papasquat's recent activity
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Comment on AI doomers: What uses of generative AI are you actually excited about? in ~tech
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Comment on Taylor Swift’s obsession with self-mythologising makes for boring art in ~music
papasquat LinkI like Taylor Swift. I think she's a great musician, I find some of her music pretty catchy, and I understand why people love her so much. From what I've seen she seems like a pretty good person....I like Taylor Swift. I think she's a great musician, I find some of her music pretty catchy, and I understand why people love her so much. From what I've seen she seems like a pretty good person.
I'm not really a fan, mostly just because her music just isn't that interesting to me. Part of that is because she almost exclusively writes about her life, and honestly... Her life seems pretty boring. She grew up in an upper middle class white family who spent a lot of effort and time towards her getting a successful music career, and she got one. She was instantly signed and has been successful ever since.
If that's the creative well you have to draw from, I mean... there's just not much there. I'm sure she has a lot of her own problems and issues, and many of them come from the uniqueness of being so successful at such a young age, but if that's what you're drawing on exclusively to base music on, I mean... it's not that surprising that some people are getting a little tired of it.
That's not to bash Taylor, it's not like she should have chosen to grow up in a worse situation for the sake of her music or anything, but when her personal life is so much of her brand, it does feel a little bland sometimes.
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Comment on Elon Musk says SpaceX will prioritize a city on the moon instead of a colony on Mars in ~space
papasquat Link ParentThere are very, very few potential disasters that could entirely wipe out life on earth but allow life on Mars or the Moon to survive. Even a mega asteroid the size of the one that hit Chicxulub...There are very, very few potential disasters that could entirely wipe out life on earth but allow life on Mars or the Moon to survive.
Even a mega asteroid the size of the one that hit Chicxulub would be more survivable in a underground bunker than surviving on Mars. A global pandemic stealthy enough to kill all humans would almost certainly also spread to Mars. The powers that be wouldn't somehow conciniently forget about the Mars colony in a global nuclear war, nor would super intelligent AI.
You really have to contort yourself to think of a scenario where earth dies, but Mars colonies somehow continue to go on and thrive.
I think if space travel becomes cheap, we'll likely naturally get to a place where other worlds are colonized, likely to be mined for their resources, but prioritizing that colonization because of some "life boat" scenario really doesnt make sense to me, and spending a ton of resources towards that is very hard to justify when there are still so many problems here on earth to solve.
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Comment on Elon Musk says SpaceX will prioritize a city on the moon instead of a colony on Mars in ~space
papasquat LinkHow does he keep getting away with saying this shit without suffering any consequences to his credibility? It can not be built within the next decade. Even if the funding for it already existed,...- Exemplary
In a post on his social media platform X, Musk wrote that a lunar city could be built within the next decade.
How does he keep getting away with saying this shit without suffering any consequences to his credibility?
It can not be built within the next decade. Even if the funding for it already existed, which it doesn't, we don't have a working way to land on the moon yet. HLS isn't even built, let alone tested, let alone actually landed on the moon. We haven't set foot on the moon for over half a century. We have no data on the viability of long term habitation on the moon, no one has ever built a habitat on the moon let alone a city.
It's beyond the realm of unfeasible, it just straight up not possible to build a self sufficient city on the moon in 10 years. It's science fiction. We may as well be talking about building the starship enterprise.
Somehow, people respond positively to this shit from a known, proven liar, who almost always lies at press announcements. It's like people have the memory of goldfishes with this guy, it just really leaves me dumbstruck every time some new story like this comes out.
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Comment on Voyager Technologies CEO says space data center cooling problem still needs to be solved in ~space
papasquat Link ParentThat would require regularly going up and down a gravity well, which would make the whole thing require an incredible amount of energy. Space vehicles don't have a ton of compute on them; at least...If you have modular heat sinks then you don't need the data center on the moon, you could shift heat to the moon.
That would require regularly going up and down a gravity well, which would make the whole thing require an incredible amount of energy.
Would a data center in space allow you to have less compute on the vehicles themselves by offloading the work?
Space vehicles don't have a ton of compute on them; at least not compared to AI workloads. There's no need for them to offload any of it. The types of orbital calculations done by the Apollo guidance computer can be done thousands of times faster by a mid range smartphone. If there ever were a need to offload any of it though, it would be a heck of a lot easier to just have that compute on earth.
