brand actually trusts and cares about product quality too, because they largely hate handling returns if they can avoid...That’s a good point, thank you! Tends to be a solid signal for how much the brand actually trusts and cares about product quality too, because they largely hate handling returns if they can avoid it.
Interesting that the “cheap” (ugh, I’m spending too much here…) ProArt has the best warranty, actually. Good to see that BenQ is broadly standing behind their hardware too, since it is priced a decent bit higher for its spec.
My bet would be on some kind of market-modulated socialism; I’ve done enough computational modelling of complex shit that I don’t trust myself of anyone else to get it right when it depends heavily on predicting human irrationality, but I do trust the ability of large groups of irrational humans to follow incentives. Just need to change the ownership system to align those incentives a bit better rather than trying to fight entropy and control the downstream allocation system.