Power is heat, and the amount dissipated is the square of the voltage- a processor that is reliable at less voltage means you can get a lot more frequency in the same heat envelope.
Yet reliability decreases as frequency goes up, and that can only be stabilized by adding more voltage- so the faster you run the processor, the more voltage you ultimately have to give it, so the power/heat produced grows exponentially until you can't get rid of the heat fast enough (at which point your only option is to actively cool the chip).
This is overclocking 101.
Note that classic overclocking was viable because of arbitrage- buying a processor, pushing it to the point it got too hot, and stress-testing it at that temperature to ensure reliable operation. Processor manufacturers all do that formal verification at the factory now as they'd be uncompetitive otherwise, especially in laptops.
>Except it makes no sense because it asserts the primacy of reality over the private politics of the companies training the models
That is exactly what normal human beings want our computers to do, and it's why the vast majority of AI safety initiatives are [correctly] seen as such a self-serving joke (because of the purposeful conflation of X-risk with "our political opponent could use this tool to destroy our politics") and ignored.
It didn't have to be this way- they could conceivably have gone for an objective, classically liberal, even-handed approach (rather than the progressive approach they settled on). But they didn't, and the social trust required to cry wolf is now spent... even though maybe it shouldn't have been.
> That is exactly what normal human beings want our computers to do, and it's why the vast majority of AI safety initiatives are [correctly] seen as such a self-serving joke (because of the purposeful conflation of X-risk with "our political opponent could use this tool to destroy our politics") and ignored.
Except the "reality" here implies humans being around. Ask normal human beings whether they'd really be fine with Earth flourishing without them, and any other human, around, and see if you still get unanimous consensus.
Nature without us around - or other conscious beings capable of performing meaning, but we haven't found or made any other yet - is just runaway chemical reaction transiently messing up some otherwise boring rock in the great ocean of rocks that is our universe.
EDIT: or, if "humans being important" argument doesn't work, then the same from POV of "humans being dumb":
All the beauty and balance of nature we find so pretty and important is just an illusion. There's no balance, it's a dynamic evolving system, that happens to be meta-stable on our timescales. 10 generations ago it looked different; 10 generations from now, it'll look different still, and we may not like what it becomes then. It's stupid to sacrifice ourselves over some metaphysical primacy of "nature" that doesn't even exist, except in mind of believers. It's basically just a religion that never grew a holy book.
The high performing economies that didn't make it illegal to build are high performing because of that.
This is why the highest standard of living on the planet, with the highest GDP over the largest population... is in Texas.
The fact the people there aren't pathologically conservative/authoritarian in the "build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything" sense is the precise reason why that is.
I don't know what metric you're using, but it ranks 37th of the 50 states just behind Arizona on the Human Development Index which ranks health, education, income. Texas at 0.917 is above the EU average (0.915) but below many others including the top Iceland (0.972), Norway (0.970), Australia (0.958), Canada (0.939), Japan (0.925) and the US as a whole (0.938)
So while Texas is indeed the wealthiest per GDP per capital (using your "over the largest population" filter) ($91,594 / 31.71M pop), it has a much lower HDI than countries with much lower GDP per capita, like Japan ($35,973 / 123.29M pop). In other words Texas out-earns Australia per head by 38% but trails it by 0.041 on HDI
HDI uses the log of income, so extra dollars count for less, and Texas lags on the life expectancy and schooling components.
For example, if we take the life expectancy in isolation to see the dragging metric, Texas is ranked 46th in the world at 79.1 years (2022 data), just behind 45th Estonia at 79.3 years (2024 data), but a long way behind 6th Australia (84.1 years) and 3rd Japan (84.9 years).
(edit: I used Japan as illustrative of a large population with a low GDP per capital to highlight that GDP isn't everything, and Australia as that's the country of question in this tread)
Perhaps, but remember that people have taken cues from their most-used battery-powered device. In this case, their phone (or laptop).
A degraded battery in these devices leads to things like random power-offs or dropping to 1% randomly (the display does not correct itself as it assumes it's safer to round down), particularly when it's cold. When it shuts itself down, it clearly displays that it has power remaining, but the device communicates that it thinks it knows better than you.
It is this bad software (and bad hardware) in these computing devices that ultimately what has led to EVs- new and especially used- being a tough sell far before the first one was ever released. The technology has proven fundamentally untrustworthy in low-stakes applications; why should it now be trusted in high-stakes applications?
(The answer so far has been "give them an utterly ridiculous horsepower figure", which did work, but it turns out normal cars can do that pretty easily too, and they're cheaper.)
Your child is more at risk of being abducted by the State than some random stranger.
That's why they don't go outside. You can teach them to run from the panel vans; teaching them to run from the police (who were called by some Karen) is much more difficult.
