Viewing profile — andrewflnr

There are long standing systemic issues, and then there's also one man making things dramatically worse in new, stupider ways.

For what it's worth, metals are still critical catalysts all over biology, they just tend to be encapsulated in biomolecules.

It is definitely in the Bible. Cynically, God seems to swing wildly between mercy and vengeance, but it's clear he would feel justified in a lot more vengeance than he takes but do…

The headline is a little confusing. They're still talking about a "split" between bacteria and archaea, so even under this theory, the very roots of metabolism and (I'm guessing) g…

In case it wasn't clear, I'm only talking about whether the universe is logically consistent.

Stuff like a field-reversed configuration comes to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-reversed_configuration Conceivably, more complex plasma configurations could exist that…

You are not grappling with the full consequences of the universe being inconsistent. If the universe is inconsistent, science is dead. Why the fuck on HN of all places do I need to…

I kinda like the waffles, actually. The main aesthetic problem IMO is the dim lighting (and litter).

> > the fact that the universe is consistent > We don't know this either. See this is what I'm talking about as far as being too open-minded. Consider what it would mean for the un…

It's inherent to the math that defines the entire concept of a black hole, or "spacetime" in general. So to the extent we can contemplate the question at all, we can be pretty conf…

Leaving aside the fact that there's no evidence superintelligence is even possible, no amount of intelligence alone will let you "trivially" create black holes. Creating black hole…

In what way? This is discussing, as far as anyone knows, an entirely natural phenomenon.

Many jobs have been repetitive and brainless since long before LLMs. I hate AI as much as the next guy, but come on.

I can tell you if I don't stretch, my muscles feel bad and stiff. No doubt this is partly because I did karate for a few years, where stretching to increase your range of motion is…

I'm afraid this is a situation where the first halfway plausible solution will "stick" and sap the pressure to change even if it doesn't do a good job.

PEs are demonstrably a partial solution at best. Fields with certified engineers still have financially motivated disasters ( boeing goes the door plug). For better or worse, I thi…

But as you've made clear, the root of the problem is not with the engineer. Personally I think a corporate death penalty strikes a nice balance of holding companies and individuals…

The black bars can stretch. They can stretch really high.

Motivated reasoning, especially by emotion or fear, especially when the simple answer is unpleasant. Missing information. Irrelevant information. Plain stupidity. Lots of ways to b…

Speaking of perspective and nuance: violent self defense is justified to defend one's safety. But a slap by, let's be honest, a relatively physically weak person is not a credible …

> Bad actors desire complexity because it leads to indifference. This is an extremely dangerous idea without being counterbalanced by fact that reality is often complex and good ac…

It'll be nice to have that precedent in place when we finally institute the Hunger Games.

Presumably because of potential network effects that would result from everyone being able to work in a single system. I don't think it's strange or implausible for people to want …

Humans do that because we're big and extra complicated. The closest analogue is probably a hybrid car, though ideally you'd want one that can create synthetic fuel from its battery…

There's a (terrifyingly) large number of developers who don't qualify as "security-oriented programmers".