I've heard a quick way to determine if the UV index is dangerous is if your shadow is shorter than you. Though location matters too.
I moved from Vermont to Texas and had to purchase an umbrella with UV protection to walk around during the day. The highest the UV index hits in the Vermont's summer is 6. In Texas, it's 11+ !!! 15 minutes and you're toast
From conclusion of paper, I read the opposite of what you state. "A better strategy would be to expose a larger fraction of the body for a shorter time period, preferably when the sun is lower in the sky to allow a greater margin of error."
A sun lower in the sky means your shadow is longer. Maybe I'm confused?
Good catch, it is kind of confusing as they seem to contradict themselves, and also depends on the season.
Figure 6 shows that for full body exposures, there is a wide window between the time for sufficient UV and the time for too much UV. As the fraction of body that is exposed decreases, the window of optimum UV exposure times also decreases. If only hands and face are exposed, there is generally only a small window between receiving insufficient UV for vitamin D production, and too much UV for skin damage (erythema).
As the UVI becomes smaller, it becomes more difficult to produce sufficient vitamin D without inducing erythema. For low sun conditions typical of midday in the mid-latitude winter (SZA ∼65°), where R∼1, the skin area exposed must be more than 12% (see Eq. 5) This means that for these low sun conditions it is improbable that sufficient vitamin D can be produced from exposing the hands and face alone, since that area is less than 12% of the full body.
If you are able to expose a lot of your body at a time then yes later in the day is workable (in the summer). In the winter, (depending on your latitude) you still need mid day sun to make any meaningful Vitamin D.
In some parts of South America the UV index reaches 15-20 due to near-equatorial latitude and extremely high elevation. It is strong enough that you need protection from indirect UV radiation.
I'm openly (very) curious to hear the reasoning behind that statement, not having lived in SF.
From what I've read, George Lucas funded 100% of the project, and the Presidio trust rejected it. Then he tried building the museum in Chicago, but he was sued and blocked for a couple years and eventually gave up. Finally he found a spot in LA. IIRC the project took 12 years. The same source mentioned SF hasn't started any major museum projects since 2016.
America is falling behind on public works. We used to have the largest aquarium in the world, and now we're sitting at #5 or #6.
So I am genuinely curious why you and others are opponents of public works projects? I honestly do not understand.
Perhaps it's getting more difficult to move the 'goal posts'?
- Train LLMs on texts -> OMG AI can write!
- Train LLMs on code -> OMG AI can code!
- Train LLMs on images -> OMG AI can generate images!
- Train LLMs on video -> OMG AI can generate videos!
- Train LLMs on math -> give free access to 100,000 researchers/scientists/mathematicians -> invest resources into Lean -> OMG AI can solve math problems!
I say 'goal posts' because that's a common argument, but the perspective that seems to not be considered is that the LLMs are doing the same thing over and over again in different domains while be fine-tuned by labeling and human review.
The emergent behavior argument is a separate consideration, but I can imagine an AI being given a list of words (a harness) that guides how it operates--not the other way around--and the difficult problem is narrowing down and filtering all the associations with the words/harness to properly align it.
And perhaps the recursive looping being discussed creates incredibly difficult (impossible) to predict behavior? If the AI could modify it's own harness, is that AGI? If we fully understood what happens in high dimensional space, and could predict the output of any combination of input tokens, then is it not AGI?
Or perhaps I just tell myself this to stop worrying about a future involving ASI (:
I doubt AI will be good enough to _scale_ many things because human language isn't sufficient to explain it (especially when not understanding what is being built). Humans invented more concise languages (math, C++) to pair with their intellectual acuity. [1]
In one extreme, we have art, which cannot be accurately reproduced or explained in any language (unless a concise language was used to create it, like math or CS art).
At the other end: 1 + 1 = 2 and PI = 3.14...
[1] It seems any language that has a binary outcome (correct/wrong) helps the AI tremendously, however when e.g. creating software, that software is not functioning in isolation. The software is an attempt to codify a fuzzy human system or need, and that information only flows in one direction: human to machine.
When I was in high school, I took a physics class. I think I scraped by but one thing the teacher said that has stuck with me ever since was "when you want to test a hypothesis, set the variables to extreme numbers". Very useful framework IMO!
If we pursued the "Most Qualified" in its truest form, then ~95%[1] of the jobs in this country would be handed over to foreigners. In isolation, this would be great for US companies. In reality, 95% of the local population would riot.
If we pursued "only hire Americans", then our growth as a country would be stunted, and we'd lose our global competitive edge.
Somewhere between is a balanced medium.
Side observation: I've noticed tech leaders/CEOs/PG have been choosing (or succumbing) to what the algorithm wants them to say or how phrase. I stopped following all of them because I can feel my emotions being manipulated whenever I read what they have to say.
[1] The USA is less than 5% of the worlds population.
The reality is you couldn't hand over jobs to the most qualified person. In most cases the most qualified person already works for you (or is you!), and just needs an assistant who by definition is less qualified.
