skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One site suggests that a refrigerator has 5900 megajoules of energy embodied in it. That's accurate enough for napkin math, so we'll run with it. 1 kWh = 3.6 megajoules, so 1638 kWh per refrigerator.

https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Appliance#Embodied_e...

Two hops upthread, the commenter says "280kWh/year" for their 1938 fridge. No clue what kind of power they use, but we can calculate the recoup cost of a replacement without knowing it.

It looks like modern refrigerators are considered about 3x as efficient as pre-70s refrigerators, so let's say that a straight swap of a size-equivalent refrigerator of average efficiency will cost 100kWh/year.

https://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=refrig.calcu...

Spending 1638 kWh on a new refrigerator will save 160kWh/year, so the break even point in carbon terms occurs after 10 years have passed.

This is all very bad napkin math done in crayon. If you want better figures, you'll need to know your own refrigerator runtime figures, which means measuring your fridge's power usage for a standard week of use (if you maintain a very stable indoor temperature through heating/cooling) or for a year (if you do not), and you'll need to know the energy saved per year of your current fridge, and etc.

ps. Apparently they have a fridge from 90 years ago that's still running. If you replace one modern fridge with another and only save 20 kWh/year, it will take you 90 years to recoup that cost. The 10 year figure is only possible because their 1938 fridge is so inefficient.

pps. Owner of said 1938 fridge, I intend no disrespect. This DOE paper talks in detail about the changes that improved efficiency – inventing high-efficiency compressors, changing the shape of the drain pipe (1% efficiency gain!), and replacing the refrigerant and insulation materials with more efficient ones. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/7281.pdf
My experience is that Stellaris works REALLY great on Linux! Since I bought it two years ago, the experience has been flawless (on Ubuntu 18.04)
Check out In Our Time on BBC4, there's a podcast.
Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029
I did the Ancestry DNA test. One thing I thought about when deciding to take the test or not, was what if this test exposes some Jewish ancestry and that information is discovered by fascists.

I considered that a low risk because I've posted enough anti-Brexit stuff that I'm probably on some fascist's list of enemies-of-the-people already.
Well, there are satellites that have far larger fields of view, so the question is how much smaller fires you can see with a blimp compared to a satellite.
> DNA test sales decline

Well, there are only so many people interested in the product (ie. not creeped by it), and they're only going to use it once...
2010s will be remember as the "wonky startup" decade, between this, theranos, uber &co.
I don't claim to understand it either, but the animations on the Wiki page at least give a feel for it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_wave_theory
Google Cloud’s Secrets Manager
Yes, it makes a practical difference but in an academic debate setting, arguments for or against pervasive surveillance are usually scale invariant. If it wasn't you could end up with arguments like this one:

"The USSR compiling detailed files on millions of citizens was not unethical because it was small scale, but Google compiling detailed files on billions of citizens is, because it's large scale."

or alternatively

"Surveilling terrorists is fine because there are very few of them, but CCTV to catch thieves in public places isn't because that's much larger scale."

These would be very odd and brittle arguments though. In fact I've never seen anyone make an argument like that. The tolerability of surveillance depends very much on context like who is doing it to whom and why, with scale being a pretty small aspect. When people debate surveillance it's always in the context of identities and purposes. But the notion that AI+surveillence is special ignores questions of who's the watcher, who's the watched and what the purpose of it all is to focus on the least important part of all: concrete cost to the watchers. After all communist regimes already demonstrated that you can scale mass surveillance up to huge levels without needing any technology at all, just ideology.

That's why I'm suggesting debates about AI in left-wing media are actually not about AI at all, that's just a way to restart the discussion about standard left-wing ideas and topics, like capitalism or sometimes identity politics. This article is an exemplar:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/13/the-gu...

In fairness, it does start by recognising that "big brother" is the primary user. But the thrust of the article is about private (ab)usage. It ends by saying:

Imagine a surveillance system that falsely identifies a black man from his face and then just as falsely attributes to him aggressive intent from his expression and the way he is standing.
> You are imposing your language/vocabulary onto me, rather than adopting mine, while failing to realise that language itself is just another instrument. I use it for communication.

You mentioned Aumann's theorem, so it seemed for me that you are bayesian thinker.

> Bayesianism, Intuitioinism, counter-factualism, methodism, particularism (obviously the list is incomlete) are just some of the tools in my toolbox. How and when I might use any particular instrument is up to me.

No, there comes another question: how you might claim that Aumann's theorem is applicable to you, if you are not a strictly bayesian? Maybe logic is also just a one tool of many, and can be rejected when you feel like that? Have you formal rules to judge when some or other tool might be used or rejected? If so, do you believe in this rules to work?

