saturnV's recent activity

  1. Comment on Seeking recommendations for a solo journey to London in ~travel

  2. Comment on Seeking recommendations for a solo journey to London in ~travel

    saturnV
    (edited )
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    Consider trying to use one of the rental bikes for getting around, london's bike infrastructure is really good (especially in The City i.e. nearer the centre), and they're a nice way for seeing...

    Consider trying to use one of the rental bikes for getting around, london's bike infrastructure is really good (especially in The City i.e. nearer the centre), and they're a nice way for seeing the sights at speed.
    London's green spaces are a big deal, would second hampstead heath or kew gardens for a nice walk, maybe richmond park if you want to see the deer.
    The olympic park is also pretty nice to walk around, though I don't know if there's enough to justify the journey for a tourist (don't think you can enter the stadium just to look round)
    London has an absurd amount of great places to eat, it's definitely worth researching places (booking is almost always necessary to get a place), I'd recommend dishoom if you like Indian food, brick lane has a food market that might be worth a look around if you're nearby

    2 votes

  3. Comment on Seeking recommendations for a solo journey to London in ~travel

    saturnV
    (edited )
    Link
    As someone who lives in London: Weird hidden gem that I love: novelty automation, a sort of satirical arcade owned by a wonderful guy, made with old-style mechanical things and logic boxes. Best...

    As someone who lives in London:
    Weird hidden gem that I love: novelty automation, a sort of satirical arcade owned by a wonderful guy, made with old-style mechanical things and logic boxes. Best to go with somebody else (I think some of the things are designed to be done with another person, can't quite remember) but I think it'd still be a nice evening without.
    https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/ has a shit ton of info about stuff going on, also here's his opinion on what museums to visit, be aware it's slightly out of date, the museum of london shut down and will re-open in a different space in 2026
    Will second british museum, try to go without a bag because then you don't have to queue for security
    If you're interested in books there's a big waterstones nearby and a good secondhand store called skoob books.
    Borough market is always good for food but will always be absurdly busy and quite expensive
    Sir John Soane's Museum is awesome, an old house converted into a museum packed incredibly tightly full of cool artifacts (has a sarcophagus in the middle!)
    London Mithraeum, Guildhall Roman Amphitheatre might be interesting to you

    8 votes

  4. Comment on The sunscreen scandal shocking Australia in ~health

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    you do get higher UV exposure at higher altitudes, so if egg-shape did affect UV levels, I'd expect less atmosphere to be the mechanism

    you do get higher UV exposure at higher altitudes, so if egg-shape did affect UV levels, I'd expect less atmosphere to be the mechanism

    3 votes

  5. Comment on Why language models hallucinate in ~tech

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    some logic questions are also inherently unanswerable! see halting problem

    some logic questions are also inherently unanswerable! see halting problem

    1 vote

  6. Comment on Why language models hallucinate in ~tech

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    apparently logprobs can be used for "stealing" weights through distillation

    apparently logprobs can be used for "stealing" weights through distillation

    3 votes

  8. Comment on Ed Zitron: How to argue with an AI booster in ~tech

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    yeah, general principle that this much spending is inefficient and could be diverted is true, my reply was a bit blithe. Though now a sizeable chunk of this spending is done through debt, so...

    yeah, general principle that this much spending is inefficient and could be diverted is true, my reply was a bit blithe. Though now a sizeable chunk of this spending is done through debt, so probably it would be better if the money wasn't spent and then we wouldn't have a risk of a financial crisis

    1 vote

  10. Comment on Ed Zitron: How to argue with an AI booster in ~tech

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    Do you have a source for this? I thought residential and industrial energy pricing was normally separate, and also that datacentres are also not that big of a contributor to energy prices in...

    prices get driven up so utilities can expand capacity

    Do you have a source for this? I thought residential and industrial energy pricing was normally separate, and also that datacentres are also not that big of a contributor to energy prices in general (~1% of US energy consumption is still fairly small)

    Just imagine if we could put that kind of money into healthcare

    Annual health expenditures stood at over 4.8 trillion U.S. dollars in 2023

    AI spending is still sub-10% of US healthcare spending, it really wouldn't do that much

  11. Comment on Denmark has proposed scrapping its tax on chocolate, cake and other sweets, as well as coffee, to help consumers cope with high food prices in ~food

  12. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

    saturnV
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    I just started reading "Rockets and People" by Boris Chertok. It's a recounting of his life as an aerospace engineer in the soviet union starting from when he was born in 1912. While it's...

