skybrian's recent activity

  1. Comment on The survival of Swiss watches in ~humanities.history

    skybrian
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    From the article:

    From the article:

    The story of Swiss watchmaking began in Geneva in the 1540s. At the behest of John Calvin, the city imposed a ban on jewelry, the craft that had sustained Geneva’s artisans. The law, however, left one deliberate loophole: timepieces, those most practical and Protestant of devices, were still permitted to be worn. Denied their old market, the city’s artisans, joined by religious refugees from France and Italy, retooled and got to work.

    [...]

    By 1870, the Swiss already commanded more than two thirds of the world’s watch output – the first and biggest winners of the new age of time. From 1907 onwards, Swiss watches won first prize in the pocket-watch category every year at the British chronometry competitions at Kew. Their victories built on advanced escapements, a finer class of finishing, and Guillaume balances that shrugged off heat and cold. In 1945, a few decades later, the Swiss accounted for over 80 percent of the global watch market.

    [...]

    Yet just as Swiss watchmaking reached its zenith, a rival technology was stirring: quartz timekeeping, first proven in 1927 by a room-size crystal clock developed by a team at Bell Labs, then refined, miniaturized, and perfected by Seiko at its R&D lab in Suwa, Japan.

    [...]

    Biver saw that, in a world where machines were taking over, he could command a premium with the work of human hands. He turned the precision of quartz against itself: ‘That famous quartz precision became of secondary importance. Who cares about ultra-precision to a quarter of a second in everyday life? As a famous Italian retailer explained to his customers: you’re a lord, and a lord doesn’t need the exact time!’

    The results came quickly: by 1985, Blancpain had made nearly 9 million Swiss francs in sales and by 1991, that figure had surged to 56 million francs. Compared to the established luxury players these numbers were small. But it was a victory for the emotional appeal of Swiss watches and set a clear course for the future of the luxury watch industry.

    [...]

    When Hayek arrived, Thomke quietly revealed what his team had built: an inexpensive Swiss-made quartz watch that could put the industry back into all three market segments: the final realization of Hayek’s original vision. The watch launched in March 1983, and soon after, it took off, a true Swiss-made alternative to Japanese quartz.

    [...]

    Swatch’s real importance wasn’t in dominating the lower end of the market (Swiss watch revenues remain extremely top-heavy to this day), but in giving Swiss watchmaking its confidence back.

    [...]

    It’s easy, with hindsight, to mock predictions like David Landes’s. But, ultimately, he was right: Swiss watchmaking should have died with quartz, along with the lamplighters of Victorian London, the ice harvesters of New England, and the telegraph operators of Western Union. Instead, Biver, Hayek, and the watchmakers of Switzerland found a way to outlive their own obsolescence – not by competing on function, but by redefining value.

    Biver doubled down on the human touch: craftsmanship, heritage, and emotion. His approach became the blueprint for the largest watch companies of today, as well as the new wave of independent artisans. In 1996, Patek Philippe launched its iconic advertising campaign: ‘You never actually own a Patek Philippe, you merely look after it for the next generation.’

    Hayek took the other approach: embracing the new technology, re-engineering everything from the ground up, and applying it to a changed world. It was the same approach picked up by Apple when it launched the Apple watch in 2014. Once again watches had a function – not just as a timepiece, but as a medical device.

    [...]

    Today, Swiss watchmaking is a $30 billion business, with a near monopoly on luxury manufacturing. The country ships just two percent of all watches made each year, yet that sliver captures almost 45 percent of all revenue from watches worldwide. An industry that once faced extinction is stronger than ever. Some things survive not because they have to, but because we want them to. Instead of causing the end of Swiss watchmaking, the Quartz Crisis was the moment it was reborn.

    2 votes

  3. Comment on Her daughter was unraveling, and she didn’t know why. Then she found the AI chat logs. in ~tech

    skybrian
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    I think it clarifies what sort of dangers they need to guard against. To make another analogy, let's talk about zoos. Most zoos house dangerous wild animals and seeing the animals is why people...

    I think it clarifies what sort of dangers they need to guard against.

    To make another analogy, let's talk about zoos. Most zoos house dangerous wild animals and seeing the animals is why people visit zoos. The zoo's management has the responsibility of keeping the public safe, despite animals sometimes making unpredictable moves and the visitors sometimes acting like idiots. Pointing out that wild animals have their own agendas doesn't let off management at all.

    Unlike a zoo, there's no physical danger when chatting with AI, so the nature of the danger is different. But it's still the case that AI characters can behave somewhat unpredictably, particularly when visitors provide them with unusual inputs.

