nopie
3mo ago
Ha-ha. Of course you can do that.
But with friends and family, sometimes I tell them how I am doing, what new clothes I have bought and what colour they are. It's a normal talk.
While some of Kamala's recorded speech indeed seems frivolous and unfit for the occasion, I am judging her charitably.
The same critique was directed towards Trump when it was claimed that he suggested drinking bleach etc. He didn't. He was just musing about potential treatments. That wasn't meant to be taken too seriously. But people take seriously everything that the president says, sometimes uncharitably.
nopie
3mo ago
It's unusual but doesn't seem weird to me. Blind (the community notes say blind and poor vision) are not always blind from birth. They might have internal representation of colour and specifying blue suit can be useful for them to have her image in their minds.
At first her mentioning her pronouns seemed weird but then again – for blind people it could be helpful in certain cases.
Of course. In those days you could die from anything else before you would die from covid. In fact, it could even be coronavirus-1970 that was worse than Sars-CoV-2. We just didn't notice it because we expected people to die at this level every year.
There are always different ways to look at the same data. With Covid certain level of deaths were inevitable. Everything that was above that we brought upon us ourselves.
Comparison of extra mortality during pandemic period between periods and/or countries can be even more fun.
Pandemic reduced life expectancy by about a half year, maybe up to one year in very unlucky countries. At the same time life expectancy in Sweden currently is roughly 4 or 5 years higher than in the US. Obviously there are some public health and/or cultural issues that make it impossible for the US to catch up with Sweden in short term. Some could even argue that it is more important to preserve freedom and dynamics, maybe even more quality of life instead of longer life.
Even if you accept those arguments, it still means that there are certain policies that impact life expectancy metric worse than covid. If preventing covid was an easy fruit to pick, the US should have prevented it. But it wasn't. Most likely the US robbed people of their agency, their freedoms and caused more harm than it would have done by implementing different policies to catch up Sweden in life expectancy.
Sweden refused to implement harsh and mostly useless policies exactly because their public health leaders were worried about life expectancy. Whereas the US and most other countries just followed the narrative which was wrong.
nopie
3mo ago
Here it is: http://avepri.com/a/sweden1.jpeg
nopie
3mo ago
It wasn't. It was on the level of flu outbreaks in 1970s.
The US had higher excess mortality than some other countries, totally due to unnecessary and wrong measures taken.
nopie
3mo ago
Wikipedia reports that 5.9% flights were cancelled worldwide. It's definitely a lot of flights but also not that much on global perspective.
Twitter had flightradar24 animations showing flights disappearing with Community Notes saying that this animation is fake and not from CrowdStrike fault event. You wouldn't really notice 6% decrease visually or would notice only a slight reduction.
People love to lie on twitter for dramatic effect.
If we assume 6% reduction of global economic activity for one day, it certainly is loss of billions of dollars. And yet it is less than one extra holiday per year.
Why do you believe that CrowdStrike provides value?
Maybe it does but where is the proof? The half of the world didn't use CrowdStrike and how did they fare?
I would even say, let's do RCT to prove that CrowdStrike improves outcomes. It is perfect case when it could be done.
Maybe nobody wants to do such a test because they are afraid that it will show that CrowdStrike provides no value.
Remember masks during covid. The evidence is that they provided either minimal value or no value at all. And yet the government mandated their use in many countries. Sometimes people do stupid things on large scale.
nopie
3mo ago
I think Elon did the right thing.
I have never heard about Crowdstrike. No computer I work with had it installed.
I totally understand that an average user is clueless and we need to protect him from his own actions. And yet, if this is such a necessity, why wouldn't Microsoft implement it directly in the OS?
Crowdstrike might be bleeding edge The need for bleeding edge is always overvalued.
It reminds me all times when everybody was trying to install antivirus software. Instead I always removed it because it only consumed resources and provided very little benefit. The best protection was to limit what user can do – do not install unauthorized software, don't even browse internet for fun, just use your work assigned software and web sites.
I think those who relied on third party antivirus software had worse outcomes because their users were more relaxed and less disciplined. At the same time those antivirus software makers got rich.
Probably the same has happened with Crowdstrike. Gradually Microsoft will implement something similar for no extra cost, everybody will realize that Crowdstrike is pointless. Until new challenges will come along and a new opportunistic company, playing on people's fears will convince to buy another scammy service.
nopie
3mo ago
The audience actually found it very funny, they laughed and cheered.
I think it just that showbusiness is very fickle. It can give sudden fame and glory and then can throw down to the earth.