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Comment on Voyager Technologies CEO says space data center cooling problem still needs to be solved in ~space
papasquat Link ParentYou could, but the reason why heat is hard to deal with in space is because it's so empty. You could use it to smelt ore... Kinda, but that would require concentrating the heat, which requires...You could, but the reason why heat is hard to deal with in space is because it's so empty. You could use it to smelt ore... Kinda, but that would require concentrating the heat, which requires even more energy, which generates more heat.
You could transfer it to the moon, but that would require the data center to be on the moon, not in space, and the moon is way harder to get to than orbit.
You could also just build heat pumps that cool down the areas you want to cool down, and heat up the radiators to super high temperatures, which makes them better at radiating heat, or use that heat to boil water to be used as steam for thrust or whatever.
The real issue is that there's no technical reason why you couldn't put a data center in space. We have the technology to do that right now if we really really wanted to.
There's no economic reason to do it though. Every aspect of it would be more expensive than putting them on earth, and not a little more expensive, like... tens of thousands of times more expensive, not to mention risky and dangerous.
The technical problems are implementation details that could be solved with enough resources. I don't see how the economic problems are solvable without some sci fi space launch technology.
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Comment on Voyager Technologies CEO says space data center cooling problem still needs to be solved in ~space
papasquat Link ParentIf you take a look at Elon from a sober perspective, you can see that he really is a very smart guy. He picks things up quickly, he has good ideas, and he's much more technically inclined than the...If you take a look at Elon from a sober perspective, you can see that he really is a very smart guy. He picks things up quickly, he has good ideas, and he's much more technically inclined than the vast majority of business executives.
His problem is that he's drank his own kool-aid. Being very smart doesn't mean you're good at everything. Even the worlds foremost expert on self driving cars isn't also good at rocketry, or social media moderation, or business strategy, or fucking path of exile 2.
The difference between Elon and most actual experts is that most people who are very very good at something will admit they're not good at everything.
Elon seems to have this opinion of himself that he's just straight up better than every other human that's ever existed. He views himself as a guy that can go into a field and immediately grasp all of the problems with that field and solve them where experts who have devoted their lives to those problems have failed.
He thinks of himself as a comic book genius, like Tony Stark or Mister Fantastic.
People like that don't exist though. They never have. If you devote your life to one field and you're naturally smart, you can become an expert on the cutting edge of that field. You don't get to just do that with everything you touch though.
He thinks he's the exception to that rule, he's surrounded himself with people who affirm that belief, and he has legions of crypto bro/hyper capitalist/right wing extremist fans online that buy into that myth.
I always am a little annoyed when people cast him as an idiot though, because he's pretty clearly not a stupid guy based on objective standards, only compared to the image of himself he's created.
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Comment on Voyager Technologies CEO says space data center cooling problem still needs to be solved in ~space
papasquat Link ParentI don't think anyone is suggesting that the people who work at these companies are idiots. I think it's a lot more likely that they think that many of their investors are idiots, and that far...I don't think anyone is suggesting that the people who work at these companies are idiots.
I think it's a lot more likely that they think that many of their investors are idiots, and that far fetched, exciting, sci fi ideas are a good way to get those investors to fork over more money.
The engineers working at these companies are well aware of the physical challenges of doing this. The business strategy people are well aware that it makes no economic sense.
Their executives are just scratching for a new angle to make headlines, and maybe some engineers will be tasked to bash their heads against the problem, and they may even launch something, but they're not going to make it economically viable without absolutely earth shattering breakthroughs in propulsion physics. They know that too.
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Comment on Voyager Technologies CEO says space data center cooling problem still needs to be solved in ~space
papasquat Link ParentThat's not really how regulation works. If the company has a US presence or does business with US citizens, it can be regulated. Those data centers in space still need to actually be communicated...That's not really how regulation works. If the company has a US presence or does business with US citizens, it can be regulated.
Those data centers in space still need to actually be communicated with and run by a company. It's not like you could run a pirate data center and the company running it would be untouchable by US law just because their servers aren't physically reachable.
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Comment on Hair loss open discussion in ~talk
papasquat Link ParentWell thank you for that, that's very flattering. Although I thought about it and I felt that I should state, since I'm sort of giving medical advice. I'm not a doctor and I have no medical...Well thank you for that, that's very flattering.
Although I thought about it and I felt that I should state, since I'm sort of giving medical advice. I'm not a doctor and I have no medical experience at all. I'm just a formerly bald guy who had a lot of time on his hand to do research on hair loss.
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Comment on The Boring Company faces Nashville tunnel criticism in ~transport
papasquat Link ParentBuilding a new lane isn't cheap or easy, and it really isn't a good solution. It's certainly cheaper and easier than tunneling under 40 feet of rock through. This isn't a particularly dense route...Building a new lane isn't cheap or easy, and it really isn't a good solution.
