Tycho

6 ms·

61.
A new class of materials that can passively harvest water from air(blog.seas.upenn.edu)
401 points by Tycho 1y ago|205 comments
62.
by Tycho 1y ago
Does it make sense to call something “the majority view” when most news websites shut down their comment sections a decade ago so that you can’t see what other readers really think?
63.
by Tycho 1y ago
It could have been a coincidence, but I don’t receive deliveries often, and I don’t get scam calls often, so the timing and circumstances make it highly suspicious.
64.
by Tycho 1y ago
A few days ago I missed a delivery from UPS (in the UK). The next day I got a text from an unrecognised cell phone that just said “Hello” and didn’t respond further. The day after that I got a scam call (another UK cell number) from someone
65.
by Tycho 1y ago
I read a story by Roberto Bolaño recently where the Spanish-speaking protagonist reads novels in French, a language he cannot speak. He said that even though he couldn’t understand most of the words, he usually understood the plot. For some
66.
by Tycho 1y ago
I don’t think so https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/354680-a-lesson-on-a...
67.
by Tycho 1y ago
If you take a step back, your position is basically that it is ok to let people break the law, ok to help them break the law even, and if you want to enforce the law, you should only do it to a degree that amounts to futility, not with any
68.
by Tycho 1y ago
Yes, but actions taken by corporations in concert with the government, due to pressures exerted by the government by extralegal means, which, I’m told, is the definition of fascism.
69.
by Tycho 1y ago
Consider the illegal immigration question. Tens of millions of people are in the country, knowingly in violation of the law. Many foreign criminal gangs are operating in the country. Yet the federal government was prevented from even constr
70.
by Tycho 1y ago
Is that Enrique Tarrio, FBI informant, you are referring to?
71.
by Tycho 1y ago
There was the whole IRS targeting of conservative groups under Obama. And I’m sure the “government overthrowers” (lol) also used Facebook and Twitter, yet only these other ones were taken down. We later found out, of course, that the likes
72.
by Tycho 1y ago
I recall right-leaning social media sites like Gab, Parler, r/TheDonald, Infowars being taken offline. I can’t read the WP article because it’s paywalled, however I have been suspicious of Wikimedia for a long time. I used to donate to
73.
by Tycho 1y ago
Should be possible to backtest by training LLMs on historic datasets and then probing them to see if they can re-discover things that were discovered after their training data cut-off. What sort of prompts could push them to make a breakthr
74.
by Tycho 1y ago
I tried o3 for a couple of things. First one, geolocation a photo I saw in a museum. It didn’t find a definitive answer but it sure turned up a lot of fascinating info in its research. Second one, I asked it to suggest a new line of enquiry
75.
by Tycho 1y ago
It’s lower today than in 2005 https://www.nationwidehousepriceindex.co.uk/resources/5bwel-... It is of course a lot higher than the 1950 - 2000 period, but I think two things explain this. 1. Women started having caree
76.
by Tycho 1y ago
Brilliant novel. I was thinking about it recently. Many years after reading it, I can still remember many of the battle/combat sequences as if I’d seen them on screen. Maybe someone could do a big Band of Brothers type adaptation, gi
77.
by Tycho 1y ago
I don’t quite follow. Without equivalisation, adults cramming into HMOs would cause the household incomes to rise dramatically. The number of children, I suppose, could theoretically mask an impoverishment, but there’s not really any clear
78.
by Tycho 1y ago
I think the equivalisation actually ‘unmuddies’ the waters. It means you can’t say something like “the numbers are only higher because more adults are living together”, as that is already being adjusted for. In theory. It’s still a travesty
79.
by Tycho 1y ago
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/households-below-av... (the latest report came out a few days ago and actually the latest year is a slight worsening of household income, but not far off the high from 2022
80.
by Tycho 1y ago
It’s worth noting that - UK poverty has been falling continually for decades - UK real disposable household income (median) after housing costs is higher than ever Part of the reason the UK “feels” poor tbh is because people keep s
81.
by Tycho 1y ago
Also Marathon and its sequels by Bungie.
82.
by Tycho 1y ago
Recently they were selling on the debt because its value had recovered close to par. But I don’t think this deal involved paying down any of that debt ahead of schedule.
83.
by Tycho 1y ago
Doesn’t housing just solve itself. People and businesses move to lower cost areas.
84.
by Tycho 2y ago
It’s good if it hits on high quality sources like ons.gov.uk
85.
by Tycho 2y ago
If you don’t like the Beatles catalog, I consider you to be sort of musically disabled.
86.
by Tycho 2y ago
What do you mean NATO is effectively dead?
87.
by Tycho 2y ago
Has anyone tried to get a robot to do oil paintings?
88.
by Tycho 2y ago
It got really bad in the last couple of years, I think because the last group of people who were too old to get into technology are no longer seen much in public, so you go into a cafe and everyone, youth, adult or pensioner is just looking
89.
by Tycho 2y ago
I only ever played Half-Life on a friend’s PC, but it still made a big impression. Especially the start, how you arrive at this massive research facility and get to just walk around before things really kick-off. Part of the appeal also in
90.
by Tycho 2y ago
Tbh I think “move fast and break things” is what’s needed. The government bureaucracy has ossified over many years, and any attempt to change it gets bogged down in “committees” and “inquiries”. The only thing that will work is shock and aw

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