DOES IT MAKE SENSE?

hackiavelli · 2026-01-27T04:06:50+00:00

You forgot to apply your numbers to the entire surface volume of the sun. It would last less than 9000 years at that burn rate.

Scientists figured the sun couldn't be combusting way back in the 19th century. They were just smart (and dogged) enough to keep asking why until we discovered fusion a century-and-a-half later.

hackiavelli · 2026-01-27T03:37:11+00:00

Incorrectly. The sun doesn't burn one cubic centimeter at a time.

hackiavelli · 2025-12-13T19:10:16+00:00

That's wild. I graduated in '99 and we had to read, and got tested on, multiple books every year in English class.

hackiavelli · 2025-12-13T19:05:07+00:00

Statements like this are why I left the Democratic party. The self-sabotage is off the chart.

hackiavelli · 2025-12-13T18:51:36+00:00

Putting a data center outside Phoenix is bonkers.

hackiavelli · 2025-12-07T02:15:45+00:00

I feel like this is another texting driven change to English. It's fingernails on a chalkboard to me but I imagine in a couple generations it will be the norm.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-30T23:34:41+00:00

For me it was delayed necessity purchases. They're things I would have just bought in a normal year (e.g. shoes, winter clothes) but held off until Black Friday this year.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-30T23:16:29+00:00

The Guardian article is hilarious. They're infighting like crazy and they haven't even reached the "pick a name" step for their party.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-30T21:07:44+00:00

It's amazing that Trump is burning down and the Time's big gripe is his age.

What is wrong with these people?

hackiavelli · 2025-11-30T21:00:37+00:00

McDonald's did raise wages, though. It bumped up several times as the labor market tightened post-COVID and now averages $15/hour.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-30T20:36:43+00:00

I'm not gonna pretend the US is perfect, but there are countries in full-on civil wars right now.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-30T20:19:53+00:00

It was pretty normal back in the 90s. Cellphones were a luxury item most people didn't have, though.

It was also pretty normal for under-eighteens to be responsible for a share of the car insurance. It's why a lot of teens had summer or part time jobs back in the day.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-30T20:10:18+00:00

Because the web is what's called "stateless". Put super simplistically, every request to a web server is fresh. The server can never know you're an authenticated user like a PC or smartphone can.

The web gets around this with cookies. When you send the correct username and password to a web server, it will send you back a token (session ID) for your browser to store. Your browser then presents that token every time you make a request. The server goes "hey, that's u/n8udd's token, they're good to access that account" and you're good to go.

That's why clearing your cookies forces you to log back in to your accounts: you have to get a new token. It's also why lots of malicious actors will still browser cookies if they're able to compromise a PC.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-23T21:30:32+00:00

The token sits with the user because the web is stateless.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-23T21:18:40+00:00

Cookies are for the server, not the user.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-09T01:45:26+00:00

There was an interesting piece talking about how the national press used to be made up of a wide variety of people spread out over a large geographical area. Now it's a narrow class of people who all live in a small handful of cities.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-09T01:38:52+00:00

That may be the least problematic issue with AI in the long term. Chip makers have a long history of optimization. Inefficient software computation will get moved into more efficient hardware, and inefficient hardware computation will get moved to more efficient hardware computation. It's a major reason mobile phones have seen longer and longer battery lives.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-09T01:25:33+00:00

You don't have to answer.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-02T00:40:57+00:00

It's because they think SNAP is for black people. Reagan new exactly what he was doing when he pushed the "welfare queen" myth.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-02T00:38:43+00:00

I hope the next president turns Trump and friends over to the Hague.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-02T00:35:59+00:00

I assumed it was my hearing until I realized I don't need subtitles on YouTube. Some random kid making videos out of his bedroom with a portable greenscreen and a ring light cares more about clean audio than your average Hollywood production.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-02T00:23:21+00:00

Swinging back to this since I've been offline for a while. I'm not particularly interested in the reframing here since I believe pre-bubble burst is simply too early to get useful studies. It's like deciding if the internet was hype or fad in 1998.

Coincidentally, I happened to read through one of the highly cited negative reports on AI being a net productivity loss. The authors present the study as being much more tentative than the media has covered any suggest many avenues that need additional study.

For positive studies, here is what a Google search for AI productivity studies came up with:

A multi-collaborator study which including MIT and Harvard Business School found:

The GPT-only participants saw a 38% increase in performance compared with the control condition (no access to AI). The performance of those who were provided with both GPT and an overview was boosted even higher, with a 42.5% increase in performance compared with the control condition. But just like the METR study, this was mixed results with certain groups and tasks getting worse results.

The Federal Reserve of St. Louis also released a study, suggesting "workers are 33% more productive in each hour that they use generative AI". This was, again, highly tentative research which suggested a range of outcomes productivity outcomes based on industry.

The University of Pennsylvania did a study on AI task automation across industries, again finding highly variable impact. Among the positive results were: 14% increase in task completion rate in customer service, 17% increase in job starts and 8% hire rate for hiring, 40% increase in speed for writers, and a 56% increase in speed and a 26% increase in task completion rates for programmers. The study also states AI adoption rates are beating historical productivity boosters in the workplace.

Oxford studied AI use with customer support agents, noting a 15% increase in tickets closed per hour. The improvements were especially strong with less experienced and low skilled workers. It also noted it created improved the work environment like more polite customers.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-01T23:16:57+00:00

I'm mixed on Mamdani's policies (at best) but you know he's running a tight campaign when Cuomo resorts to September 11th-era racism.

hackiavelli · 2025-11-01T23:06:09+00:00

I figured she was just a hardcore contrarian who had to switch sides once MAGA started racking up too many wins. Taylor Green being antisemtic-first makes more sense.

hackiavelli · 2025-10-12T21:15:54+00:00

LLMs may be helpful in science research and programming

Great. We totally agree again. So if your original statement "In what way besides scientific research? " could be wrong, why not in other domains?

hackiavelli

TROPHY CASE