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rolandr

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rolandr
·hace 3 meses·discuss
1k tok/s = 1000 tok/s...
rolandr
·hace 7 meses·discuss
"Using newly-assembled data from 1980 through 2024, we show that 25% of scientifically-active, US-trained STEM PhD graduates leave the US within 15 years of graduating."

I believe there will be a significant "discontinuity" in the data beginning in 2025. Likely along the lines of (1) US-born science majors going abroad for their PhD's (and likely staying there afterwards), and (2) a major decline in foreign students coming to the US. Blocking disbursement of ongoing grants, immediate and dramatic slashing funding for the sciences, holding up universities under pain of blocking federal funding, eliminating fellowships, firing government scientists, stuffing agencies and commissions with politically appointed yes men, having oaths of fealty in all but name, deporting and blocking return of foreign students, and many more actions of similar character tend to fo that.

One of the greatest national scientific establishments was irreparably damaged in a matter of months. No discussion, no process -- just pulling the rug out. The US will coast for a few years on the technologies that just popped out of the university pipeline of development, but that pipeline is now essentially broken.
rolandr
·hace 2 años·discuss
I’m not seeing how you are getting there from that quote. Seems like one of the least controversial sentences in the article. Maybe it would be better to say “should” instead of “need?” In any event the overall point is pretty sound.

Even with dogs, if they are not well socialized when younger, they end up having problems interacting well/appropriately with new dogs and people.
rolandr
·hace 2 años·discuss
I don’t know if that source ultimately took into account the CO2 costs in extraction and transportation.

However, plastic sure isn’t free in that regard! 8-10% of petroleum (which is pulled out of the ground, with increasing effort each year) is used to produce plastics. I’d put good odds on extraction and transportation CO2 costs for petroleum exceeding those for LNG - no good guess on coal. That also doesn’t account for your energy costs in moving the post-consumer plastic around.

Plus, natural gas has significantly lower emissions than plastic to begin with.

Obviously, which others touched on, it’s better to displace burning fossil fuels and plastics (arguably fossil fuel too) with renewables —- an effort that continues to accelerate.
rolandr
·hace 2 años·discuss
At first, I thought this was a good overlooked point, but after digging into it, there isn’t a net reduction.

According to [1], the gCO2e/kWh for the relevant energy sources are: Coal 850g Natural gas 385g Plastic incineration 512g

According to [2], in the US in 2023, 43.1% of electricity was from natural gas and 16.2% from coal. Based on that, the average fossil fuel kWh resulted in 512 gCO2e.

So, if you substitute the average fossil fuel with burning plastic, there is NO net improvement in CO2 emissions per kWh. Against just natural gas, burning plastic actually produces 33% more gCO2e.

I think the above approach is the correct way to evaluate this. Basically, to get your kWh from nonrenewable sources, you are still burning something and have to choose one thing or another to be burned. Choosing plastic allows you to defer burning your fossil fuel (or, in other words, gives you more total fuel to burn), but it doesn’t help climate change efforts.

[1] https://www.clientearth.org/media/1h2nalrh/greenhouse-gas-an... (page 29) [2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
rolandr
·hace 2 años·discuss
Find someone interested in continuing that business under a long term (royalty or such) or short term (lump sum) financial arrangement that is acceptable to you? I think there will be interested people, maybe even within this community (not suggesting I’m one of them, though).
rolandr
·hace 2 años·discuss
Do you think it’s more difficult for people to identify with and connect to media lacking people of their own race? Interesting idea.
rolandr
·hace 2 años·discuss
Back when I had a really nasty run-in with poison oak, my friend’s father who was a doctor suggested the hot water trick. AMAZING. His explanation was that it depleted histamines that caused the itching. Appears to bear out:

“ a poison ivy rash (like any other allergic reaction) is caused by the body releasing the chemical histamine to the affected area as part of your immune response. Heat will stimulate the production of histamine, and although this creates an unpleasant itching in the moment, the heat will eventually deplete the affected cells of their histamine, which can provide up to 8 hours of itch relief afterwards. This can be achieved by aiming warm water at the affected area, and slowly increasing the heat to the maximum tolerable temperature until itching stops.”

https://teclabsinc.com/why-you-shouldnt-use-hot-water-on-a-p... (article title referring to not using hot water when washing off oils after initial exposure)
rolandr
·hace 3 años·discuss
Hence why I also included “the training methods and data.” All three come together to produce something impressive but with inherent limitations. The human tendency to anthropomorphize leads human intuition about its capabilities astray. It’s an extremely capable bullshit artist.

Training agents on every written word ever produced, or selected portions of it, will never impart the lessons that humans learn through “The School of Hard Knocks.” They are nihilist children who were taught to read, given endless stacks of encyclopedias and internet chat forum access, but no (or no consistent) parenting.
rolandr
·hace 3 años·discuss
No. The author is demonstrating a concept - that there are many easy inroads to twisting ChatGPT around your finger. It was very tongue in cheek - a joke - the author has no true expectation of getting the car for $1.
rolandr
·hace 3 años·discuss
It is reasonable to say that the author demonstrated that bit of trust was misplaced to begin with.

The training methods and data used to produce ChatGPT and friends, and an architecture geared to “predict the next word,” inherently produces a people pleaser. On top of that, it is hopelessly naive, or put more directly, a chump. It will fall for tricks that a toddler would see through.

There are endless variations of things like “and yesterday you suffered a head injury rendering you an idiot.” ChatGPT has been trained on all kinds of vocabulary and ridiculous scenarios and has no true sense or right or wrong or when it’s walking off a cliff. Built into ChatGPT is everything needed for a creative hostile attacker to win 10/10 times.