• 6 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • I don’t think he represented leaded fuel in aviation correctly, although he wasn’t wrong. It’s an economic and legal issue

    It’s important to understand this is propeller planes only: jets and turboprops always used jet fuel with no lead. The octane benefits to piston engines really don’t apply to turbines so it was never a concern. However commercial aviation is almost entirely turbines. The most active, profitable and by far the largest part of the industry never had a problem.

    Those piston engined propeller planes though… that entire industry was destroyed by litigation and lack of economies of scale in the 1970s. Not only is this a small part of the industry with less profit, not only was the industry mostly destroyed, but now most of those airplanes in active use are old. Very old. They keep flying much longer than for example a car, and there are very few aircraft produced every year. Also note the small volume of fuel used, and lead contamination means this has few refiners and limited distribution: there’s not much profit

    So there have been attempts to develop an unleaded fuel for decades, but why does it never happen? Everyone seems to support the idea. Economic and legal. To support a new fuel, engines potentially need to be modified, aircraft performance certified, and someone needs to take legal responsibility for any problems. Who’s that going to be?

    • there’s so little (relatively) fuel used that refineries could never become profitable developing a new fuel, could never earn enough to offset liability, could never spend the time and legal effort to get a new fuel approved
    • Even if there was an approved fuel, and it was available, and the remaining manufacturers took full legal responsibility, and all new aircraft were certified for that fuel, there are so few aircraft manufactured that it would take centuries to replace the fleet
    • Most of the aircraft fleet is orphaned: theirs is no manufacturer. There’s only an owner and a mechanic, and even if there was an approved fuel and it were available, and there were known engine modifications they could make, there’s no way they could re-certify the aircraft with a new fuel nor any way they could cover the legal part
    • Most of the fleet has been privately owned for many decades. We have a general legal principal that things are “grandfathered” to when they are first sold. For example, building codes change every year but your house is still ok because it’s grandfathered in since it complied when it was new. Same with most of the small aviation fleet: they’re good when they meet the standards in place when they were new. In most industries, this is not too bad since there’s turnover, but this industry collapsed so completely that there essentially isn’t turnover

    So because of the collapsed industry meaning very little new development or manufacturing, the high legal bar because of safety requirements, the sheer age of the fleet, and the general legal principal of grandfathering, there’s just not a way to move forward


  • My company is about to do a round of layoffs, and that will become more common as we enter recession, and yet more common when the recession continues. Too many people will be suddenly out of a job just when few places are hiring, including a good friend of mine who I brought into the company and is now on the chopping block. They’ll need all the savings, all the resources they can get.

    While I’m safe from this round of layoffs, I’m stuck ANTI-preparing.

    • College financial aid is already changing for the worse, and my kids’ colleges expect to start by taking my entire emergency fund, then keep squeezing more out of me.
    • in the more immediate term, my chest freezer needs defrosting, so I’m not buying anything frozen but 8nstead trying to use up everything


  • If you wouldn’t really want to do programming, don’t. That only gets worse for a lot of people. It’s something I enjoy and have done well at, and it can be tempting given the number of jobs and growth, and good pay. However the people I know who are most miserable are those who weren’t especially interested in the work but the jobs and the money.

    I’m sure you could do programming, and you’d deal with it a few years, but it’s a specialty that not everyone will enjoy, and you may just get more and more miserable.

    I Personally believe not enough people start from the other side, the subject matter interest. Pretty much every field needs programming or technical skills, and data science is exploding across many fields. Definitely an option to consider is whatever subject you like, but the technical skills to bring the automation or the data analysis. That going to be huge!


  • I imagine there’s a significant chunk of users who don’t know or care how to properly open their server up to the world and are relying on the Plex proxies

    That seems like the obvious place to put a subscription that won’t get people upset. Or maybe it’s in the presentation.

    When HomeAssistant started a subscription, they renewed their commitment to opensource, added new remote features with obvious costs under subscription while still letting you do it yourself, plus made it clear this funded continued opensource development. I happily pay this and haven’t been disappointed. Did Plex fumble a similar opportunity?



  • The given reason is simply that it will return control to the driver if it can’t figure out what to do, and all evidence is consistent with that. All self-driving cars have some variation of this. However yes it’s suspicious when it disengages right when you need it most. I also don’t know of data to support whether this is a pattern or just a feature of certain well-published cases.

    Even in those false positives, it’s entirely consistent with the ai being confused, especially since many of these scenarios get addressed by software updates. I’m not trying to deny it, just say the evidence is not as clear as people here are claiming





  • It’s a cost-benefit calculation.

    • For a vacuum at the speeds they travel and the range it needs to go, LiDAR is cheap, worth doing. Meanwhile computing power is limited.
    • my phone is much more expensive than the robot vacuum, and its LiDAR can range to about a room, at speeds humans normally travel. It works great for almost instant autofocus and a passable measurement tool.
    • For a car, at the speeds they travel and range it needs to go, LiDAR is expensive, large and ugly. Meanwhile the car already needs substantial computing power

    So the question is whether they can achieve self-driving without it: humans rely on vision alone so maybe an ai can. I’m just happy someone is taking a different approach rather than the follow the pack mentality: we’re more likely to get something that works

    Edit: everyone talks about the cost-benefit, but I imagine it makes things simpler for the ai when all sensors can be treated and weighted identically. Whether this is a benefit or disadvantage will eventually become clear



  • After reading this I still don’t know why everyone is criticizing Schumer.

    Government shutdowns are bad. For everyone employed by the government, receiving government services, working with government agencies, or in case anything unexpected happens. Continuing as-is is easily preferable to not continuing.

    I do wonder if a shutdown invokes some sort of procedural change leaving us open to even more shenanigans.

    But really the only hint I see is the term “Clean CR”. By definition , you expect a Continuing Resolution to continue. Was this not clean? Were there changes embedded that we would object to? If so, I haven’t seen any detail on this



  • I make what most people here would consider a good salary but am somehow in the ranks of paycheck to paycheck. A huge part of that is supporting a family, ridiculous housing costs, and loss of college financial aid.

    If you reply that I should be able to do better, you’re probably right. However since divorce I was finally able to set aside an emergency fund and start saving the max toward retirement, but financial aid considers those part of the family contribution to my kids college, so I can’t win. Divorce also cost me a mortgage lasting until I’m almost 80, yet college financial aid counselor asked me to extend that with a reverse mortgage