Favorites November 1st 2024
The more battery EVs we build, the more batteries that will be available for us to deconstruct for materials.
Claude was correct, it's a A321neo. At least on his first try, gemini and chatgpt couldn't do it.
Cars are so ridiculously space-inefficient!
Apparently, the key was getting it to reliably count pixels to figure out how far to move the mouse. Humorously, when asked to build a web site, first thing it did was open chrome, load up the Claude website, and have that generate the initial site. Snake eating it's own tail. While completing tasks, sometimes claude would take a break to surf the web (cached), look at photos of Yosemite.
Polls are ridiculously close, and people's 'gut' are not an effective way (cached) to predict elections.
Longer Reads
• I've spoken before about the 'ideological turing test', whether you can explain the views of your opposition well enough so that they would agree that you've done so accurately. Someone did an experiment where they randomly assigned Republicans and Democrats to write statements either as themselves or as their opposition. They then had people try to tell apart the statements. You can try it yourself here. Once you've given it a shot read the results. (src)(cached)
• Good construction physics article about China's efforts to build a viable widebody commercial aircraft. TL;DR: it's very very hard. Going to space is probably easier. (src)(cached)
• Really interesting thread about how wind turbines have actually gotten cheaper over time, but it's tricky to measure. (src)(cached)
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Harris' policies are much more popular with voters than Trump's and it's interesting to see that graphed. (src)(cached)
– Some public polling in Gaza, they're "more moderate than British/American student protests" on prefered outcome for the conflict. (src)(cached)
– Trump said some pretty racist stuff about a dead US army soldier while stiffing his family (src)(cached)
– Toyota is still trying to make Hydrogen cars happen, they're not gonna happen. (src)
– Reducing emissions of school buses improved student's test scores (src)(cached)
– Thread about the current state of Drone warfare in Ukraine. Most worrying part is that their drone capabilities still depend on China, whose threatening a ban on exports (src)(cached)
– I had not previously realized that the 'bystander effect' had basically been disproven. (src)(cached)
– New bad press for Trump regarding his Epstein connections, maybe that's why he doesn't want those files made public (cached). (src)(cached)
– Modern superhero movies have levels of crossover that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. (src)
– WSJ reports that Putin was helping the Houthis, and also mentioned that Musk has been meeting with Putin for years. And Musk definitely agreed to do some things (cached) for him. (src)(cached)
– Tyler Cowen on China, "Xi's China is the poorest group of Chinese people on the planet" (src)(cached)
– Samuel L Jackson endorses Harris. In a recent survey, there's no celebrity with a higher net approval among men than him. (src)(cached)