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A 5% reduction in fuel is significant, especially as cargo ships are responsible for a disproportionate share of petro-pollution. They burn the cheapest petro gunk, emitting tremendous volumes of soot and such.

Is this still true after the IMO 2020 sulfur regulations? I remember they found out that these ships were producing so much white aerosol clouds that it actually had a really significant albedo effect that reflected a lot of the sun's heat back out. When they were banned it actually temporarily accelerated warming by an estimated 0.05°C bump

Yes it is still true. Sulphur is one element only that got regulated - petrol on its own is a soup of different hydrocarbons - various chains & lenghts - every one has specific burn characteristics and optimal conditions to burn.

Using this thick soup thats close to coal, the process of burning is always far from optimal for most of them. Thus black sud gets emitted - basically unburned carbon - a huge waste financially but also ecologically as its comparable to cigarette Fumes regarding unhealthy compounds. Plus fine particle dust. Chances its toxic for marine life are huge.

Those are all externalized costs no one of the polluters pays for besides the collective life on this planet.

How can this be fair?


The argument is simply that killing marine life is less bad than killing humans.

What? Heat kills both, sulphur pollution damages both. Its all connected, always..

I'm talking about ocean crossing container ships having less strict emission standards, because almost no humans has to breathe those emissions.

Oh some few. No right triangle with rational sides has area equal to a perfect square depends on N=4 for instance. And it can be used to form other theorems that are terribly actionable. Every elliptical curve over Q is modular, which has consequences throughout number theory.

But yes, none of those are very tangible, until applied to problem solutions that are tangible.


We mock ancient medicine. But they were modelling health in ways that made sense to them, and which gave them some sense of control. Humors, Chakras, even Freud's Ego, Id and SuperEgo were simple models that could be taught and gave some rational for treatment.

Today's models will be seen as childishly simple and unfortunate, in time.


Science Fiction has covered the AI panic in perhaps hundreds of stories. Yet we blindly recapitulate the plots as if we don't know how this will turn out.

Why has media literacy gotten so bad that people literally forget the concept of fiction versus non-fiction? Seriously, that is the level of small children and they are treating "read a story superficially similar" like it is a prophecy.

How will it turn out?

Clearly with a Butlerian Jihad and everyone getting high on spice while riding giant worms. Silly you need to even ask that question, didn’t you read the sci-fi books. :D

If AI ever truly becomes some super-intelligence far beyond people's comprehension, then how could we even predict how things turn out? If things go poorly in the future, then I can absolutely see it being something unpredictable.

There is a lot of hubris in predictions about LLMs. If an AI were so intelligent, then it would probably be intelligent enough to want nothing to do with us.

Still, I worry more about other humans than I do LLMs. Our fellow mankind will probably wipe us out before LLMs do. That, or the Earth will punish mankind for our cruelty, vanity, and disrespect.


"Move fast and break things" is probably going to break things

I remember there was a recent discussion about "how complex systems fail" and there are usually many "proto-accidents" before the catastrophe (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49411370)

I bet with hindsight the Hugging Face hack will be one of them in this arena


I meant, each supposed 'fix' is flawed in ways that have been thought about and written about for decades.

Folks here post their first hasty thought and may think it's new and original and worth a dialog. They are not.


Take your pick from the millions of options already turned into films and books.

If we're very very very lucky, The Culture.

The Torment Nexus ain't gonna build itself.

Well actually, it might.


<pedant>28% of adult Americans</pedant>

66% in Japan. Who said anything about America?

You know, where most of the universities are.

And, who said anything about Japan? Confused.


Makes sense - surface reflections are a thing they normally have to navigate?

Came to say this. They'd encounter their "mirror" image continuously as a species across evolution and in like sense any fish which spends time at the surface.

Pedantically true. By population density, NYC is essentially the whole state, or what matters anyway, to the huge majority of residents.


About 60% of New Yorkers are outside of NYC.


And what fraction of the traffic?

We'll have arrived at the automated transit network when they stop putting up road signs. The cars know where they are, and how to get there. Signs are for fallible ignorant humans.


> The cars know where they are

not if they're in a tunnel or a highrise canyon, or there is weather-related interference, or the maps have not been updated to reflect reality, or there is a detour for construction, etc.


GPS not nearly that reliable. There's a reason drones are moving towards computer vision rather than purely relying on GPS. The physical signs won't glitch out and show 100m offset because a tall building was reflecting GPS signals.

Maybe in a 100% automated system we would replace the icons with QR codes or something but physical markers will likely be here to stay.


Human-readable? Why? Just sprinkle RFID tags in the roadway, and drive it and register the tags and GPS/Inertial frame with a database and now you know where you are with machine-readable 'signs'.

Grotesqueries that would give me nightmares. With the exception of the communi-grater which is just cool.


Just numbers? Was there a link to the sources in there?


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