It's certainly cheaper and easier than tunneling under 40 feet of rock through. This isn't a particularly dense route we're talking about here, so land use issues aren't nearly as much of a problem as the dense urban areas where subways make economic sense.
The whole pitch of the boring company is that you can bore faster if you use smaller tunnels; tunnels that only one car can barely squeeze through. The entire issue there is that having a tunnel that is so narrow that you can't pass is incredibly unsafe and inefficient. All it takes is a single breakdown, and everyone in the tunnel is trapped in one direction.
An accident completely shuts the tunnel down until you can tow the car completely through the other side.
Ignoring that, cars are a really awful way to transport lots of people.
The really frustrating thing about their pitch is that they compare apples to oranges. They say that the Nashville loop route will take 8 minutes to complete versus 15-30 minutes via road.
They're comparing an uncongested loop with zero wait time traveling at maximum speed with real world road conditions.
The thing is, it's an 8 mile drive. If this was a zombie movie situation where absolutely no one was on the road, I could go balls to the wall and get there in 8 minutes too. The loop doesn't somehow break physics and eliminate the time it takes to get somewhere. It's just a road. If you look at the Vegas loop during peak hours, it would have usually have been faster to drive, because the roads in Vegas have way higher capacity than the loop does. You have to wait in line for your own personal Tesla to roll up and then wait in traffic, except this time it's underground.
Throughput is the main thing that matters when talking about high volume transit. The theoretical, traveling only time when the system is operating 100% smoothly and uncongested is so irrelevant that it's not even worth bringing up, but that seems like the main thing this crap gets sold on.
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Comment on The Boring Company faces Nashville tunnel criticism in ~transport
papasquat LinkI don't get the point of this thing. It's like you take a highway and a subway, combine them by using the worst parts of each, then make it have new disadvantages that neither of them have. Even...I don't get the point of this thing. It's like you take a highway and a subway, combine them by using the worst parts of each, then make it have new disadvantages that neither of them have.
Even if you have an irrational hatred of trains, you could literally just build another lane on i-40. It would be cheaper, safer, faster, and move more people.
It's like everyone just becomes laser focused on these projects and immediately get to work thinking up justifications without ever stepping back to ask "what is actually the point of this thing?"
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Comment on OpenAI exec becomes top US President Donald Trump donor with $25 million gift in ~society
papasquat Link ParentThe law was dead as soon as citizens united was decided. Since then, it's been "we're not doing bribery. Wink wink." We know it's massive poltical corruption, they know it's corruption. We all...The law was dead as soon as citizens united was decided. Since then, it's been "we're not doing bribery. Wink wink." We know it's massive poltical corruption, they know it's corruption. We all just pretend it isn't because of strange loopholes.
Politicians in theory aren't allowed to tell PACs how to spend their money or what to do. In practice, why would they ever have to? Their platforms are, by nature, as public as possible. We know what Donald Trump supports, so he doesn't need to pick up the phone to tell you what to advocate for.
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Comment on Hair loss open discussion in ~talk
papasquat Link ParentSort of? Not really though. When you get a hair transplant, they take hair from the back of your head, which is resistant to DHT. That's the reason that even totally bald guys still have the donut...Sort of? Not really though. When you get a hair transplant, they take hair from the back of your head, which is resistant to DHT. That's the reason that even totally bald guys still have the donut ring around the back of their heads.
Those follicles remain DHT resistant no matter where they're transplanted. So you won't lose any transplanted hairs to androgens. The hair around them is another story though. Your hair loss for the follicles around where you were already losing hair will continue as normal, so a lot of guys stay on drugs after transplants so that they don't have a bunch of new hair loss behind their transplanted hair.
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Comment on Hair loss open discussion in ~talk
papasquat Link ParentI've looked into this pretty extensively. There are potential sexual side effects with fin and dut. They're very rare though. It's also very difficult to figure out how much of that is placebo and...I've looked into this pretty extensively. There are potential sexual side effects with fin and dut. They're very rare though. It's also very difficult to figure out how much of that is placebo and how much are actual physiological effects. As soon as you put the idea of sexual side effects into someone's head, they're going to watch like a hawk for them.
There are many, many threads filled with guys overanalyzing the strength of their erections after being on finesteride. Even so, the majority of those side effects go away after being on the drug for a bit as your body reestablishes an equilibrium. The ones that don't generally go away after ceasing the drug.
