fsociety999's comments

> Natural gas plants are about twice as efficient (~50%) as a typical gasoline engine (~25%) and burn much more cleanly, producing fewer pollutants across the spectrum for the same amount of energy.

I think this is an overly simplified view. That is the main problem I have with all this stuff. It is too easy to repeat the established “scientific consensus” which is all based around everything operating perfectly in a vacuum. In the real world, systems are complex and it is often not nearly as simple. See, for example, this article:

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/environmental-impacts-natur...

It states

> The drilling and extraction of gas from wells and its transportation in pipelines results in the leakage of methane, the primary component of natural gas. Methane is 34 times stronger than CO2 at trapping heat over a 100-year period and 86 times stronger over 20 years

And

> Whether gas has lower life cycle greenhouse gas emissions than coal and oil depends on the leakage rate, the time frame employed for evaluating global warming potential, the energy conversion efficiency, and other factors. One study found that methane losses must be kept below 3.2 percent for natural gas power plants to have lower life cycle emissions than new coal plants over short time frames of 20 years or fewer

As far as I’m concerned even if natural gas is “not a fossil fuel” on paper, if it leaks methane in order to extract it, it is no better, and perhaps worse than coal. Let’s say natural gas is only 25% better than coal when all is said and done. That puts us at approximately 50/50 in terms of emissions for the US grid (20 + 0.75 * 40) = 50. At that point, my claim that “most” of the energy still comes from fossil fuels is essentially true when you look at it just in terms of emissions.

Of course, it doesn’t take into account that the energy use in the grid has been shifting towards more renewable sources over time, but the idea that there is some net positive just from switching to electric vehicles, I think is far from a foregone conclusion.

Also, it seems everyone in the replies has latched on to my claim about the energy in the grid, but no one touched on the environmental impact of mining lithium and other metals to produce the batteries which will almost surely be a net negative for the environment.

I am not trying to trash on electric cars here, merely trying to point out that these issues are far more complex than the way they are talked about in the mainstream media, the scientific community, and hacker news.

Okay, so it is a clickbait title that “disproves” the claim.

The bigger issue, in my opinion, is what about all the energy needed to recharge the batteries? Last I checked, most of that still comes from fossil fuels.

In addition, what about the environmental impact of mining lithium and other minerals to produce the cars? This article goes into that a bit:

https://therevelator.org/ev-batteries-seabed-mining/

I think there is a non-zero chance that when all is said and done, electric vehicles actually are worse for the environment than fuel powered vehicles.

There is also so much we don’t know. I feel like in one way or another, human efforts to “solve” climate change will ultimately be what leads to our extinction. Whether that is trying to send things into space to block out the sun, or mining oceans for rare metals to use to make batteries. Fun fact, the oceans actually suck up a huge amount of carbon dioxide. It would be pretty fitting if human mining efforts at the bottom of the ocean throw that balance entirely out of whack.

This is one of the problems with government mandates related to electric vehicles. All of the metrics they use to measure success are based on emissions while driving, but that is only one small part of the picture.

What I find so odd about all this stuff is the target is very rarely OpenAI/ChatGPT. I understand it can be a useful tool, but if your concern is that AI has scanned your books without your consent and can generate new content in your writing style, then OpenAI is who you should be complaining about.

Somehow the project with tens of billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft gets a free pass, but a two person passion project that makes no money gets viciously attacked and killed. The same thing happened with generative art. The open source tools and smaller projects got served with lawsuits, but somehow DALL-E was not included in those.

Open AI is who people should be targeting since they are the ones who have all the money and the politicians in their pockets to basically stomp out any competition. My real fear is not that people find creative uses for AI on a small scale, but that Microsoft/Open AI builds a centralized system that works on their terms where you are forced to play by their rules and they decide what is fact and fiction.

I haven’t read Zach Rosenberg before, but I put this prompt into ChatGPT, and sure enough, it generated what I presume to be writing in his style:

> Could you write two paragraphs in the style of Zach Rosenberg arguing in favor of shutting down a tool that uses AI to analyze the text of his books?

Did the author consent to Open AI scanning the text of his books to generate new text emulating his writing style? Where is the outrage over that?

I have received Apple satisfaction surveys before and the options are basically this:

How satisfied are you with your new iPhone?

* Insanely satisfied

* Extremely satisfied

* Very very satisfied

* Quite satisfied

* Satisfied

* Mostly satisfied

* Somewhat satisfied

* Neither satisfied or dissatisfied

* Neutral

* No opinion

* Dissatisfied

I’m exaggerating a little to make my point, but I suspect that’s more or less how they get these insanely high scores. Also I’m not sure they send the satisfaction surveys to everyone. Probably you have to have a history of purchasing Apple products.

I don’t think they are manipulating the data itself as this article seems to suggest though. I think the survey methodology itself is skewed.