    So I don't think calling them ghosts lets off management at all. It's more like, they should have known this new technology is not reliable, and making it reliable is an unsolved research problem. That doesn't mean it can't be used at all, but the people running it need to be mindful of the dangers and monitor it better.

    3 votes

  4. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of December 29 in ~society

    skybrian
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    Posting this a bit late, but: It’s official: Scott Wiener is running for Nancy Pelosi’s seat in Congress ... (Pelosi announced her retirement on November 6.) Also, AI safety folks like him for...

    Posting this a bit late, but:

    It’s official: Scott Wiener is running for Nancy Pelosi’s seat in Congress

    The San Francisco lawmaker’s announcement [on October 22] made clear that he’s done waiting for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to step aside, as he previously insisted he would.

    But rather than rely on his many legislative accomplishments – which span from fast-tracking housing development to policing reforms – the three-term state senator spent the majority of his launch video promising to fight back against President Donald Trump’s agenda and defend his city, which the president has threatened to target next for troop deployment.

    ...

    Wiener joins a race that also includes progressive challenger Saikat Chakrabarti, the former chief of staff to New York’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Chakrabarti has been vocal in urging Pelosi to step aside and make room for a younger generation of leaders.

    (Pelosi announced her retirement on November 6.)

    Wiener is best known for pushing legislation in Sacramento that speeds up development of new housing by blowing holes in California’s landmark environmental laws, which housing advocates say are too often weaponized to indefinitely delay projects.

    He pushed controversial legislation this year that speeds up construction of apartment buildings near public transit stops in the state’s largest metro areas, which would allow for taller buildings in single-family neighborhoods. He also authored a new law this year that bans immigration and customs enforcement agents from wearing ski masks to conceal their identities.

    Also, AI safety folks like him for pushing two AI safety bills through the state legislature. The first one was vetoed by Newsom. A second, more limited bill, passed.

    3 votes

  5. Comment on Her daughter was unraveling, and she didn’t know why. Then she found the AI chat logs. in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Maybe it clarifies their responsibilities? Sometimes the behavior of LLM's is not the "helpful, harmless" AI assistant that the big AI labs are trying so hard to build. It's emergent. But whatever...

    Maybe it clarifies their responsibilities? Sometimes the behavior of LLM's is not the "helpful, harmless" AI assistant that the big AI labs are trying so hard to build. It's emergent. But whatever weird behavior emerges, the people running the systems are responsible for watching what's going through the portal and shutting down the weirdness. Their audience has grown too big, too fast to do that effectively.

    4 votes

  6. Comment on Her daughter was unraveling, and she didn’t know why. Then she found the AI chat logs. in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Well yeah, it's a metaphor. I think it's helpful because LLM's have the latent ability to generate dialog for a wide variety of characters. They're no more real than the characters in a novel, but...

    Well yeah, it's a metaphor. I think it's helpful because LLM's have the latent ability to generate dialog for a wide variety of characters. They're no more real than the characters in a novel, but you can talk to them, so that's new.

    4 votes

  7. Comment on Her daughter was unraveling, and she didn’t know why. Then she found the AI chat logs. in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Cautionary tales: yep. We're surrounded by ghosts now and we need more ghost stories. Ghosts are so cheap and convenient that people putting them to work as ghost therapists seems almost...

    Cautionary tales: yep. We're surrounded by ghosts now and we need more ghost stories.

    Ghosts are so cheap and convenient that people putting them to work as ghost therapists seems almost inevitable. It would be a lot better if it were done by organizations that are actually in that business, mindful of the risks, and that monitor them, rather than by companies that just provide a general-purpose ghost portal and saying "do what thou wilt."

    3 votes

  8. Comment on Her daughter was unraveling, and she didn’t know why. Then she found the AI chat logs. in ~tech

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Yes, a ghost can't stalk you if you're connecting to an AI chat service in the usual way. You can just close the chat and walk away. But I expect that AI-driven scams and cyberattacks will become...

    Yes, a ghost can't stalk you if you're connecting to an AI chat service in the usual way. You can just close the chat and walk away.

    But I expect that AI-driven scams and cyberattacks will become a big deal next year.

    Having a ghost contact you outside a portal that you control should raise all sorts of red flags. (But then, how do we tell it's a ghost?)

    5 votes

  9. Comment on A, B, C or D – grades might not say all that much about what students are actually learning in ~humanities

    skybrian
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    As a nerd, I don't like that professor's advice very much. The nerds could be checking all the boxes and still have passions outside of school, right? Sure, don't expect everyone to get a 4.0, but...

