jltsiren

19 ms·

361.
by jltsiren 10mo ago
By "without preconceptions", I mean that your initial review should not be influenced by anyone else's opinions. In CS, conference management software often makes this explicit by requiring you to upload your review before yo
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by jltsiren 10mo ago
That's a wrong way of using AI in peer review. A key part of reviewing a paper is reading it without preconceptions. After you have done the initial pass, AI can be useful for a second opinion, or for finding something you may have mis
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by jltsiren 10mo ago
Is joy related to happiness, or are they two separate concepts? That depends on your cultural background and the languages you speak. The World Happiness Report can be traced back to the UN General Assembly Resolution 65/309, which was
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
Mail voting should be limited to special situations anyway, as it's obviously a bad idea when the stakes are high. When you vote in person, there is nothing that connects the ballot you photographed to the ballot you cast. Surveillance
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
It looks like the results are also boss-verifiable. You must be able to demonstrate that you voted correctly, or you will be fired. Feel free to replace the boss with spouse, friendly neighborhood gang, or another entity the voter can'
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
Wood is abundant in Canada, Russia, and some developing countries. Other developed countries (including the US) are densely populated enough to use everything they manage to grow. Here in Finland, paper recycling started in the 1920s, and i
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
There is more to recycling than energy consumption. For example, wood is a limited resource. In many parts of the world, almost all growth outside protected areas is harvested and used. By recycling paper and cardboard, you make wood availa
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
Nordpool prices are not true market prices, as much of the demand does not participate in the market. For example, many residential customers still have fixed-rate contracts, and some power companies sell the power they generate to their ow
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
With the Romans, the situation was the opposite. Their success was mostly based on the idea that conscripted peasants will eventually beat elite warriors. You just had to equip and train the conscripts instead of wasting the resources on th
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
That's the traditional recipe for military coups. When the ones with the weapons, training, and combat experience have no particular loyalty to the regime, they often start thinking that they would be more qualified to rule.
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
The two world wars were not the same. WW1 was a stupid war that happened for stupid reasons, and there were no real moral differences between the sides. Many nations tried to use the war as an opportunity for independence by collaborating w
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
Kansas would probably spend very little on defense, if it was a sovereign state. Defense spending is not virtue signaling. It's money countries may have to waste if they feel threatened. But if there are no credible threats, it's
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
And the outcome of that pivot might not be what you wanted. Because the American world order does not maintain itself on its own. Not even in Europe. Without American commitment, Europe will likely become more fragmented. Some countries wil
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
> Yet continued to trade as usual with Russia and took no steps to reduce reliance on Russia in strategic sectors. And some European countries are still doing that. They are even trying to strengthen their ties with Russia. Because they
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
The Obama administration announced the shift in strategy. And European countries responded by grudgingly increasing defense spending. To the extent they felt threatened. That amounted to an increase from ~1.3% of GDP to ~1.55% between 2015
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
From a European perspective, the primary purpose of NATO between 1992 and 2022 was to avoid wasting money on defense. Europe was willing to accept a world order, where the US was the hegemon and paid for the privilege. If the US does not wa
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
The budget is ultimately limited by the government's ability to extract value. There are no similar limits to the quantity of laws and regulations that can be in effect at the same time. Legislators can of course impose an arbitrary li
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
It's easier than ever to learn, if you want to learn. It's also easier than ever to not learn anything, if you only do what's expected from you.
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
Rooftop solar is easy in suburban sprawl. You don't need extra land, if you have already used extra land for densely built but sparsely populated residential areas. But if you instead have cities, towns, and villages separated by agric
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
Renewables are hard when your population density is high. The availability of renewable energy scales with the size of the country, while the demand scales with population. Last year, German onshore wind generated 111.9 TWh, or roughly 320
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
The EU sets the rules for the EEA. Non-EU member states can accept the rules or leave. There is a reason why the Norwegian model was never a serious option in the Brexit negotiations.
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
They might be able to tax the exports to the UK but not to the EU. As a member of the European Economic Area, Norway cannot impose trade barriers within the single market.
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
The job training you get at 20 is often obsolete when you're 40. For example, many women of my parents' generation trained for jobs in the textile industry. But eventually the jobs disappeared, as Finland got too wealthy. A bit mo
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
Pretty much every economist who has ever thought seriously about UBI has already given an answer. Most of the funding would come from abolishing progressive income taxes. Instead, the highest (or second highest) bracket would start at 0. Wi
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
Electricity prices go up when you have access to customers who are willing to pay more. If grid connections to other regions are limited, people in regions with a lot of cheap generation (such as Norway) pay low prices. But if you add grid
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
The difference between baseline and peak electricity consumption in Finland is >2x. That's mostly driven by heating. Because renewables make electricity cheap on the average, utility companies invest in cheap heat storage systems su
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
Free countries do not have long-term consistent goals, almost by definition. They have elections instead, in which citizens indirectly determine the national goals and priorities for the next few years.
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
When there is no clear canonical way of implementing something, adding it to a programming language (or a standard library) is risky. All too often, you realize too late that you made a wrong choice, and then you add a second version. And a
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
In CS, types are usually a higher level of abstraction built on top of more fundamental layers. If you choose to break the abstraction, you can definitely use an integer as a string, a list, or a function. The outcome is unlikely to be usef
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by jltsiren 11mo ago
That system already exists. It's called the industry. It spends an order of magnitude more on R&D than the academia, and it also pays you better. And if you are young, the career options are less risky. Academic research is mostly

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