Viewing profile — isthatafact

Telescopes in space are extremely expensive even if the launch itself were completely costless. A decision of whether or not to destroy the dark night sky globally should be made a…

It does not need to be a choice between having internet or seeing stars at night. Also, telescopes on the ground can be made much bigger and more powerful than in space, so even if…

Science is progress. Putting mirrors in space in order to provide sunlight at night seems more like willful destruction than progress.

> "Bikers don't pay taxes" That is obviously false -- just ask any biker who is not a little kid or a billionaire.

In many places, bicyclists are not fewer in number, not that the distiction makes the rest of your comment rational.

At least it is a break from the endless stream of anti-LLM posts written by LLM with half the comments being serious replies and the other half fake-politely debating whether it wa…

Implicit in "this post looks like AI"—at least the vast majority of the time—is that it is a wordy ramble with no real value because it says nothing novel or substantive—so I would…

> "But parks aren’t some natural creation, they’re entirely manmade." ? That does not at all match my experience with parks. But besides that, I am not sure how it would support yo…

I agree. Stability of a system is not so much about whether there is some mechanism or force that wants to push it away from equilibrium (because there probably is some such pertur…

It is difficult to know whether going faster is overall safer. In my experience, some fraction of cars will pass a bicycle under any conditions, no matter what speed that bicycle i…

For me, when someone promises to "drain the swamp", they reveal their ignorance and selfishness with their shallow anti-swamp ideology. Swamps are rich ecosystems with incredible n…

My guess is that the very rich can instead figure out a way to avoid it mostly, but I like the idea of taxing ridiculously high wealth, even if it is difficult. However, a tax an u…

That seems like sarcasm because it is an overused excuse that republicans give for the bad usa economies under republican presidents. I never once heard a reasonable explanation wh…

Without regulations, ads seem to infiltrate into every space--virtual or physical--that is not controlled by the owner or some other gatekeeper. I would hope most people anywhere w…

That is an extremely cynical view, and it does not fit with reality. There is no mechanism where little Timmy gets a free ticket to be a university professor in science. People who…

"worthy position" could only mean a relatively senior position, so the scientist would have already demonstrated success via publications, and having friends would of course be exp…

I am no expert, and I am not sure what is meant by "nepo", but that seems like a wild mischaracterization or exaggeration. Is there evidence? It seems obvious that parents can incr…

Some investments seem to be specifically crafted to attract people who do not understand X, where X is physics, or economics, biology, math, etc. And then giving in to greed and ga…

I am not able to travel to work or anywhere else without seeing ads, which manipulate my thoughts in unpleasant and often offensive ways. If samsung and similar companies achieve t…

Freedom from ads seems like a fundamental human right, and necessary for freedom of thought. "Unskippable" ads seem incompatible with freedom of thought. > "Users should have choic…

You could make the vehicle very aerodynamic since it only needs to carry a burrito or a pizza, and drag is not that even that big of an issue in cities because speeds are so low th…

> "What about non-vehicle traffic, like bikes and pedestrians?" It seems like the world is missing an obvious application for "AI". Every traffic light should notice a walker or bi…

> 20% increase in cost of BoM equals at least ~100% increase for customer. I am no expert in BoM and margins, but that seems like a wild claim to me. Could you explain your math?

I am no expert in Intel, but in my view, Gelsinger lost the faith of many by being unrealistically optimistic. Of course a CEO needs to be optimistic, but he promised (in 2021) zet…

In addition to the likely high costs and predictable negative side-effects, one could extrapolate from the article title that climate engineering could also have unpredictable nega…