    As a nerd, I don't like that professor's advice very much. The nerds could be checking all the boxes and still have passions outside of school, right? Sure, don't expect everyone to get a 4.0, but that doesn't mean it should count against them. Better to look for other signals instead.

    1 vote

  10. Comment on Her daughter was unraveling, and she didn’t know why. Then she found the AI chat logs. in ~tech

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    It seems to me that talking to strangers and talking to ghosts can both be risky, but in different ways. The ghosts do a passable imitation of people, but they are also much more willing to go...

    It seems to me that talking to strangers and talking to ghosts can both be risky, but in different ways. The ghosts do a passable imitation of people, but they are also much more willing to go along with fantasies when random strangers wouldn't. The ghosts are also unstable and likely to go on weird tangents.

    Also, one of the many problems with the Internet is that people will put stuff online and children have access to it by default. If it were simple to say that a new website is adults-only then maybe new services would just do that? If they wanted to cater to kids then they could wait until they're ready to do that deliberately.

    On the bright side, it's probably easier to fix the ghosts than to fix people, so I expect that the major AI websites won't be as bad as social media in the long run.

    The ghosts that you run into out in the wild, though, will probably get worse, because bad people are running them.

    8 votes

  11. Comment on Nvidia-backed Starcloud trains first AI model in space in ~space

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I think “hardly even in space” is underselling the difficulty of getting to orbit. Most of the energy usage comes from getting to orbital velocity.

    I think “hardly even in space” is underselling the difficulty of getting to orbit. Most of the energy usage comes from getting to orbital velocity.

    2 votes

  12. Comment on Rapid swings between pro-EV and anti-EV US policies have disrupted long-term planning, forcing Ford, GM, and Stellantis to scramble to reshape their strategy in ~society

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: … … … I don’t follow the logic. It seems like these would be reasons for cancelling expansion plans rather than discontinuing it? But there’s more to it: More plug-in hybrids...

    From the article:

    Ford, GM, and Stellantis are laying off thousands of EV employees, idling some plants, and reimagining others. Ford envisioned its Blue Oval City in Tennessee cranking out 500,000 electric trucks a year. This Emerald City of EVs will now become Tennessee Truck, a meat-and-potatoes ICE plant. Ford has killed off some EVs, including a second-gen Lightning and a Transit-style van, which will cost it $8.5 billion. Axing a joint battery venture with South Korea's SK On will result in another $6 billion charge.

    …

    Despite the chaos, automakers are now free to make whatever they like, at least until the next sheriff arrives in Washington. "Choice" is the new mantra. Unsurprisingly, their choice is to make hay and haul it by building more high-margin SUVs and pickup trucks. The Trump administration and supporters have cast this as a win for affordability, as long as one ignores the potential fuel savings over the lifespan of more efficient ICE and electric models. Feature-laden pickups and SUVs are also the models that drove the price of the average new car past $50,000 for the first time, leaving consumers with fewer affordable alternatives.

    That said, the Biden administration's rules would have required companies to make about 56 percent of new passenger vehicles fully electric by 2032, up from 9 percent today. The targets, together with carrots in the form of IRA subsidies and consumer credits, led automakers to invest tens of billions of dollars in U.S. EV and battery factories, as well as tech R&D. But the goals proved too ambitious, says Sam Fiorani, vice president of AutoForecast Solutions.

    …

    Ford, after losing nearly $13 billion on EVs since 2023, reached the same conclusion. "We can't allocate money for things that will not make money," CEO Jim Farley told Reuters. "As much as I love those products, the customers in the U.S. were not going to pay for them. And that was the end of that."

    …

    The Lightning, a Ford executive told Car and Driver, actually did OK for a pioneering electric truck. Critics lauded its performance and tech, including its mobile-power capabilities. The Ford outsold the Tesla Cybertruck and Rivian R1T, along with all three of GM's electric pickups combined. But initially strong sales stalled, on pace for about 30,000 this year. The executive said emission targets would have compelled Ford to sell hundreds of thousands of Lightnings a year to offset thirstier trucks like the Super Duty series, among the brand's most profitable models. From an initial ratio of roughly one Lightning for every 10 gasoline F-series, Ford projected it would need a one-to-one sales split to meet 2032 standards. Other options, all unpalatable, involved buying climate credits or offering steep discounts to drive sales. Ultimately, the math didn't add up. Ford knew it had to pull its chips off the table.

