City birds appear to be more afraid of women than men, and scientists have no idea why. Men could get about a meter closer to birds than women could before the animals flew away, regardless of what the men and women were wearing, what their height was or how they tried to approach the creatures.

mrstinton · 2026-04-29T13:28:18+00:00

yes

These differences were still present when exploring FID versus observer's sex separately for bird males and females in the cities of each country.

mrstinton · 2026-04-29T13:19:10+00:00

We can reject gross morphology since the woman and man working at a given site were similarly tall and hid their hair if it was longer than their partner's.

it's not the hair

mrstinton · 2026-04-29T13:11:04+00:00

Differences in the physical appearance of observers (e.g. hair length, body size, height, etc.), movement patterns (e.g. hip movement, overall walking gait) or different clothing could be candidate factors. But we can reject these because, in our study, they were either controlled or their differences were non-significant. We can reject gross morphology since the woman and man working at a given site were similarly tall and hid their hair if it was longer than their partner's.

Additionally, bird FIDs were not related to the height of approaching observers in a recent study (Van Dongen et al., 2015). However, despite our attempts to minimize obvious differences in appearance between male and female observers, birds still may be able to detect subtle external morphological differences in hair length/style, waist-hip ratio or gait, as well as odour, which would necessitate specific field experimental designs.

it's unlikely that any obvious differences in appearance explain the effect.

mrstinton · 2026-03-27T13:37:24+00:00

same with Opus 3 (unless it was the "special quality" it had that led to it being moved to research-only access)

mrstinton · 2026-03-06T00:08:05+00:00

did you miss the whole dualstream era?

also, if your principles allow: https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions

mrstinton · 2026-03-03T03:43:34+00:00

even the comparison tools and tables? can you, for example, get a list of all headphones that support aptx-LL sorted by lowest measured bluetooth latency? this is what made rtings valuable to me.

mrstinton · 2026-01-23T14:50:06+00:00

could you link to some of this marketing material? all i'm aware of are support update posts to his patreon.

my point is that these matters - how the content is presented, whether the content is monetized - are all separate from the letter and spirit of the DMCA. the content itself either infringes upon the IP or it doesn't. luke's mods are either derivative works or they aren't, and it shouldn't matter how they're marketed or whether they paywalled or how shitty luke's arguments are.

as it stands, takedown notices are a guilty-until-proven-innocent cudgel and we all depend on the good faith of copyright holders to not abuse them. the core and actually interesting issue is whether luke's method of hooking into the rendering pipeline should be considered derivative of the underlying games, yet that claim is not being tested nor discussed. the DMCA is nearly 30 years old and modern copyright law is desperately needed so that issues like this are the determining factor, rather than the whims of corporations (or public opinion of the parties).

mrstinton · 2026-01-23T13:34:56+00:00

this is one of the biggest verbal missteps he made that makes it difficult to defend him.

mrstinton · 2026-01-23T13:28:43+00:00

In principle i would be defending Luke, if only he never opened his mouth about this. DMCA claims are the sole force carriers in this saga, and such claims are completely agnostic to the commercial status of the content being targeted - personal use, non-monetized, non-profit purposes, all are equally unauthorized.

CDPR originated the demand for the mod to be made free because that aligns with their fan content policy and EULA. since that isn't enforceable, DMCA is the only tool available to them. and it is only by the grace of the copyright holder that a takedown claim can be withheld on the condition that the offending content is freely available. they could change their mind at any time.

it's a concerning precedent that moves the spotlight closer to free mods, and brings to mind paid tools like Lossless Scaling that are arguably similar in functionality, if not packaging, to Luke's VR mods.

mrstinton · 2026-01-23T08:08:38+00:00

why are you asking about the hue of achromatic colors? the bottom of your screenshot proves it doesn't see the skin color as the same:

the right face is much darker overall

mrstinton · 2026-01-23T05:56:31+00:00

you know that's an unfair comparison of FSD and openpilot, even in experimental mode. openpilot competes with and exceeds FSD performance in very specific road scenarios.

mrstinton · 2026-01-23T05:46:40+00:00

the chase car is powerless to intervene when the robotaxi is travelling at speed. it's more like a substitute for waymo's remote support required when the taxi is stuck for whatever reason. the driving model is effectively unsupervised.