All I want to show, that you cannot reason without some beliefs you take as granted. So your claim that you have no beliefs is false.
Isn't the point of this finding your personal file stored in the server?
Surgeons often specialise highly. Particularly for complex surgeries. Experience has a huge impact on outcomes.

Not always, possibly not most, but many.
Vilifying screen time isn't great either, are the negative effects coming from actual screens or brightly-coloured games designed for dopamine hits? Is reading on a screen functionally different from a book in terms of attention span?
Even if they left some of it as binary blobs and cut off the older systems from the Sonos ecosystem I'd be happy with this solution.

I need the speakers to talk to each other so I can play throughout the house over wifi but as I have a Sonos Bridge to my old hi-fi I don't need them to talk to the internet themselves.
Awesome video, thanks for posting that. I'll add a more recent interview with Sandin that is pretty interesting:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Izx2CqxM71s
There are so many reasons why this is a bad idea:

- what seems like superfluous options to you might be required for people with allergies or other conditions

- even those that don't have any medial reasons might still have preferences. eg some washing detergents smell rank to me while others don't. There will be people who have the reverse preferences too. So just because you cannot detect any difference it doesn't mean others also don't.

- monopolies are bad for consumers for a multitude of reasons. Lack of innovation, higher prices, etc. Really this point alone should be multiple bullet points.

What I really wish supermarkets stopped doing was moving stuff around. I know exactly why they do it (lost customers tend to buy more stuff by accident) however as a customer it's REALLY(!!!) annoying having to relearn where you're preferred breakfast cereal is now located when the last place you'd want to be on a Saturday afternoon is stuck in a Supermarket with two bored kids (though these days I just pay for home delivery)
Estimating the Potential Total Number of Coronavirus Cases in Wuhan City, China
That's not entirely true, it also works in apps that embed safari (e.g. twitter's in-app browser).

I didn't see any ads in a quick test with Firefox on iOS, but maybe that was Firefox's tracking protection, not a content blocker.
Is This Site Secure?
>On February 27, 2002, a passenger train stopped in Godhra, a city in Gujarat. It was coming from Ayodhya, where many of the passengers had gone to visit the site where Babri Masjid was destroyed, ten years earlier, and to advocate for building a temple there. Most of them belonged to the religious wing of the R.S.S., called the V.H.P.

>While the train sat at the station, Hindu travellers and Muslims on the platform began to heckle one another. As the train pulled away, it stalled, and the taunting escalated. At some point, someone—possibly a Muslim vender with a stove—threw something on fire into one of the cars. The flame spread, and the passengers were trapped inside; when the door was finally pushed open, the rush of oxygen sparked a fireball. Some fifty-eight people suffocated or burned to death. As word of the disaster spread, the state government allowed members of the V.H.P. to parade the burned corpses through Ahmedabad, the state’s largest city. Hindus, enraged by the display, began rampaging and attacking Muslims across the state.

Behold the FAKEery of The New Yorker.

First of all, Babri Masjid was an illegal structure (As per SC judgement).

Second of all, those people were not just some RSS/VHP members. They were women and children and pilgrims to the Ayodhya Ram temple (at maasjid site then.) which was allowed by the law.

Third of all, see what event triggered the curfew.

Finally, don't justify any curfew. If you happened to see the partition of India, you might feel 2002 was something sort of perhaps a protest.
Off-Peak Public Transport Usage
Out of who's line? His and those employees line? They're temporary servants, not property.
“Can be made to work reliably” is disingenuous. It just does.
ive heard intel are carving staff like nobodys business but i assumed that was because theyve been losing so much ground to amd amongst other things

i think if they fail to pull something significant out of the bag very soon they could be in serious trouble, especially if the likes of apple decide to make the switch to amd chips, sure they just posted better than expected revenue but were only just seeing the start of amds rise
Especially if one considers how the NSA got most of their data through PRISM from corporate partners like Google. If those never collect it, the NSA can't gather it.
I wanted to buy one for a while, and my girlfriend offered to get me one for Christmas, but this is the reason I didn't.
why did you settle on adhd? adhd people are typically overactive. It means Attention Defecit Hyperactivity. I mean, it is literally about being 'hyperactive'. Like my friend. He's like always walking super fast and very extraverted. He does stuff every hour of the day and never gets tired. I try to keep up but really he has to wait on me. He did have trouble with school, but that's because he's always running off somewhere, not because he's sitting at his desk fidgetting. these days he runs his own company and has a full time job, a lot of social commitments, sports etc. He can't gain any weight because he's always running and lives life at a higher pace than normal so he's very skinny. Also it's widely known ritalin and aderall help everyone with concentration, not just adhd people. so you can't diagnose yourself based on the fact that it helps you. I am not saying you don't have a problem, but i find your case to be atypical for adhd. generally people with concentration problems without hyperactivity end up under the 'add' label. But i don't know everything, of course. it could be something else. or nothing that has any label. it's just that what you wrote about doctors and that you are not listening. you might want to consider listening to them a bit.
When cars drive past I cannot listen to what someone is saying on the phone. It completely blocks all the sound of them talking.