There's a very, very small contingent of men who report side effects after ceasing the drug, but this is exceedingly rare, and we're not sure if this is the drug, a psychosomatic effect due to guys being obsessed with looking for side effects, or just an unfortunate coincidence that comes naturally with aging for many men. (Most guys who take finesteride are entering middle age, when ED problems tend to show up even without any drugs).
For me, my conclusion was that it was an exceedingly small risk, and I've not experienced any negative side effects at all.
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Comment on Hair loss open discussion in ~talk
papasquat LinkI started balding at around 23 or so, and I'm in my early 40s now. By the time I was about 33, my hairline had receded so much that I was shaving my head. I went through a lot of personal stuff...I started balding at around 23 or so, and I'm in my early 40s now. By the time I was about 33, my hairline had receded so much that I was shaving my head. I went through a lot of personal stuff that started making me self conscious of it in a way that I wasn't really before so I started trying to actually solve it. Finasteride, caffeine and minoxidil topically 2x a day. It sooooorta worked? Not really noticeably though. In the end, I got a hair transplant when I was 37, and it's one of the best decisions I ever made.
You can't tell I was ever losing my hair unless you look at some thin areas very closely, and I don't ever really think about it anymore. I never really thought of myself as a bald guy, so it was always jarring looking in the mirror after I started shaving my head. I just didn't have the build or skull shape to pull it off. It kinda reminded me of the Matrix, when in the real world, Neo is bald, but when he's in the matrix his residual self image is of him with a full head of hair. Even after years of shaving my head, I still felt like that. Having a hair again has helped me feel like "me" a lot more, of that makes sense.
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Comment on Hair loss open discussion in ~talk
papasquat Link ParentIt depends entirely on your response to it. I don't respond to minoxodil whatsoever. Finasteride is slightly better for me, but lots of people don't really respond to it either. Unfortunately...It depends entirely on your response to it. I don't respond to minoxodil whatsoever. Finasteride is slightly better for me, but lots of people don't really respond to it either. Unfortunately they're the best we have, but they're not a panacea.
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Comment on ‘House burping’ is a cold reality in Germany. Americans are warming to it. in ~life.home_improvement
papasquat LinkThis is kind of crazy to hear about for someone who lives in Florida. Virtually every building has central air conditioning here, so ventilation isn't a problem, and if someone tried to open all...This is kind of crazy to hear about for someone who lives in Florida. Virtually every building has central air conditioning here, so ventilation isn't a problem, and if someone tried to open all of my windows in the middle of summertime after my poor heat pump chugged away fighting the good fight against the swampy hot fog we call air here because of some German tradition/social media trend, I think I would actually physically restrain them.
It seems a little bit counterintuitive to spend a bunch of money on high efficiency, insulated windows, and then regularly throw them open a few times a day so you can dump all of that energy outside. Surely a ventilation system is a better solution there?
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Comment on SpaceX is acquiring xAI in ~space
papasquat Link ParentMost earth orbits, especially the easy to get to ones, also eliminate the one possible advantage of having things in space. If something is flying around the earth, about half the time its...Most earth orbits, especially the easy to get to ones, also eliminate the one possible advantage of having things in space. If something is flying around the earth, about half the time its orbiting, the earth is occluding its view of the sun. You could put something in the orbit of the sun instead, but that would require wayyyyy more launch energy to do.
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Comment on SpaceX is acquiring xAI in ~space
papasquat Link ParentNeither do I, but I hear this argument a lot about running out of space, usually in the context of solar panels taking up a lot of space. People don't comprehend how much empty space exists in the...Neither do I, but I hear this argument a lot about running out of space, usually in the context of solar panels taking up a lot of space. People don't comprehend how much empty space exists in the US, especially if they haven't spent much time in rural areas in the western part of the country.
I like it for situations where an absolutely gargantuan amount of data needs to be sifted through, and perfect accuracy isn't the most important thing in the world, better than human accuracy is good enough.
Things like email spam filtering, phone call screening, pouring through huge data sets of telescope images looking for certain types of atmospheric phenomenon, weather modeling, sensor fusion and so on.
The thing is that "ai" has been used for that sort of thing for decades, quietly. It didn't get as much hype as LLMs have lately because of chatGPT mostly because it doesn't try to impersonate a human chatting with you, which I think is a monumentally bad use of AI.
As far as LLMs... Honestly I always scratch my head at this one, trying to think of a way that it could be used that makes people's lives better. Maybe in some situations where it could be used as an aid to trawl through lots of data. The issue there is that it quickly becomes a crutch that people start relying on and start throwing expertise out the window.