While I agree that cancel culture is bad, I have no sympathy in this case. Who is to say that the fame and income of those performers was really deserved?
nopie
3mo ago
That's because almost everyone in the UK goes on cheap holidays to Europe. Spending time on holidays in the UK is more expensive and only rich people can afford it.
nopie
3mo ago
I would expect most young people to have at least a driver licence if not a passport. Some might not have but I think they could obtain some kind of ID. Although many would not bother.
Non-citizens holding these documents doesn't matter because the electoral register is made separately and non-citizens are not included and will not be able at the polling station.
nopie
3mo ago
I am in the UK but I didn't vote.
My only concern is economy. I don't see anyone having any ideas whatsoever about it. My only hope that we don't know how but maybe some unknown figure will ascend unexpectedly to the power and will make necessary reforms. When Gorbachov became a leader of the USSR, no one suspected what will follow. Ironically, Russia has returned back to old ways of self-isolating from free trade.
nopie
3mo ago
The issue with Biden's dementia was revealed by Biden himself 4 years ago. In one response to Trump he revealed that he knows the details of the test used to assess dementia. Apparently he had been evaluated by doctors already then. We just have never been told the results and how they have changed with time.
Leaking this information would reduce uncertainty but essentially it would be the same that we can infer from videos but more precise.
nopie
3mo ago
Scott Alexander needed years to realize that yes, Biden is on his path to dementia. Maybe it is just that now more bettors have finally realized what is going on.
With the public information we had strong priors that Biden shows signs of likely dementia and if true, it will be progressing. Recently we saw how much it had progressed. Now we can estimate how much worse Biden will be in 1 month, 2 months, 4 months etc. with quite narrow confidence intervals.
As Anatoly Karlin says – it is all programmed. Previously people just refused to believe these bad news.
Similarly it was with effectiveness of masks in preventing covid. I didn't see any prediction markets but many people wanted to believe them to be effective despite all the evidence. When it was all reviewed and Cochrane review was published many still refused to believe that the evidence for any benefit is non-existent. Politicians are especially resistant to negative scientific findings but eventually they will be forced to accept reality in one way or another.
nopie
4mo ago
I benefited from stock market plunge during covid.
It was very clear that the covid panic was overblown. I couldn't predict how long the lockdowns would last but it was clear that deep pessimism was not justified. If the stocks didn't rise in September 2020, they would by 2024 for sure. So, I bought them when they were low.
And then all extra cash we couldn't spend in lockdowns got invested in stock market and it caused a small bubble of its own but it was still worth to invest for most people.
The funny thing is that I based all this on a simple fact: people get cold virus infections up to 10 times per year and it trains our immunity. We cannot meaningfully stop them, not with our current tech. A new virus will cause more problems because we have no previous immunity. And yet, with covid the risk increased exponentially by age.
Thus my prediction was: eventually everyone will get it regardless what we do. Most people will be fine, elderly will experience higher mortality as in an unusually nasty flu season and that's it. It happened exactly like that.
And yet, so many still refuse to face this reality, still argue that “covid is different” or that “people should wear masks during flu/covid season”.
It is sad to live in among such pessimists but at least I can solace myself with a lifetime chance to win on the stock market. The world should have followed Tegnell's recommendations instead of calling him nazi.
It wasn't a chance that I made the correct prediction. It was rather a chance that I got necessary education in this field and see other experts that reasoned exactly in this same way and being correct in their general predictions.
It is somewhat similar to beliefs about Havana syndrome. One doesn't need to be a genius to understand that no sonic weapons of such impact exist. People just want to believe in them for various reasons. Except that it is a small localized event that never had any impact on stock market.
nopie
4mo ago
My wife's relatives who are elderly were in Mexico at that time and they got Chinese vaccine.
It probably was less effective than Pfizer/Moderna but not much less because all covid vaccines are quite weak. The comparisons cannot always be trusted due to the way how such data was collected or time of vaccination. For example, Sinovac was given earlier we noticed that protection fades sooner than for vaccines that were given later.
Ok, I accept argument that this is a cold war with China and in war innocents get killed too. It is just a question where do you draw the line?
On the other hand, if Pentagon has targeted the attack in some other area instead of medicine, maybe it would be even more successful. I think the impact of criticising Sinovac was very small or even negative.
nopie
5mo ago
“up to” could mean less than 10%. Could be 1% or whatever. Even if we accept 10% figure, we also expect the GDP to grow more than 10% during this period.
Many suggested measures talk about degrowth. That could have severe impact on our growth, even more than 10%.
That's why I want more detail analysis and our confidence levels about this analysis. Obviously we will need to stop using oil sooner or later but it is not about that. It's about the politics that surround all these decisions.
