Given that there are significantly cheaper, healthier and more efficient alternatives to eating animals isn't it more accurate to say that they're feeding the animals to make money?
I’m glad you asked. I’m working in a competing product named Globe that will offer twice the service at half the cost with a greater emphasis on security and privacy than Sam Altman ever could.
All you need to do is send me your biometrics, and if you don’t feel like doing that willingly I’ll use the billions of dollars of capital that my friends and I have to coerce you into doing so because I’ll leave you with no other choice.
The problem we at Globe are trying to solve is real and necessary to solve.
People who oppose it are obviously the problem, not me and the existence of a problem is sufficient reason for me to coerce people into accepting my solution without government oversight because my friends have been diligently working hard to reduce the ability of governments around the world to do so.
Like all of us these people make a cost-benefit analysis when it comes to their choice of employer and how much it suits their purposes and personal priorities like giving back to the community.
This is just another factor they’ll have to grapple with in their analysis.
I’m sure some of them will find it a bridge too far but not enough to really matter. The work will continue as will the expansion of Meta and the negative externalities that it produces.
Thank you for the data source. I'll eventually add it to the project that I'm working on
I've got a little orbital dynamics simulator written in C that I've been tinkering with for the past little while. I've got the solar system planets and some asteroids going, I was going to work on moons and artificial satellites / probes next.
My goal was to tinker with simulating a solar system based economy that used Aldrin cyclers for lunar / asteroid mining.
Thanks for the link! Looks like pretty useful tools.
I'm playing with a space game idea of physics simulation somewhere between the fidelity of KSP and Eve Online. More robust ships and easier gameplay than KSP, but much more in-depth physics than Eve.
A bit too early (and too much AI slop code!) to share but can push to github if useful - wrote some scripts to parse the gaia DR3 release: https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/
Parses all rows of the gdr3/Astrophysical_parameters/ files and filters out all objects within X ly of our solar system.
Same idea there as with the exoplanets; build a statistical distribution from real-world data and use it to generate fictional solar systems.
I've been wondering for a while now what sort of air defense if any the US military has around SpaceX launch sites.
After watching videos of Russian and now gulf state oil & gas infrastructure being blown up by small drones for the past while I've come to realize the obvious reality that a SpaceX rocket -- particularly Starship is an extremely vulnerable and expensive target.
It seems totally feasible for a nation state or even an individual to short SpaceX stock after it goes public and then blow up a rocket or two on the launch pad.
What if it didn't delay your education? In some countries an undergrad degree is only three years. I'd take a person with 1 year of civil service + 3 years of a degree over someone with 4 years of a degree any day.
Somebody who is confident enough to handle a rifle and throw a hand grenade is way more useful to me than someone who was forced to another literature or geology course.
Have someone demonstrate a command of the English language by following written instructions that require coordinating activities with a small group of people.
Instead of learning how to read a topographical map for first year geology lab final actually put the map in their hand with a compass and have them do an orienteering exercise as a group.
> What if it didn't delay your education? In some countries an undergrad degree is only three years. I'd take a person with 1 year of civil service + 3 years of a degree over someone with 4 years of a degree any day.
In a world where 1 year of civil service was normal for most people, I'm skeptical that this is the choice the labor market would consistently make. Remember, if pretty much everyone in society is doing the same national service, then that means the military had to find jobs for everyone to do, including people with mediocre general competence or who are in fact bad at following written instructions in English. "I completed my mandatory national service, just like pretty much everyone else" is not that strong of a signal.
In the Soviet Union, smart math and science students often competed hard for academic and technical positions that would let them fulfill their military obligation by doing some kind of math or science for the Soviet state, instead of being a conscript foot-soldier for a few years like was normal for Soviet males (boot camp sucks for everyone, but it really sucks for most smart nerds). If the US had a system like this, there would definitely be industries where it was normal for everyone working in them to have avoided the worst of actual combat training somehow or another - or for actually having done normal soldiering to be a culturally-unusual thing to do. Just like how in our actual society it's unusual for someone who works at a silicon valley tech company to have actually volunteered to serve in the US military earlier in life.
I'd prefer someone who is confident enough to take another geology or literature course over the gun-handler. I'd make sure that person is in a supervisory position over welfare-state products of our armed forces, certainly.
If you were presented with three options for hiring, each with identical professional experience, but the first has a four year degree, while the second has a three year degree, and the third has a three year degree plus + year of national service in a country with an effective military which one would you pick and why?
Taxpayers in non-failed states like Finland that are able to provide astoundingly high quality of life for their citizens while also providing a strong military that is based around mandatory national service.
Finland has been rated the happiest country in the world what, eight or nine years in a row now and was able to secure they borders against a overwhelmingly more capable neighbour with no participation in a mutual aid defensive alliance like NATO until very recently.
In so many ways Finland is the model we should all be looking at emulating in Western countries.
While the majority of Finns speak highly of their conscription system, there's also an understanding that it's propped up by Finland's unique history and place in the world. I think people are seriously naive as to how much shit the Finnish people have suffered over the last millenia, and how that has contextualized their modern existence.
