skybrian's recent activity
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Comment on San Diego rents declined following surge in supply in ~finance
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San Diego rents declined following surge in supply
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Comment on The zero-days are numbered — Firefox team uses AI to find and fix vulnerabilities in ~tech
skybrian (edited )Link ParentIt seems pretty unlikely that a simple bug like log4shell would happen again in a world with widespread AI-driven security reviews? People often skip reviewing their open source dependencies...It seems pretty unlikely that a simple bug like log4shell would happen again in a world with widespread AI-driven security reviews? People often skip reviewing their open source dependencies themselves (it's too much work) but I'd guess that a lot of companies will start to do their own automated checking of them? These common dependencies are likely to get a lot more review.
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Comment on What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat in ~society
skybrian (edited )Link ParentPaying more in taxes to the US government than legally required instead of donating to charity is a terrible idea. How much you pay in taxes has zero effect on what Congress decides to spend, or...Paying more in taxes to the US government than legally required instead of donating to charity is a terrible idea. How much you pay in taxes has zero effect on what Congress decides to spend, or on what the Trump administration decides to do. USAID would be just as cancelled if billionaires paid more in taxes. ICE would still be deporting people and we'd still be at war with Iran.
You might as well set the money on fire for all the good it will do. Paying more in federal taxes than is legally required has zero effect and you get zero credit. That's true for us and it's true for billionaires too. (For a local government like a public school it's different.)
In times like this, we're fortunate that there are well-funded private charities. They can't make up for USAID, but at least they can do something. It's good that we live in a pluralistic society with many kinds of organizations that try to do different things. By donating to a good charity you get to redirect money towards better uses.
Furthermore, charitable donations are often tax deductable for a reason. It's cooperating with what the government wants you to do.
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Comment on What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat in ~society
skybrian Link ParentThe Trump administration is to blame for cancelling USAID. Some billionaires supported him (for example, Musk), but so did the millions of people who voted for him, and other billionaires publicly...The Trump administration is to blame for cancelling USAID. Some billionaires supported him (for example, Musk), but so did the millions of people who voted for him, and other billionaires publicly opposed it (Gates).
So I don't think talking about billionaires as a group helps as far as public policy is concerned. They're not a monolith. They have different politics.
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Comment on What is watts, volts and amps ? in ~science
skybrian LinkWatts tell you energy consumption. For example, a light bulb consumes a steady amount of electricity when it’s turned on. A 100 watt light bulb consumes twice as much as a 50 watt bulb, or the...Watts tell you energy consumption. For example, a light bulb consumes a steady amount of electricity when it’s turned on. A 100 watt light bulb consumes twice as much as a 50 watt bulb, or the same as two 50 watt bulbs.
(When connected in parallel, and ignoring things like dimmer switches.)
As others have said, it’s implicitly per second. You need to multiply by the time that the light bulb is left on to get energy used.
If you want a water analogy, a bigger pipe will let more water flow through it than a smaller pipe. But you could have two smaller pipes that are equivalent to a bigger one.
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Comment on The Colorado River disappeared from the geological record for five million years: scientists now know where it went in ~science
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...] [...] [...]From the article:
The Colorado River existed in western Colorado 11 million years ago and first exited the Grand Canyon around 5.6 million years ago. But how it navigated the terrain between the two points for around 5 million years had been a mystery.
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One obstacle in the ancient river's path is the Kaibab Arch, a topographic high point located in northern Arizona and southern Utah. Geologists have proposed different scenarios for how the river crossed it, but one theory that the new evidence makes more plausible is lake spillover. In this scenario, the Colorado River would have filled a lake and eventually exited it along a course to the Grand Canyon.
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The collaborative work began when He, Douglass and Emma Heitmann at the University of Washington met in the field while studying the remnant deposits of Bidahochi Lake, an ancient lake on Navajo Nation land. Most of the deposits of this enigmatic lake have eroded away, so no one knows how large the lake was. Geologists also didn't know what rivers fed the lake, or why Bidahochi Lake eventually disappeared.
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Geologists have developed a technique called detrital zircon geochronology that uses lasers or ion beams to measure the ratios of uranium and lead isotopes in hundreds of zircons in a sample. The unique age and history of each zircon can thus be traced to learn the sources of a sediment and estimate when it was deposited. The age spectrum derived from hundreds of zircons in a sample is called its detrital signature.
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The results showed that signatures of the sediments deposited about 6.6 million years ago in Lake Bidahochi closely matched those of other Colorado River deposits downstream and upstream, including the Browns Park Formation in northern Utah and Colorado.
Study of rock layers in the field from this time period showed signs of rippling that indicated a strong river flowed into standing water, and fossils of large fish species characteristic of fast-flowing waters.
These lines of evidence strongly indicated that the Colorado River was supplying water and sediment to the Bidahochi basin before it spilled over and the river began to flow through the Grand Canyon. This set the stage for the mighty Colorado River that carved much of the Grand Canyon and upon which much of the West depends for water.