    I just started reading "Rockets and People" by Boris Chertok. It's a recounting of his life as an aerospace engineer in the soviet union starting from when he was born in 1912. While it's interesting for what it says about the development of aerospace, it's also informative in what goes on in the background (i.e. October revolution, death of Lenin, stalin's purges, WW2, etc.). It is incredibly detailed, being a series of 4 books, which is a bit intimidating. NASA funded a translation and host free to download pdfs online as well, which is very nice.

    Would recommend for anyone interested in USSR or aerospace history!

    6 votes

  13. Comment on Why the internet really wants your ID... (and why now?) in ~tech

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    It requires the platforms to perform a bunch of onerous and overreaching regulations, but I don't think that's relevant to the age verification bit AFAIK? like people aren't mad at gov for not...

    The full act includes restrictions on much more than just porn

    It requires the platforms to perform a bunch of onerous and overreaching regulations, but I don't think that's relevant to the age verification bit AFAIK? like people aren't mad at gov for not letting them bully / be bullied, but maybe there's crackdowns on knives/gun communities and that'd be bad (but pretty marginal and avg uk person probs doesn't care)? What sort of reworded poll question about age verification would you expect to change the results?

  14. Comment on Why the internet really wants your ID... (and why now?) in ~tech

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    thx for responding, definitely worth being aware of this as a possibility, we will see what happens

    thx for responding, definitely worth being aware of this as a possibility, we will see what happens

  15. Comment on Why the internet really wants your ID... (and why now?) in ~tech

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    presumably banning spammers would be easy if they couldn't just make a new account (because it'd be linked to their ID), though I think there will always be enough hacked accounts up for sale that...

    presumably banning spammers would be easy if they couldn't just make a new account (because it'd be linked to their ID), though I think there will always be enough hacked accounts up for sale that it won't really matter

    2 votes

  16. Comment on Why the internet really wants your ID... (and why now?) in ~tech

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    First point I disagree with in the video is the claim that there is a downside - risk of being hacked. Big Tech security is basically the best you're going to get, they have dedicated security...

    First point I disagree with in the video is the claim that there is a downside - risk of being hacked. Big Tech security is basically the best you're going to get, they have dedicated security teams fending off nation-state level attacks. Storing IDs is no more difficult than storing payment details e.g. google pay. The usage of age verification data / ID for ad targeting would violate GDPR as they are only allowed to use the data within the bounds you have consented to or in some reasonable manner, so that seems very likely to be false to me. "online businesses would need to pay a fee to them for their identification services" - not sure where this is coming from, don't think this is that likely, it's free right now and also there's plenty of competition from other services so it wouldn't make them that much money.

    "they haven't been paying to fight the regulations. They've been paying to shape them"

    The video doesn't really provide any evidence for this claim despite it being critical for their argument

    Also the online safety act is very popular in the UK! 70% of people support it when polled post implementation

    Also also, I don't see how the video's argument generalises to tech companies which aren't google

    5 votes

  17. Comment on The Left is always right too early in ~society

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    Also his point about leftists being right all along about genocide in gaza is dodgy because liberals now still think they were correct in that there was not a genocide immediately after october 7,...

    Also his point about leftists being right all along about genocide in gaza is dodgy because liberals now still think they were correct in that there was not a genocide immediately after october 7, they think that israel has only just started being genocidal in the last few months by blocking aid for too long and becoming more indiscriminate in killings, among other things, whereas some leftists believe that israel has been commiting a genocide for years against palestinians.

    8 votes

  18. Comment on The Left is always right too early in ~society

  19. Comment on The Left is always right too early in ~society

    saturnV
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    Isn't this just another case of "economists have predicted 7 of the last 3 recessions" + ignoring the failure cases, e.g. chomsky defending the khmer rouge or russia in the ukraine war;...

    Isn't this just another case of "economists have predicted 7 of the last 3 recessions" + ignoring the failure cases, e.g. chomsky defending the khmer rouge or russia in the ukraine war; accelerationist leftists in 2016 who voted trump, etc.

    17 votes

  20. Comment on Wikipedia loses challenge against UK Online Safety Act verification rules in ~tech