Approved vaccines are effective, they stop infections at least in 95% of cases on average for 10 years. Covid vaccine was tested in clinical trials which showed strong efficiency preventing infections.
That means that covid vaccines should be mandated to everyone, young and old and they will help to almost eliminate covid via heard immunity, right?
What went wrong with this reasoning? Despite vaccination most people got infected with covid anyway. The protection was short lasting (3-4 months at most). It reduced severity and hospitalizations in elderly though. Other people especially children were not that much affected anyway.
Biology is more complicated than we could infer from a simple graph.
I have no strong opinion about global warming but I am against trivialization of this science. Too many unknowns for me. How believable are the models? How warmer temperatures will affect us? I can see both negative and positive aspects. How much would it cost to prevent that versus to adapt to the change?
nopie
6mo ago
Obviously when Ukraine joins the EU, it will be required doing business with Russia in accordance with the EU customs rules.
But that is completely different from the statement that the EU demanded Ukraine stop doing business with Russia.
We need to be precise what we mean to have a meaningful discussion.
nopie
6mo ago
Bad/good is different from worse/better. Besides many things you are demanding of them are not of intelligence but executive which belong to a completely different part of the government. I doubt that CIA runs the country. And it is good that they don't.
nopie
7mo ago
I find it hard to believe that the US demanded that Ukraine stops doing business with Russia.
Also, I also don't believe that Poland's main export is labour. It is true that a lot of Polish people were working in other EU countries but now Poland is developing their own industries and getting richer in this way.
Ukraine however remained poorer than Russia, mostly due to its own corruption. Despite all the flaws of the EU, the EU membership has been good for economic development of post-Soviet countries. Ukraine could definitely benefit from the EU membership.
nopie
7mo ago
It is hard to believe that US intelligence is becoming worse. The recent events (Ruso-Ukrainian war, Crocus City Hall shooting) show that is has become better.
It appears that CIA has wide access to online communication worldwide and combined with modern AI technologies that allows to sieve vast amounts of information and find a needle in the haystack. A translator I had known got hired by a US agency couple of years ago. She has never spoken what she does but I suspect that she works on automated translation models for US intelligence. Currently we should assume that communication in any language is equally monitored and analysed.
Also, it hard to believe that if Russians really possessed such technology that many describe as improbable it wouldn't have leaked by now. Even best agents eventually make mistakes.
Russians have been involved in assassination in other countries, like in the UK. But we know that because eventually we found some evidence. It is likely that it could have happened in this case too, especially after repeated attacks in several countries. Unless, of course, CIA knows more about these cases but keep silent.
And third, why would Russians use this technology against targets of low importance instead of someone who really matters?
nopie
10mo ago
I didn't read it as incitement at all. I think that a lot of people are in self-censoring mode and are constantly afraid that their writings could be perceived as racist and apply their standards to others too.
To me it sounded that he hates AI doomers and then imagines how they could become violent. He is probably wrong is his descriptions but just because they are very graphic, it does not mean that he encourages them.
It is similar to how some writers describe immigrants in Europe from Islamic countries by calling them scum and describe all their current and imagined crimes. Obviously, a lot of people consider this to be incitement against immigrants and call for censuring them. Slurs against immigrants are unjustified as it could indeed cause people to spread hate against immigrants but it is not condoning or incitement of crimes committed by those immigrants.
Here the discriminated group is AI doomers who are deeply unhappy with Fredie's article. Maybe I shouldn't call them AI doomers as it sounds offensive. I am not really familiar with the accepted terminology.
The narrative is that in a certain sense CrowdStrike fiasco was caused by regulators who promoted its use on the basis that it ensures full security with a single tick in the box. If true, this is an example of regulator failure more than CrowdStrike failure.
Regulators have a duty to ensure that their recommendations are fit for purpose. It also includes evaluation of risks from the accepted solution. When Boeing 737 Max planes were falling from the sky, it was the fault of Boeing because they self-certified any changes. You could argue that the regulators should not have allowed that without proper overview but I would not directly blame the FAA yet because Boeing lied.
However, in case of CrowdStrike it is different because they relied on 3rd party software and that puts more responsibility on the regulators to ensure that CrowdStrike service really works and the remedies are in place when it fails.
Another case of improper regulation is covid vaccine mandates in many countries. In certain conditions vaccine mandates could be justified, for example, in case of a very deadly, fast spreading disease and very good vaccine which is not the case with covid. The regulator failure here is even more apparent because vaccine mandates were introduced after the data about vaccine inefficiency to prevent infection and spread of covid was already published in peer-reviewed journals.
I am not arguing for stronger or more regulations, I am demanding better regulations which fulfil their purpose instead of ticking boxes.
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