Suppose you found someone at your competitor who is doing your exact same job (already unlikely - their have a different structure in some way that is important) who is better than you. Would they be willing to move to where you company is? Would your company be willing to pay enough to make them join? Even if the above are true, all those structures your company has that are different mean there will be some time before they are better than you.
Most jobs don't need the best person. Is my doctor the best in the world - probably not - but she is more than good enough for my needs.
Though I have to object to your 95% number. Most people in the world do not have the education that the US provides. Most people are not fluent in English which is almost always a critical part of working for a company in the US. Once you add those requirements, the something closer to 50% of the most qualified people for your job live in the US (now if New Zealand was your country 95% of the most qualified don't live there - and most probably wouldn't want to move even though it is apparently a nice country)
Which is to say even if there was unlimited immigration allowed, your best hire in the US will be an American in most cases.
Though it doesn't matter who is most qualified you need to a plan to mentor and train up the younger generation. (who then grow old and train the next generation)
Your hypothesis straight up assumes that a) Americans have the best possible education required for the work (we don't; functional illiteracy has never been higher in the last few decades). And b) Americans are the most fluent in English (again see a.).
Even if the above assumptions are true the set of Americans who are qualified will be completely outnumbered by, say, even 2% of qualified people from a huge population like China/India/etc.
Your first assumption is completely and utterly wrong. I do not require anyone to have the best education. America does have a great education system. Do others do better? Well, that's very, very arguable, but let's accept it for discussion. The American education system is still very good. For most purposes, the American education system is more than good enough for the job at hand, and so it doesn't matter that an arbitrary education system is better since better doesn't matter once you've crossed the line of knowing the required material.
As for English, most Americans have English as a first language. Now there are certainly accent differences, but that actually plays in the favor of Americans when you're in the U.S. I can understand someone from Australia. However, they do speak a little different and I have to work a little bit at it. That makes them worse at any communication they would have to do with me. The majority of the world does not speak English as a first language. Some people are better than others, but the vast, vast majority of people I've heard who don't live in America have poor English skills. Sure, in countries like England or New Zealand, they will have great English skills as well, but when you get to Germany, some have great, some can just barely get by, and some, despite years of studying, can't actually speak it. Germans are one of the more likely people to have good English skills. If we were to go to China or India, English gets really really hard to understand. Their grammar is typically very very wrong.
Two billion people between India and China with rough numbers, two percent of that is about the population of the US. You're not looking at overwhelming the number of people in the US with only 2% of your population, at most half, and that is before we get into it, there are a lot of people in India and China who are older and not well educated. By contrast, your older people in the US are still likely to have had a fair amount of school and so be better.
> If we pursued the "Most Qualified" in its truest form, then ~95%[1] of the jobs in this country would be handed over to foreigners. [1] The USA is less than 5% of the worlds population.
This would be true if you're talking about randomly picking people from around the world to live in the US for their formative years and go through the US education system (at which point they barely count as "foreigners"). This isn't reality, though, and if you're talking about hiring a worker today, a large swath of that 95% won't speak English, or won't be literate, or will have never received a formal education, all of which are disqualifying for pretty much every job in the US.
It wouldn't be 95%. The US is like 5% of the world, but it disproportionately contains the most qualified workers in many fields. Also, in many cases, even if a worker was somehow qualified, they would be lacking some basic skill like English proficiency or basic cultural compatibility, that would make them actually unqualified on net. But your overall sentiment is right. There are hundreds of millions of people who want to come to the US and make less than you.
It is also a fact that "most qualified" is fuzzy. It comes down to something more like, performance per dollar, or "culture fit", or some other thing. Unless you are trying to absolutely have the most advanced shit in the world at any price, "qualifications" or "talent" are not the ultimate factors. Having been in this industry for a while, most foreign workers obviously aren't "the best" like that. They're not even more talented or hard-working than the average American worker. But they usually work for less and the job gets done (roughly speaking), and their mere presence drives down everyone's wages.
I don't follow that "Most Qualified" would mean 95% of jobs going to foreigners. I get that the U.S. is 4-5% of the world's population, but if I live in San Antonio, Texas, the pool of plumbers for my house must also live in San Antonio, Texas, meaning that 99.9+% of the world is not remotely qualified for the job.
I mean, this debate is about immigration, right? So current location doesn't super matter, assuming you can amortize the cost of relocating a plumber across several years' worth of plumbing work.
In practice, you hire the most qualified within the pool of people that can reasonably work for you: right to work in the right country, compatible hours, is able to connect socially with the rest of your team, etc.
You clearly have worked in a bubble. I find more qualified people in the usa than out of it, this is more of a payment issue than a lack of skill issue.
Just throwing out an idea: I recently stumbled upon an old-school website where someone is uploading a photo of their day (almost) every single day since 1998.
Came across screen captures of the original Everquest (SO COOL) and other games, photos of anime/cosplay events, city shots, family, friends, etc. Really fun for them, and fun for people who like me who still enjoy surfing the web.