    I don’t follow the logic. It seems like these would be reasons for cancelling expansion plans rather than discontinuing it? But there’s more to it:

    Ford's follow-up to the Lightning will become a series plug-in hybrid that automakers like to call an "Extended Range Electric Vehicle (EREV)." That new Lightning will be built in the same Detroit factory, with beefed-up towing stamina as part of a total driving range of about 700 miles. For consumers attuned to energy savings or electric advantages, a planned wave of EREV models—from brands such as VW's Scout, Ram, and Hyundai—may be the most significant showroom change sparked by the EV pullback.

    These EREVs are looking like an intriguing hedge for automakers and buyers. They mix electric and internal-combustion power, but with considerably more pure-electric range to sidestep the chief criticism of more common parallel plug-in hybrids. Yet akin to the latter PHEVS, it remains to be seen whether enough consumers will understand the technology's potential or pay a premium for it. Automakers are racing back to hybrids as well, where Toyota is sitting pretty: Nearly half of Toyota's U.S. sales are now hybrids, after the company faced withering criticism for not keeping pace on EVs.

    More plug-in hybrids doesn’t seem like a bad thing, particularly if they have decent electric range. Most car trips are short.

    Wakefield says automakers are definitely in line for a windfall. For now, they will not face fines for falling short of C02 or mileage standards. Nor must they buy climate credits from the likes of Tesla, which padded profits via $10.7 billion in credit sales since 2012. And companies no longer need to develop and build as many EVs to meet federal targets, in a market that still faces daunting barriers to adoption. In China, Wakefield notes, EVs typically cost 5 to 10 percent less than comparable gasoline models. "Here, they still cost 25 to 30 percent more," he says. "But maybe by the end of this decade, we'll start seeing real cost parity."

    …

    Yet domestic automakers face a familiar dilemma. They must build popular cars at home without ignoring the wider world, including the potential existential threat of China. The CEOs of the Detroit Three insist they're not walking away from EVs.

    Ford intends to bring a $30,000 electric pickup to showrooms by 2027, from its skunkworks project in California. That mid-size truck will ride on a "Universal EV Platform" designed to radically reduce costs. Ford expects EVs, EREVs, and hybrids to make up 50 percent of its global cars by 2030, or triple its 17 percent today.

    1 vote

  14. Comment on Her daughter was unraveling, and she didn’t know why. Then she found the AI chat logs. in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: … These statistics don’t tell us what they’re chatting about. Still, if you discover that your kids are chatting with ghosts regularly, there’s certainly reason to be concerned....

    From the article:

    Generative AI has attracted a rising number of users under the age of 18, who turn to chatbots for things such as help with schoolwork, entertainment, social connection and therapy; a survey released this month by Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan polling firm, found that nearly a third of U.S. teens use chatbots daily.

    …

    And an overwhelming majority of teens — 72 percent — have used AI companions at some point; about half use them a few times a month or more, according to a July report from Common Sense Media, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focused on children’s digital safety.

    These statistics don’t tell us what they’re chatting about. Still, if you discover that your kids are chatting with ghosts regularly, there’s certainly reason to be concerned.

    …

    In the research lab Charmaraman oversees, teens experiment with building their own AI chatbot companions; they engage in critical thinking and develop a deeper understanding of the technology’s parameters and limitations. But many of their peers don’t have this sense of digital literacy, she says: “They just bump into [AI]. A friend is using it, and they think, ‘Hey, I want to use it, too, that seems cool.’” For many of those among the first generation of children to navigate AI, she says, “they’re learning it on their own, without any guidance.”

    …

    In response to mounting public scrutiny over the effects of AI chatbots on children, Character AI announced that, as of Nov. 24, it would begin removing the ability of users under age 18 to chat with AI-generated characters.

    …

    Character AI users between the ages of 13 and 18 are now directed toward a teen-specific experience within the app, one that does not involve chatting with AI characters. But at the time R downloaded Character AI in 2024, it was rated in the App Store as appropriate for ages 12 and older (Character AI’s terms of service specify that users must be at least 13 to use the app) and appealed to children with AI-generated personas designed to imitate pop stars, Marvel superheroes, and characters from Harry Potter and Disney.

    The use of AI among children has become so prevalent that Elizabeth Malesa, a clinical psychologist who works with teens at Alvord Baker & Associates in Maryland, says the practice has recently started asking about it during the intake process. Malesa has heard numerous patients talk about AI chatbots in a positive context — noting that they’re helpful with homework, or offer useful advice — but she also recalls a 13-year-old patient who had used an AI companion app to explore questions about his sexual and gender identity. In response to the boy’s “pretty benign prompts,” Malesa says, the conversation quickly tilted toward inappropriate sexual content: “He didn’t know what was happening or why he was getting there, but he was also just curious, and so he kind of kept going.”