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The Colorado River disappeared from the geological record for five million years: scientists now know where it went
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Comment on What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat in ~society
skybrian Link ParentPower isn’t just about money. Bezos isn’t going to arrest you, deny your visa, or raise your taxes.Power isn’t just about money. Bezos isn’t going to arrest you, deny your visa, or raise your taxes.
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Comment on Early data from Rubin Observatory reveals over 11,000 new asteroids in ~space
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...]From the article:
The submission to MPC comprises approximately one million observations, taken over the span of a month and a half, of over 11,000 new asteroids and more than 80,000 already-known asteroids, including some that had previously been observed but were later "lost" because their orbits were too uncertain to predict their future locations. You can interact with all of Rubin's asteroid discoveries in the Rubin Orbitviewer, which uses real data to provide an intuitive way to explore the structure of our cosmic backyard in three dimensions and in real time.
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Among the newly identified objects are 33 previously unknown near-Earth objects (NEOs), which are small asteroids and comets whose closest approach to the sun is less than 1.3 times the distance between Earth and the sun. None of the newly discovered NEOs pose a threat to Earth, and the largest is about 500 meters wide. Objects larger than 140 meters are closely tracked as they could cause significant regional damage if they impact, yet scientists estimate that only about 40% of these mid-sized NEOs have been identified so far.
Once operating fully in survey mode, Rubin is expected to reveal an additional nearly 90,000 new NEOs, some of which may be potentially hazardous, and to nearly double the number of known NEOs larger than 140 meters to around 70%. By enabling early detection and continuous monitoring of these objects, Rubin will be a powerful tool for planetary defense.
The dataset also contains roughly 380 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs)—icy bodies orbiting beyond Neptune. Two of the newly discovered TNOs—provisionally named 2025 LS2 and 2025 MX348—have been found to be in extremely large and elongated (stretched out) orbits. At their most distant points, these two objects reach roughly 1,000 times farther away from the sun than the Earth is, placing them among the 30 most distant minor planets known.
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Early data from Rubin Observatory reveals over 11,000 new asteroids
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Comment on What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat in ~society
skybrian Link ParentOn the one hand, “not a billionaire” is kind of a low bar since someone with, say, a hundred million is still set for life, ten times over. But on the other, I don’t think it should be a litmus...On the one hand, “not a billionaire” is kind of a low bar since someone with, say, a hundred million is still set for life, ten times over.
But on the other, I don’t think it should be a litmus test for anything. The Giving Pledge asks that they give a majority of their money away and it could be in their wills. It’s kind of weak sauce, and yet, if most billionaires did that then that would be fantastic. The people who are giving a majority of their money away in a thoughtful way should be praised.
I would not expect this to solve world poverty in any scenario. I think people don’t have a good sense of scale and overestimate what private charity could do. Governments are an order of magnitude more powerful.
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Comment on What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat in ~society
skybrian Link ParentYes, I agree. (There are lots of mediocre op-ed articles out there!)Yes, I agree. (There are lots of mediocre op-ed articles out there!)
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Comment on What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat in ~society
skybrian Link ParentThe whole "evil or not" framing seems problematic. Even if it's not binary, it's still putting all the things someone did on a one-dimensional scale, and to do that, you have to decide whether the...The whole "evil or not" framing seems problematic. Even if it's not binary, it's still putting all the things someone did on a one-dimensional scale, and to do that, you have to decide whether the good things and bad things somehow cancel out. Did they do more good than bad or more bad than good? How do you even weigh that? There are a few cases where it's obvious, but usually it's a mix.
I don't think people's deeds cancel out. Bill Gates's charity doesn't cancel the bad things he's done. And also, the bad things he's done don't cancel the lives saved through his charity. They both happened, and you usually can't give each deed a number and add them up. They're incomparable.
For someone writing a biography, it all goes in. It seems pretty common for powerful people have plenty of good and bad stuff in their biography. Having power means they had more opportunity than most of us to do both.
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Comment on The air is full of DNA — here’s what scientists are using it for in ~science
skybrian Linkhttps://archive.is/hW6rT From the article: [...] [...] [...] [...]From the article:
Although eDNA is already collected routinely from water, snow and soil, to gather information about biodiversity or to track contaminants or viruses, scientists have not typically monitored sources of DNA in air other than pollen and spores — robust packages designed to travel on the breeze.
But, in the early 2010s, various ecologists began to wonder whether air might contain useful DNA traces beyond those wrapped in such windborne bundles. In 2013, biologists Matt Clark at the Natural History Museum in London and Richard Leggett at the Earlham Institute in Norwich, UK, took air samples in a greenhouse and outside it.