The cars don’t even have to be that loud or close by. A few tens of metres away at 30mph and I still can’t hear anything anyone says.

Sometimes I have to swap places with a friend when walking down the pavement just so I can try to hold a conversation.
the GDPR would not allow 23andme to sell genetic data to insurance companies without strict opt-in

That's true. But there's a different issue and the very reason why I would never do such testing.

An insurance company cannot enforce a genetic test on you in order to write a policy. What they can and will do, however, is ask you in the questionaire for such a policy if you did a genetic test and if yes they would oblige you to share the results before writing a policy.

The problem here is you can't lie. If you did a test and you deny it and it's proven later that you lied the insurance will refuse coverage.

So it's in your best interest not to get tested at all.

My understanding is that it's very different in the US. Such data is insanely valuable to insurers and that directly translates to the prices they're willing to pay for it.

Unethical? Sure as hell. Illegal? Probably not without a strong legal framework.
How far removed from genetic data does the data have to be so that insurance companies can use it? Can I start a business that analyzes genetic data for know risk factors and then sell only the risk factors to insurance companies?
> Most modern FORTH don't have SMUDGE any more, which has been replaced by HIDE and REVEAL.

I think, the modern Forths (i.e. since 1994 ANS Forth standard) need neither HIDE nor REVEAL as these are made superflous by RECURSE.

Other edge cases could be handled using a mechanism like DEFER [1] (which can be implemented in terms of ANS Standard words).

Just looking through the manual, even the modern Gforth has something like RECURSIVE [2] which is just a differently named implementation of REVEAL.

[1] http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/gforth/Docs-html/Defe...
https://forth-standard.org/standard/core/RECURSE
[2] http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/gforth/Docs-html/Call...
A couple of examples from Java/Kotlin code:

- Too much business logic hidden behind dependency injection (using Dagger in this instance). I think DI should be used sparingly, to decouple large subsystems like the database or the network. It can feel clever to inject everything, so your system is super modular and decoupled, but that just makes it much harder to understand, with little or no real benefit.

- Somewhat related, excessive use of annotations to accomplish tasks that could be done in a more straightforward way with normal code. For example, in Android, you might have an annotation that adds some fragment to your activity as a mix-in; but is that really easier than just calling a function to do the same thing?

This stuff starts to cause real trouble when there are 1000 occurrences sprinkled through your code, and suddenly you need to step through it to debug a tricky problem. Straight-line code is vastly easier to deal with.

So I’d say “clever” is more of a problem at an architectural level, rather than inside individual functions.

At the low level, shorter is almost always better. If somebody comes up with a clever way to reduce a function from 10 lines to 4, say, that’s great -- as long as its purpose is clear and it’s testable.
I don't remember how many bans there have been on Tildes to date but it's either two or three, and they're always a big deal. So I don't know about your definition of "culling".
Buts that’s “continue to work as is” but if the whole world moves on, then features will stop working. E.g. they’re not gonna get updates to deal with breaking API changes from music providers.

I’m not sure what more you could expect.
I’ve been in this situation. Frequently it’s because new owners are acting quickly to turn the culture into what they want rather than what the previous owners or leadership set up, while trying to fix some perceived problem at the same time. This often means tearing down what others were trying to build up, and bringing down a culture that people had bought into. Thus, people leaving.

If this might be the case, then my advice is this - talk to the person as high up as possible that is making the changes, ask them what they want the future culture to look like. Then, decide for yourself if you want to work in that culture, whether you think they can actually get there without it all burning down, and whether you trust them to not lie to you.

If you want to be a part of that future, then you’re incredibly valuable as you can help course correct by communicating when things aren’t going in that direction. It’s great to be in that situation. In either of the other situations, know that you’re taking on a bunch of risk in terms of your work life balance, enjoyment of work, and probably sanity while the org you’re in contorts and buckles. If it’s still worth it, stay. If it’s not worth it, go.
Ehm, isn't it super obvious that this, too, follows the Pareto distribution?
Glenn diz que resistência democrática brasileira é maior do que esperava
I wonder why I am down-voted on this: hydrogen is only marginally produced from renewables today. Who would bet it will be the case in the future when the demand is huge? Large countries (Germany, China, India) mainly produce electricity from coal, natural gas or petrol: is it good for the climate to charge our batteries with that electricity?

People refuse to look at reality, now.
I'm often concerned that studies that assess screen time (especially in contrast to reading or other cognitively rich activities) don't seem (ever, so far as I can tell) to assess two areas that seem important:

1) The distinction in content being delivered via a screen: ie, does watching Mighty Pups result in measurably different brain activity or development than Studio Ghibli films? Common sense suggests so, but why aren't these studies assessing that?