Previous hn thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36136819

I am not entirely sure why you are getting downvoted. It says right in the study

> Vaccine-expanded T cells were durable, persisting up to 2 years despite post-vaccination mFOLFIRINOX treatment

So yes, that seems to suggest you may have to keep going back every couple years for more boosters.

Of course this isn’t and wasn’t ever about TikTok. The same way the original Patriot Act was never really about catching terrorists. When a bill has broad bipartisan support you can usually be sure it is not in the interests of the people.

I am honestly a little surprised they named it the RESTRICT Act as opposed to something like “The Internet Freedom Act” which is more in line with how they usually operate.

The bill is overly broad to the point where they can basically ban any app or service for any reason, and they don’t have to tell anyone why they did it. It also includes a section I haven’t seen a lot of people talking about:

> (K) e-commerce technology and services, including any electronic techniques for accomplishing business transactions, online retail, internet-enabled logistics, internet-enabled payment technology, and online marketplaces.

“internet-enabled payment technology” to me sure sounds a lot like Bitcoin and/or other cryptocurrencies. So all they have to do is say that some Russian state actor used Bitcoin to transact and boom Bitcoin is illegal. You try to use it, 20 years in federal prison and/or up to $1M fine.

This is perhaps the most tyrannical/orwellian bill I have ever read. If this passes, Americans need to take to the streets and burn it all to the ground.

While I agree it is a bit of a clickbait headline, it is all about the precedent when it comes to this kind of thing. I think you are severely downplaying the risk here. Using vague language like that opens the door for them to crack down even harder.

The government wants to monitor everything people do online and VPNs give people a way to opt out of that surveillance. It is a typical legislative move to add extra provisions all in the name of “banning the evil, Chinese spy app”. There is no reason to believe this will stop at TikTok. What if people use VPNs to get around other censorship that may or may not exist now? What if people use VPNs to access content using BitTorrent? Who is to say they won’t crack down on that that stuff next?

Governments love to take advantage of situations to expand their control think about what happened after 9/11.

Apparently this is exactly what is going on here: https://twitter.com/Fynnderella1/status/1640016692305711105

I used AltStore for a while, but it’s kind of a mess. The project is not super well maintained, it’s buggy, it doesn’t recognize paid developer certificates if your paid account is linked to a business, it requires a Mail.app plugin to run, etc.

There is a community developed fork now called sidestore, which seems to work much better in my limited experience trying it out.

It still requires a bit of setup and you have to set up a VPN client on your device in order to install an app, but it seems more reliable to me.

https://sidestore.io/

I’m hopeful that Apple will allow sideloading apps directly in iOS 17 to comply with new EU regulations, but I guess we will see.

> the new weather app rocks in terms of functionality (IMHO better than the previous version of Dark Sky)

While I agree that functionally it offers a lot, the interface is around 1000 times worse than the Dark Sky app. For example, to see the “feels like” temperature over the next few hours in Dark Sky, it used to show up immediately on load for the current time, and with a single tap to see it over the next 24 hours. On the new Apple Weather app, you have to first tap on the current day, then tap on the drop down on the upper right, then tap on “Feels Like”, then tap on the graph itself and drag to the desired time.

It is absolutely incredible to me that something so simple went from taking one step to taking five steps. I don’t know how any user interface designer can justify it.

The spins on most media coverage of this story are insane. Somehow they seem to suggest that it’s okay to lie (repeatedly saying he lived a frugal lifestyle) and steal (claims he didn’t know what was going on) as long as you give the money away to “good causes”.

I put good causes in quotes because it is debatable that that is where it went.

It wouldn’t surprise me if “Effective Altruism” is itself a concept that was invented by billionaires to hide behind and somehow make up for all the bad things they have done.

It should tell you everything you need to know that Julian Assange published government secrets and is being prosecuted by the espionage act and is locked up in a maximum security prison, and Sam Bankman-Fried stole billions of dollars from regular people and is still invited to speak at events while the media covers for him.

It sounds like easy money, but the volatility will likely liquidate you if you use any kind of leverage, and there are also lending fees you would likely have to pay. I would be happy to take you up on that bet though. I would be very surprised if it even drops below $10k again.

Yeah. Bitcoin is on a four year cycle due to the supply cutting in half every four years. Look at 2014, 2018, and now 2022, they are all pretty similar. I think it may still drop a bit further before all is said and done.

I am expecting the recovery to begin next year leading into the 2024 halving, but we will see.

While I agree that the Bee should never have been banned, the answer to this problem is less censorship, not more. It sounds like you are calling for people who have different ideological views from you to be banned, but that is not how a healthy society should function.

There are already tools you can use on Twitter and other platforms to ignore content you don’t want to see (mute or block, for example). Banning someone should only be done in extreme circumstances like if someone is breaking the law or making literal calls to violence.

