Recent submissions

Comment · 10 days ago
We just exited looker by having codex migrate the dashboards to html.

Now it's just a git repo.

Comment · 4 months ago
Starlink is useful, but people often confuse coverage with capacity density.

The rough hierarchy is: fixed fiber/cable > Wi-Fi > cellular > LEO satellite > traditional GEO satellite. Starlink is a huge improvement over old satellite internet, but it is still fundamentally a satellite system, not dense terrestrial infrastructure.

As a rough illustration, suppose one Starlink beam covers about 63 square miles and has 6 Gbps of usable downlink. At New York City density, that footprint contains about 1.85 million people. That works out to roughly 3 kbps per person. For comparison, network planners typically budget on the order of Mbps per person to comfortably support peak demand in dense urban environments.

You can improve that with more satellites, more beams, more spectrum, and better hardware. But even a 100x improvement only gets you to about 300 kbps/person. Additionally, this all adds cost... that isn't needed for the vast majority of time or space that the sattelites will be over. If the sattelites orbiting over New York also orbit over the Sahara Desert - every $ spent improving NY capacity is also improving the Sahara... but with no return.

The reason fiber, cable, Wi-Fi, and cellular work so well in cities is spatial reuse. Capacity can be reused block by block, building by building, apartment by apartment, tower by tower, and access point by access point. A beam from hundreds of kilometers overhead covers a much larger area.

So Starlink is excellent for rural areas, ships, aircraft, remote sites, disaster recovery, and backup connectivity. But it is not a replacement for terrestrial broadband in dense cities. It solves coverage much better than it solves urban capacity.

Comment · 4 months ago
I agree that there may be a lot of variation between models that leads to different use cases, at least today. But I’m not sure the car analogy works.

An X5 is not simply “inferior” to a CR-V, or vice versa. A Camry is not “inferior” to an F-150, or vice versa. They are optimized for different buyers, budgets, constraints, and use cases.

That may actually be the better analogy for AI models: there probably is not one universal “best” model. There are models that are better or worse for particular tasks, price points, latency requirements, deployment constraints, privacy needs, etc.

Comment · 5 months ago
Sorry that's no realistic. People start businesses, including law firms, all the time with little to no capital.

Assuming token costs will be prohibitive assumes:

A) tokens will be really expensive and B) you need to fund tokens before you have revenue.

Your asserting AI makes the economy more capital intensive, when I think you'll see in practice it's the opposite.

Comment · 10 months ago
> a brain can innovate, and as of this moment, an LLM cannot because it relies on previously available information.

Source needed RE brain.

Define innovate, in a way that a LLM can't and we definitively can prove a human can.

Comment · 10 months ago
Just wait until after launch. You get a refined experience and often much lower prices.
Comment · 11 months ago
I pointed out the claim is both irrelevant and factually wrong.

That should be sufficient rebuttal.

Comment · 1 year ago
Humans are not deterministic.

Ironically AI models are iirc.

Come up with a real argument.

Comment · 1 year ago
> Not spending all the wealth you before you die would be irrational if your children won't inherit it.

Sure, but that's only one small aspect of the economy.

Maybe younger generations would earn more with all the spending and save more knowing there is no inheritance coming.

You only look at one aspect, claim you know what would happen, and the proclaim yourself right.

Comment · 1 year ago
You've not established that your suggestions are core principles of modern economics or derived from them.

For example, you are asserting there would be 'no reason to own property beyond a certain age'... which isn't supported, and then jumping to the conclusion that that would lower savigns rates.

None of this is clearly true, just supposition.

Comment · 1 year ago
If no sources exist, then you must accept making claims such as this would 'lower savings rates' are simply not backed up. Maybe it will... maybe it won't.

So what if there is no reason to own property beyond a certain age? Even if we take this claim as true... that doesn't explain if this is a good or bad thing.

Comment · 1 year ago
I'd need a source to back up those claims, as you note it's not trivial to understand how economy would react.

I also don't see why buying a house would be much riskier? If you buy a house for your family it's because you either prefer the lifestyle or think it provides economic advantages over renting. Given you only need housing when your alive, I think what happens after you pass is not as major a concern as presented.

Comment · 1 year ago
Why is spending everything before you die a perverse incentive?
Comment · 1 year ago
Except that if rendering was magically free... why not just pathtrace everything?

DLSS might not be as good as pure unlimited pathtracing, but for a given budget it might be better than rasterization alone.

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