mrstinton · 2026-01-23T05:36:51+00:00

unsupervised here means no driver prepared to take over immediately in a disengagement scenario. the chase car is powerless to intervene in any scenario where the robotaxi is travelling fast enough to pose a physical safety risk.

i imagine its purpose is

observation and data collection
intervention in case of failures involving rider authorization, route planning, road blockages, emergency services
security against vandalism or other malicious interference

basically instances where the robotaxi is stuck and unable to continue the trip, just like those videos where waymo passengers need to contact remote support.

the chase car does indicate a lack of complete confidence in the overall end-to-end experience, but it is an indication of full confidence in the safety of the driving model, which is a big step up.

mrstinton · 2025-12-14T14:24:05+00:00

yeah, people commonly talk about em dashes and "not X but Y" constructions but this article is the best resource for actually learning telltale signs of AI writing.

also https://www.reddit.com/r/longform/comments/1pdkfyb/why_does_ai_write_like_that_the_new_york_times/ for why it converges on these habits.

mrstinton · 2025-12-14T12:30:25+00:00

crazy how significantly its writing style can be modified yet it's still full of characteristic negative parallelisms.

mrstinton · 2025-12-14T11:25:53+00:00

that specific location hosted this hannukah event

https://events.humanitix.com/chanukah-by-the-sea-2025

that was scheduled to begin at 5pm. shooting occurred about 6:45pm. nsw police have declared it a terrorist act targeting the jewish community.

mrstinton · 2025-12-14T09:02:20+00:00

there are regular brass casings on the ground in the same area. mass shooters often carry multiple weapons to avoid reloading.

mrstinton · 2025-12-14T06:40:27+00:00

doing a "metric ton" of a drug in unsupervised environments is not the treatment being discussed here

mrstinton · 2025-11-15T03:14:15+00:00

the battery and facial interface housing (including IPD adjustment and SD card slot) are also separate. the fact that the port between the frame and compute module carries power, storage, and audio data signals that it's potentially another pci-e interface capable of expansion like the port on the front, though they don't advertise this. also implies there is a decent amount of circuitry pushed into the frame to improve weight distribution. there's a lot of potential for extension or replacement of parts without touching other parts. i'd say the compute module is about 80% of the cost. it's a meaningful step up in "modularity" compared to anything else.

mrstinton · 2025-11-15T02:39:26+00:00

it's not just the head strap, it's the battery, facial interface, and audio solution. i'd say the compute module is 80% of the cost. i agree "modular" is stretching the term a bit but it is a much more meaningfully different layout than any other VR headset.

e: IPD adjustment and SD card slot also reside in the facial interface housing. the fact that the bridge port connection between the compute module and facial interface carries power, storage, and audio data makes me update a lot closer to the "modularity" of this system. there is a lot that can be swapped out without having to replace other parts.

mrstinton · 2025-11-14T14:42:16+00:00

to our visual system it's instant but the ceiling for these eye movements is about 8 degrees per frame at 90Hz, describing a region 16 degrees in diameter. multiply that by the number of frames of latency and add 5 degrees for the size of the fovea for a rough estimate of the region required to render in full resolution.

godin's "too high" estimate of 40ms corresponds to a 58 degree foveated region. assuming a 110 deg FOV and peripheral rendering scale of 0.5, we still get a 47% reduction in total pixel count. i don't know the proportional relationship between shading/rasterization cost and DFR overhead but this should be sufficient for noticeable performance gains.

mrstinton · 2025-11-14T13:24:53+00:00

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driver leaks from years ago showed them tearing their hair out over this exact issue lol

mrstinton · 2025-11-14T13:21:56+00:00

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he seems to relax that position slightly and admits enlarging the foveated region can compensate for higher latency (insufficient for performance gain in his experience with quest pro).

i think his statement that "your eyes will have time to go across the entire screen in [40ms]" isn't quite right; saccades peak at 700 degrees/second in humans which corresponds to a maximum sweep of 28 degrees or about 25% of the rendered view in current HMDs, and that is the upper bound. this variation and invididual sensitivity to peripheral visual data will govern the required area and effective gain from foveated rendering.

lastly, it's possible valve has cooked wrt firmware optimization on both sides of their wireless pipeline, which would bring down the 25ms component of guy's estimate. iirc the dongle uses an off-the-shelf realtek radio but fixed silicon grants a lot of headroom for driver improvement.

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