When my mom was still alive and relatively new to a smartphone (at age 80) I decided to send her some sort of relevant picture every day via Whatsapp, to get her used to communicating that way. Sometimes it was a real stretch to come up with something. But yes, this forces you to evaluate your life from that viewpoint "surely something was interesting today? Let's keep a picture of it". Even if it's just what I'm having for lunch that day.
I'm not sure if you are in this demographic, but a lot of people I know born in 1999-2003 or so in the US used snapchat as a primary method of communication for many years, and a large part of it was keeping up "snap streaks" of sharing one photo a day with many different friends.
This is one thing for all of the pairs of genuine friends doing this, but I also have two friends who I introduced to each other exactly once, and who have never spoken since, who have a 6 year snap streak together, and both of whom have streaks like that with dozens of other people, many of whom are virtually strangers.
That is interesting. For a streak to count, do you have to both send out your own, and open incoming images? I wonder how much you could tell about someone if you had a 6 year snap streak with them. Would they be more like a friend, or an awkward relative with whom you seldom meet and have little in common?
Both of you have to send them to the other person as a specific recipient (so not just putting it on your story). I'm not sure about opening them.
For the two friends I'm thinking of, my impression is that they don't know each other any better through snapchat than they do from me knowing both of them and mentioning them to each other (they live 1000 miles apart and only met once). I guess the best I can say is that I would be comfortable seating them at the same table at my hypothetical wedding. Same vibe as my cousin I have on Facebook but have only really met twice in the last decade.
Well I knew someone who did this ritual and they would send black photos of their leg so close to the camera. So I'd imagine nothing and its classic number go up social media.
Everquest looked sooooo good back then. Man! No more Meridian 59!
Why did you have to destroy my memories? :)
It's like looking at the first DivX encoded movie that was soooooo good vs. VideoCD/LaserDisc. And then you look at it today and it's so damn blocky and also in that tiny resolution. Ugh!
My first job was working at Wendy's (c. 2006/2007). I recall the kitchen being busy enough that you had to constantly navigate around your coworkers. I worked with a bunch of Brazilians (all super nice people) and a handful of kids around my age.
IIRC lunch rush had (my memory is fuzzy..):
2 drive through positions, 2-3 people on cash registers, dining room cleaner, fry guy (sometimes 2?), 2-3 burger assemblers, one person on drinks, griller, dish washer, and the assistant manager and manager helping out everywhere. Prep team might still be working too.
I remember really enjoying the food a kid (in moderation). And everyone having a mini tantrum when someone ordered fries with no salt :D
Was also shocked to see one of my Brazilian coworkers working at the crack of dawn on my way to school, cause he typically had closing shifts.
Statistical anomaly detected: this morning I woke up from an earth quake in my dream. It was powerful enough to really sway the buildings and room I was in. Im in Texas though, but >= 7.0 earthquakes only happen a handful of times a year.
when was this? USGS shows no earthquake in Texas. Are you trying to say that Texas as >= 7.0 earthquakes a handful of times a year? According to wiki[0], Texas has never had anything close to a 7.0
Except. . . (accept)... SaaS solves the problem of needing one piece of software to communicate between multiple (many) users and/or other pieces of software.
Can't picture a functioning world where every piece of software is custom and requires factorial amount of AI comparisons and reviews to patch the API to communicate. In fact, it's impossible! There's not enough compute to handle a factorial explosion.
Given how much of the industry is SaaS that would be such a self own! Wow, fantastic, you can build all your software in house, zero dependencies. Wait, your users can do the same? And they don’t need to pay you anymore for any of your cool services because they just asked their agents to recreate your infra from scratch? Interesting, truly the future of humanity
> Wow, fantastic, you can build all your software in house, zero dependencies. Wait, your users can do the same? And they don’t need to pay you anymore for any of your cool services because they just asked their agents to recreate your infra from scratch?
The cherry on top is that OpenAI and Anthropic brainwashed your coworkers and your company's C-suite into uploading the entirety of the "proprietary" codebase onto their servers thousands of times per day over the last three years.
No need to brainwash, they did it willingly and with a smile, tweeting about how they are part of the revolution while telling us all how we will be left behind
Video game industry analysts are predicting the same is going to happen to their (my) industry. Contract out more and more work to SEA/China/Poland et.al. It's extra painful because games are relatively cheap to localize (fantasy is universal, it's just translating text and words), so studios based in cheaper parts of the world already have an advantage and they have access to the west markets. Global competition can be brutal.
As an aside, there are large portions of the US where coastal folks dont want to live. These places are 2-4x cheaper (compared to costal game industry hubs) and could be cost competitive.. but it's probably not going to happen.
I moved from Vermont to Texas and had to purchase an umbrella with UV protection to walk around during the day. The highest the UV index hits in the Vermont's summer is 6. In Texas, it's 11+ !!! 15 minutes and you're toast
reply