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But it was the discovery of tiger DNA near Cambridge, UK, that alerted the wider community to airborne DNA’s potential. Elizabeth Clare at York University in Toronto, Canada, and Joanne Littlefair at University College London wanted to know whether they could find animal DNA in the air. They collected samples at a small zoo in Cambridgeshire, UK, reasoning that they would know the origin of any DNA they found, because the exotic animals were confined to the park.
In the laboratory, the researchers extracted the DNA from the samples, and amplified and sequenced it. They found that they could sniff out tigers 200 metres away from their enclosure, as well as many of the zoo’s other animals, their food — including chicken, horse and pig — and wildlife such as hedgehogs, bats and squirrels. In total, the samples contained DNA from 25 species of mammal and bird, including 17 kept at the zoo. Another study near Copenhagen Zoo, published at the same time, had similar findings.
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But it was a physicist who found a way to scale the method up. James Allerton, at the National Physical Laboratory in London, suggested that Clare examine samples taken by the UK Heavy Metals monitoring network, which has 25 air pumps, located in cities, in the countryside and at industrial sites.
The researchers studied samples from 15 of the network’s sites and, last year, published what they say is the world’s first national survey of terrestrial biodiversity using airborne eDNA. They found common UK animals, as well as exotic pets such as parrots and an invasive fish species, the silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix), that had not previously been reported in the region. From vertebrates to single-celled protists, they picked up 1,100 taxa.
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Ecologists are doing just that, documenting weekly, seasonal and cyclic fluctuations in the abundance of many species and matching these to climate variations. They have uncovered long-term community changes — the rise and fall in the abundance of pine trees because of changing forestry management, and a concomitant decline in other trees, mosses, lichens and fungi. They have tracked over time well-known co-variations between several species, such as those between flies and some bacteria, and found new ones.
Europe is dotted with radionuclide-detection stations, which could provide “an unprecedented opportunity to reconstruct ecological history and detect ongoing changes”, say Stenberg and his co-authors.
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But the idea of continuously collecting airborne DNA in public spaces troubles some scientists, who raise concerns similar to those about the sampling of DNA in waste water.
Breathe out on an evening walk and your DNA could waft into a discreetly placed urban sampler. Shotgun sequencing, using rapidly emerging, cheap, portable techniques that can generate the type of read-out that helps to identify individuals6, could produce results in the field, in near real time, says Duffy.
His team has shown this to be possible by sampling the air and unwashed windowpanes in Dublin and in Florida, from which they could distinguish between individuals of the same animal species. For ethical reasons, they did not try this type of sequencing for the human DNA that wound up in their samples, which is known as human genomic by-catch. But short-read analysis revealed human ancestries and some genetic diseases.
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The air is full of DNA — here’s what scientists are using it for
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Comment on What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat in ~society
skybrian (edited )Link ParentI think "even the weather felt expensive" shows his hand. It's Santa Barbara, so of course the weather is usually good. What does that even mean? He's entitled to his opinions, but my point is...I think "even the weather felt expensive" shows his hand. It's Santa Barbara, so of course the weather is usually good. What does that even mean?
He's entitled to his opinions, but my point is that there is very little in the article that's based on learning anything new or interesting about billionaires. They're just run-of-the-mill opinions that you can get anywhere, from someone who doesn't actually know more than the rest of us.
But it's certainly true that rich people, or rich companies, can make extravagant gestures. I was quite impressed when Google flew the entire staff to Disneyland in 2008. That was a major operation with a lot of chartered flights between San Jose to LA. They even closed the park to normal visitors one evening for the event, which I guess is a thing a company can buy?
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Comment on What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat in ~society
skybrian Link ParentThat's what I'm getting at. Many, many people have posted their opinions about billionaires and here is another one. It's not actually based on better reporting than the rest. The author doesn't...That's what I'm getting at. Many, many people have posted their opinions about billionaires and here is another one. It's not actually based on better reporting than the rest. The author doesn't seem to know more about them than the rest of us. So if you wanted to learn more about billionaires, this isn't the place to look.
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Comment on What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat in ~society
skybrian Link ParentHere's more of the timeline for context: August 2013 Jeff Bezos agrees to buys the Post October 2013 deal closes October 2024 Bezos forces no endorsement over the protests of editorial staff....Here's more of the timeline for context:
- August 2013 Jeff Bezos agrees to buys the Post
- October 2013 deal closes
- October 2024 Bezos forces no endorsement over the protests of editorial staff.
- Feburary 2025 The Post announces major changes to the opinion section.
- Feburary 2026 The Post announces layoffs.
Bezo's interference in October 2024 is well-documented by the Post itself. But for the previous two elections, apparently he hadn't started interfering yet?
So I don't think it's likely that he bought the Post to control the content back in 2013. If that was the reason, why wait a decade? It seems more likely to be a shift in strategy.
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Comment on What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat in ~society
skybrian Link ParentIf he met any other billionaires, they're not named or described in any detail. It sounds like he met some celebrities, though?If he met any other billionaires, they're not named or described in any detail. It sounds like he met some celebrities, though?
From the article:
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