I think the key point in this article is this:

> I think it all stems from Apple’s desire to simplify things for themselves

This is the only logical explanation for a lot of Apple’s decisions lately. It’s funny how the release notes for Ventura say:

> System Preferences becomes System Settings and features a new design that's optimized for efficient navigation on Mac, and delivers a more consistent experience across iPhone and iPad.

I wonder how long it took their marketing people to come up with that. The truth is this design is not at all optimized for efficient navigation on a Mac. In some cases it actually requires more clicks than System Preferences. Also a consistent experience from iOS to MacOS is not as important as Apple makes it out to be. No one expects a computer to work exactly the same way as a phone or tablet.

The only real justification here is that it probably makes lives easier for Apple developers since they can now manage a single codebase for settings vs. separate ones.

It’s funny cause the one App that I think could actually benefit from this kind of change is the Music app which is a complete abomination on the Mac, but actually works quite well on the iPhone and iPad.

It’s a shame when companies put ease of use for their engineers above ease of use for their users, but this kind of thing seems to be more and more common in the software industry these days.

I don’t think there is much doubt that traditional media companies put profits over reporting and facts. It is difficult to critique war when defense contractors buy up much of your ad space. Likewise, it is difficult to critique big pharma when pharmaceutical companies buy up many of your ads, etc.

The problem with the proposal to make the news publicly funded is that that just replaces one set of incentives with another. If governments dictate when media outlets receive funding and how much, then it is unlikely that said media companies will be overly critical of the government. This same kind of thing has started to creep into other parts of society like the public education system where standardized test scores are often considered more important than a well-rounded education.

Personally, this is why I like the business model of places like Substack where you can find specific journalists you trust to actually hold people in power accountable and can support them directly. Finding truly unbiased information these days is not easy.

Speaking of Substack, I highly recommend this three part series about conflicts of interest and media companies:

- https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/big-media-big-conflicts...

- https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/the-monopoly-on-your-mi...

- https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/the-monopoly-on-your-mi...

While they frame the post as if this is a positive and something they want to do, reading between the lines, it sounds to me like something has them rattled.

They mentioned regulators here, and I would be curious to hear the story behind that.

Don’t want to go too tin foil hat, but it makes you wonder if a certain other AI company that claims to be “open” may be afraid of a company that actually is open and is applying political pressure.

I think it is quite possible that humans attempting to “fix” nature is what will ultimately lead to the extinction of the human race. It is pretty fitting too since we are the ones who helped accelerate the mess we are in.

The article points out some of the problems here:

> There are significant and well-known risks to some of these techniques — sulfur dioxide aerosol injection, in particular.

> First, spraying sulfur into the atmosphere will “mess with the ozone chemistry in a way that might delay the recovery of the ozone layer,” Parson told CNBC.

> The Montreal Protocol adopted in 1987 regulates and phases out the use of ozone depleting substances, such as hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) which were commonly used in refrigeration and air conditioners, but that healing process is still going on.

> Also, sulfates injected into the atmosphere eventually come down as acid rain, which affects soil, water reservoirs, and local ecosystems.

> Third, the sulfur in the atmosphere forms very fine particulates that can cause respiratory illness.

Who gets to make the call that these risks are okay and are not as bad as the negative impact(s) we may face from climate change? Who decides that it is an acceptable trade-off to wipe out entire species and ecosystems and potentially some percent of the human population?

The problem is when it comes to climate change impact, it is all hypothetical based on models we have limited understanding of whereas with this stuff there are concrete risks and side-effects now.

The FBI is more or less a legalized criminal organization that is funded by U.S. taxpayers, but is unelected and unaccountable to them. This article is from 2013, but I haven’t seen anything to suggest that this behavior has changed:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/04/fbi-in...

The important part to consider:

> The FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in a single year, according to newly disclosed documents that show just how often the nation's top law enforcement agency enlists criminals to help it battle crime.

I know this is talking specifically about informants, and you could make a case that that is necessary, but what reason is there to believe that this doesn’t extend to members of the FBI as well?

Here is a more recent article about this:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/11/18/fbi...

Is it really that insane of an accusation? This is how almost everything in the world works.

This isn’t only about greed either. People want their research published for reasons other than greed. For example, they want to move up in their career or achieve recognition.

After looking at a lot of medical studies related to COVID during the last couple years, I have seen first hand how biased and inaccurate many of them are. Some of these studies are even mentioned in major news outlet despite their obvious flaws when you actually begin to scrutinize them. Think big pharma providing research grants for studies that conclude their products are effective.

The OP never said that people falsify data as a result of receiving grants from interested parties. They often don’t have to. They can simply design the experiment in a way that doesn’t account for specific variables or behaviors then use the resulting data to reach a specific conclusion.

I remember seeing an article related to AI research on HN a little while ago that somewhat explained this problem. The grant money all goes to people researching deep neural networks which creates a reinforcing feedback loop. Since all the money goes to one branch of research, it creates very few opportunities to research competing ideas. I believe it was this one:

https://nautil.us/deep-learning-is-hitting-a-wall-14467/