> Finland has been rated the happiest country in the world
"Tilastollinen onnellisuus" is a concept relentlessly mocked by Finns. Finns are very proud of their country, but many are also very quick to call it a shithole, to engage in valittaminen, and for good reason. Their love for it is practically an expression of sisu. The contradiction of it being an absolute dreg of a swamp populated by insufferable FINNS, yet they would all agree to throw their life away to defend it anyways, is not a situation that was conjured out of thin air with some clever social policies and progressive tax reform.
First off, the difference in diction between PM Mark Carney and other world leaders is startling. Clear, cogent reasoning with rhetoric meant to impart on the listener that the speaker respects them and the presentation of an actual plan instead of just concepts of one is refreshing.
Second. I've been finding it more and more difficult to communicate online with Americans or people who have succumbed to contemporary American-brained thinking. There's something corrosive about being surrounded by slurred, infantile thinking, it seems like even the most intelligent people will eventually succumb to it and regurgitate it back because they see it as the easy road and suffer no immediate consequences for doing so.
It's extremely frustrating to see this come from American oligarchs who bend the knee to a mad king with a sexual penchant for young girls. To satiate their greed people like Sam Altman and Tim Cook align themselves with the worst of American society and unctuously flatter them with gaudy bauble bribes and obsequious speeches. Sure it serves their immediate purposes but what are the long term consequences of this? Do these people realize that every time they sell a piece of their soul to increase their personal wealth it destroys a piece of their society? Do they care?
It seems like America is rudderless now, a living ghost shambling into an uncertain but terminal future. Other countries see that now and there's a strong 'if it bleeds we can kill it' vibe after watching America deplete years of missile stocks against Iran only to watch China begin to resupply Iranian stockpiles to provide the Americans with another opportunity to deplete years more.
> Sure it serves their immediate purposes but what are the long term consequences of this? Do these people realize that every time they sell a piece of their soul to increase their personal wealth it destroys a piece of their society? Do they care?
It makes me wonder, at what amount of wealth does it stop being "F%ck you" money and start being a ranking on the scoreboard?
> Do these people realize that every time they sell a piece of their soul to increase their personal wealth it destroys a piece of their society? Do they care?
you should look into how wealthy elites live. this is not "their" society, they are completley detached from it. their homes are surrounded by tall walls [0]. they have their own neighbourhoods. they buy themselves islands to party on. they fly there using private jets. they talk with each other in private signal groups or at off-the-record clubs. they build themselves bunkers. they invest in chartered cities. that is the psychology of wealthy people. they are not and do not wish to be a part of society
in fact, they don't want society to exist as society at all. because while they unite and collude, they simultaneously discourage everyone else from doing the same. in his davos speech [1], carney himself quoted the phrase "workers of the world unite" in order to discredit it. he gave it as an example of dishonesty, something worthy of scorn. due to its use by communist regimes. historically his point is valid. but the subtext is clear
What's worse is that this the predictable result of a choice that America made decades ago and continues to make.
Outsourcing manufacturing capacity to China and letting domestic manufacturing skills atrophy and institutional knowledge die out was a choice that many people opposed but were ultimately helpless to stop because the people making the decisions ignored them and did it anyways for personal gain is how we got here.
You'd think that the supply chain shocks that we saw during COVID would be a wake up call that would have jolted people into action.
You'd think that Ukraine-Russia war would have been a wake up call that would have jolted people into action.
You'd think that the recent failures by the US military in Iran and the depletion of years of missile stockpiles would have been a wake up call that would have jolted people into action.
I'm at a loss to explain it. It's like the American oligarchs want to weaken America, or at least are willing to do so if it means that they have greater control over it. Maybe they don't care about manufacturing capacity because they know that America is ultimately a nuclear protected island and that even if things continue to decline they'll be safe to rule it like a king?
> It's like the American oligarchs want to weaken America, or at least are willing to do so if it means that they have greater control over it.
The capital holders want it under their control. The fact that it harms the state is a consequence they ignore, or worse, believe that other people will deal with. There is not thought given to how much harm will be caused, because the harm is seen as part of the process used to acquire that control. It's the sort of thinking that aligns with beating a dog to teach it not to bark and then ignoring the cataracts that form from the repeated blows.
Flowery language is important but something like BLUF - Bottom Line Upfront[0] is important too.
While it's important for universities to continue to teach the ability to write using 'flowery' language I think that it is also important that schools teach students something like BLUF -- Bottom Line Upfront.[0]
Compare and contrast those two sentences. I'm fine writing a comment that us just the first sentence and the link without a footnote but I know as a message it won't go over well on a site like Hackernews. They looooooove their verbosity here.
So in some situations you have to gussy it up -- give it some of that Emeril "BAM". The deal is that you have to know your audience. The medium is the message.[1] shit like that.
Stuff on Linkedin is full of pointless words because that's what Linkedin is for -- it's about signalling to other people that you can string together a bunch of pointless words that are effusive and vaguely passive aggressive at the same time -- you know, typical business shit.
“Whether in a suit or in a loincloth people are ignorant little thorns cutting into one another. They seem incapable of advancing beyond the violent tendencies which at one time were necessary for survival.”
We can delve into this kinda stuff but really it just comes back to the know your audience and that the medium is the message. Also don't repeat your self.
It's the first song mentioned in the article, but oddly no link to a performance. There's links to two other of her songs. The cover is lovely, as is the rest of that artist's music.
Gosh, "Talkin' Like You (Two Tall Mountains)" is heartbreaking:
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