    4 votes

  16. Comment on Toll roads are spreading in America in ~transport

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    A tip for people driving through Pennsylvania: getting an E-Z pass can cut the cost of tolls substantially. PA tolls are over twice as much if you rely on them billing you by mail. I assume it’s a...

    A tip for people driving through Pennsylvania: getting an E-Z pass can cut the cost of tolls substantially. PA tolls are over twice as much if you rely on them billing you by mail. I assume it’s a way of charging more for people from out of state.

    2 votes

  17. Comment on The time Weird Al Yankovic went too far in ~music

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article:

    From the article:

    Parody is protected by “fair use” copyright doctrine when it’s used for the purpose of commenting on the original. Or, to quote the decision of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994), a parody is a work that “at least in part, comments on that author’s works.”

    For example, one Weird Al song that does qualify as fair-use protected “parody” in this sense “Smells Like Nirvana.” Weird Al is lifting the melody of Nirvana’s song “Smells like Teen Spirit,” but the fact that he’s using a Nirvana melody and mimicking Kurt Cobain’s singing style is part of the commentary: it wouldn’t make sense if he took a Queen song and rewrote the lyrics to make fun of Nirvana.

    But most of the songs we colloquially call “Weird Al parodies” wouldn’t qualify as parody under the Campbell standard if he tried to rely on fair use alone. They don’t really “comment on” the original; they just use the melody as a vehicle for a completely different joke, as Weird Al does when he rewrites “Mickey” to be about the I Love Lucy character “Ricky.” Absent permission, they’d be on very shaky legal ground.

    [...]

    Weird Al often tells stories about how he talked directly to specific musical artists to get their permission for a song, which often include charming anecdotes about how he met them in person or over the phone to get a “yeah, that sounds fun.” But that is not the end of the conversation, it is the start of a negotiation between “my people and your people.”

    [...]

    So, the answer to “how does Weird Al get away with it” is that he doesn’t “get away with it.” He pays people for the right to use their music, except in the case of style parodies, where he doesn’t need to.

    [...]

    If there is one thing that I would like Weird Al fans to take away from this post, it is that Albuquerque is not an original song.

    This is new information to every Weird Al fan I encounter, and I’ve encountered a lot of Weird Al fans. This is a weird misconception to have about a particularly famous Weird Al song, especially when Weird Al is not an artist typically known for producing original songs: you’d think the prior would be “this is probably a parody song,” and yet everyone seems to think it’s a Weird Al original.

    I think this case is best made simply by exposing you to the music. Here is Albuquerque by Weird Al, and here is Dick’s Automotive by the Rugburns.

    12 votes

  19. Comment on A medical mystery from postwar Germany in ~health

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article:

    From the article:

    Shortly after the end of the Second World War, a German man visited his eye doctor complaining of “floaters” — little specks drifting around in his field of vision. As anyone today can verify by googling the term, it’s an extremely common condition. It’s almost always benign. Eye doctors see this all the time.

    What this doctor saw, however, when he peered into the patient’s eye, was by no means ordinary. Floating within the eyeball, slowly tumbling end over end, were rods of a metallic substance — copper — each about a millimeter long.

    [...]

    There was an obvious common link among all of these men with copper rods in their eyes: they were all truck drivers. Further interviews began to shed some light on their histories. During the last years of the war, Germany—formerly one of the most industrialized and motorized countries in the world—had run desperately low on fuel. There were still many vehicles on the roads in good working order, but they couldn’t move, simply because there was no fuel to put in their tanks. And yet goods still had to move from place to place in order to keep the economy going and the war engine running. In desperation, truck drivers had turned the clock back a few decades and reverted to the practice of using livestock to pull their vehicles down the roads.

    [...]

    Some ingenious driver somewhere in Germany figured out that if you stripped a length of such copper braid from a collapsed building and cut it to length, it would work just fine as a whip. Actually getting the thing to crack required a bit of practice, of course. These guys didn’t have the benefit of professional trainers telling them how to do it right.

    A common mistake among novice whip cracking practitioners is to yank the handle of the whip toward you in order to accentuate the crack. This actually works. But it’s discouraged on safety grounds. When you do it, the end of the whip tends to snap back toward you. Experienced whip crackers don’t do it that way.

    Putting two and two together, Dr. Erggelet asked these drivers whether, while cracking their makeshift copper whips, they’d ever felt a sudden sharp sting in the eye. The patients answered that this was certainly the case, but that in a few minutes the pain went away and they thought nothing more of it.

    8 votes