2) The function of a parent or adult companion to help with understanding and integration of the content - does watching media alone result in different outcomes than watching with an attentive parent?

However, this study doesn't even seem to actually measure any aspect of screen time at all - it just looked at differences between households that used "Get ready to READ!", a particular reading curriculum which requires parents and children to read together, vs those that didn't.

I think books and screen time are both important. Given the incredible ability for parents to curate decades of incredible digital media, from series to TV to classic video games, it seems crazy to me to refrain from substantial collaboration with our kids in enjoying and reflecting on these media.

Now, sometimes parents end up using screen time as a way of babysitting, with media that hasn't even been viewed by the parent, much less together with the child. I admit that I myself have occasionally fallen into this form, but I don't like it, and it's not what I'm talking about when I suggest that screen time is an overall good thing.

But why aren't these studies measuring that difference?!

My 4-year-old gets a lot of screen time (and a lot of book time, and board game time) and I think that's great. We play classic NES and SNES games, watch age-appropriate (but socially meaningful) movies, and explore the internet together to learn about his interests. Until a serious study (ideally much larger than this one, with 70 participants) actually addresses the realities of the media being delivered and the methodology and its delivery, I find it hard to take seriously for making my own parenting decisions.
"Production line mistakes may lead to generic defects that propagate throughout an entire fleet of reactors and are costly to fix," (person from University College London) warned.

Wouldn’t the knowledge gained by fixing a large one-off reactor be of limited transferable value, as compared to expensive knowledge that could be used to upgrade an existing “fleet” plus improve subsequent versions?
What I like about the '70s stuff is almost everything uses standard parts you can get from any reasonable factor, and the few unique components are usually still simple enough that some hobbyist or small machine shop will be turning them out and selling them. Providing it hasn't been abused it's possible to refurbish something using only simple tools and a bit of testing, and some of the equipment is seriously good even by modern standards. (One of the main reasons I ended up with a '70s turntable is I couldn't find anything new under £1000 with the same sound quality, or that didn't require directly fiddling with belts and pulleys to change the speed.)

By comparison, whenever any of my modern kit breaks down I find the offending part will be unique to that unit, the spare parts supply is nonexistent, and there will be no published specs allowing one to cobble something together.
Do you know a voice chat like this where I could get real-time information whether or not someone is there without having to join?

We use Hangouts and WhereBy (formerly appear.in) for some projects, but when you're in the "about to join" screen, the list of other people in the room isn't updated past initial load.
> Can anyone give a specific example of code they've worked with that was "too clever"?

Code that relies on implementation details of a library that a good portion of developers wouldn't necessarily know. In C# if your code relies on LINQ being lazily evaluated to produce the correct answer it's probably too clever.

Using reflection in static languages like Java or C# when it's not necessary.

Writing code that passes functions around when you don't need to.

Chaining together a series of map/filter/reduces in order to avoid writing a simple for loop.

> Based on my experience, if a coworker wanted to "avoid cleverness" I imagine we'd end up arguing over something like a for-loop versus a map, but such small code decision matter very very little in comparison to overall architecture, and where you place the "seams" in your system.

> So I ask, when you have felt that code is "too clever", was it because someone used a map, but you're more comfortable with for loops, or was it bigger than that?

This rule basically comes down to all things being equal try to write straightforward code. If you can write two functions in 5 lines of code but one function will be more easily understood by a more novice programmer, go with the more straightforward approach.

>My first job was maintaining some PHP. The author didn't know what a function was. The code was a 5,000 line script, top to bottom, with basic control and looping logic nested up to 17 deep (I counted). It was horrible. Yet surely, the author had avoided cleverness at all costs; he had built a working system with only the most basic tools, those being all he knew.

No one is arguing that writing straightforward code is the most important code quality to strive for, just that before you implement that currying solution to reduce the number of lines of code from 40 to 35. Think twice.
I used to implement Schema.org for everything that was possible in my previous projects.

Now, working on a new project, I think I'm only going to stick with 'breadcrumbs' and that's it.

The thing is that I don't like how Google is evolving. The "take everything and use it for their own profit" attitude while giving less and less space to the publishers as time goes by.
I think this article was written a few days before the EU memo was leaked. He doesn't mention the EU in it.
it will not pay for the loss of earnings/business during your stay in the hospital and convalescence

I can't speak for other countries in Europe. But in Switzerland you have mandatory coverage from your employer.

The employer will pay your salary for a certain amount of time. After that insurance will kick in and pay (usually) 80% for up to a couple of years.

After that invalidity insurance kicks in. That's usually about 60% of your salary until retirement. You can buy added coverage to raise those percentages.

Bankrupcy for medical reasons is pretty much unheard of herearound.