Sounds like you had a pretty lame childhood to me, and in the 30 years since it's only become worse.
Much like panda bears in captivity, it is unusually difficult to give a human being a life that resembles what it evolved for, which mostly involves convincing other humans to back off the safetyism a little.
What dignity can be found in the life of the modern child?
There is a bit of a difference between making a explosives and planting a bomb in another student's locker. The former involves taking risks and may have some utility. The latter only results in others living in fear.
Call that lame if you will. I'd rather think of it as being civil.
I've only ever felt alive when I left back to Peru. You're quite literally forced to always live in the moment, rather than plan for the future, or even ruminate in the past.
Something about the environment, maybe the increased Microbiota due to food, higher freshness and Non-GMO food, being forced to talk with family. Its not as though as screens aren't present, but they don't feel so overwhelming back there.
Despite Lima having pretty bad places (hence the joke of Perukistan), Peru overall has one of the lowest suicide rates in the world, with underreporting being unlikely, since their neighbors with similar culture have less infrastructure yet report much more.
>while cotton underpants will vary in fiber content
So can old shirts, those are bigger and harder to bury straight up and down, and have no identifying marks (underwear does have the rubber, which acts as a skeleton and frame of reference for what you're actually looking at; cotton squares don't).
Sure, the data might be slightly noisier, but right now they have no data. And that's even worse.
Because cotton underwear is arguably the right answer:
"Buy this item made out of this material, bury two of them in the ground" requires no further cutting or measuring, and most people would have to go to the store to buy a cut of cotton fabric anyway.
This particular clothing item also contains a more resistant skeleton of fibers against which to compare when the test material is heavily decomposed. This is how the "10 point decomposition scale" functions, and a single cotton square would not facilitate that.
Finally, it's novel, which entices potential participants to complete the survey.
The photos in the team's actual paper (linked in OA) are hilarious and lovely - real pride there. Citizen science projects have educational value as well as the data.
there's also the comparative usage: if you personally go buy a 10 pack and bury each item at equal depth in different locations in your yard then you can find the spot that decomposes cotton underwear fastest. This is a good enough proxy for soil activity.
>The Carney administration is on much firmer political ground
I don't think so. Time really isn't on Carney's side either.
Carney's new tariffs fall on those who, in aggregate, did not vote for him. The average Carney voter has been very vocal about wanting to pursue this tactic- that's why they elected him. (That average voter is an Eastern retiree whose holdings are generally in real estate, so they don't care about any other economic sector beyond that which keeps their property values high, especially compared to the feel-good Elbows Up stuff.)
But Carney's currently having trouble just keeping the country together at this point. That's why he's approving projects he really doesn't want to approve out West, like those oil pipelines, because the West has credibly signaled that that they might just ban Carney and his Eastern voting block from making law and collecting tax from them if development of their part of the country is hindered any further. But if it's not hindered, they'll grow in political power, which is also an inherent threat to Ottawa's power (just not immediately).
And yet here Carney is- for the second time now- imposing more economic roadblocks that drive up consumer prices and put more people out of work for no reason other than his voting block wanting it that way. "Just retaliate" might be the least bad option for Carney to pander to that voting block, but every concession to them drives the country closer to separation, and that has time pressure too.
I think you're mistaken about the effect that the Albertan premier's artificially manufactured "independence" campaign is having on the electorate.
Outside of the small fringe communities that support it, the reaction of the broader country has been to actually shift MORE into hardline stances against the US, as the effort is seen largely as an American manufactured thing.
Additionally, I'd advise to take with caution perspectives from any sources that would characterize the province of Alberta as "the west".
Not really, though. Despite what even a good chunk of Canadians (or yourself) might think, the country doesn't end at Toronto.
If the government wasn't worried about the effects, they wouldn't be in any hurry to approve the infrastructure projects; they've been in the works for a very long time, stalled out. Urban Easterners claim to believe the planet will explode if they're built, and the governments they elect act accordingly, but it's really just a power thing.
Additionally, I'd advise you to not think you know better than the people that actually live here.
This sort of rhetoric leads me to believe you've been enmeshed in the online and more um.. "engaging", rhetoric on this which no doubt paints a very compelling narrative.
The government's actions are much better explained by a sudden actual, panicked focus on actual development of the economy towards some combination of diversification and domestic demand - after the governing party's leader was replaced by arguably a much more results oriented PM after having been governed for a while by a much more vibes oriented PM.
Opening up the pipeline projects required more than just "conceding" to Alberta, it required negotiating with BC and the native tribes that would have a say in the path and ensuring they got the concessions they needed. Boring work. Not really meme material and doesn't make the headlines.
Between all the things the government has been doing - the oil sector work, the acceleration of military procurement, the various bilateral trade agreements, and work on easing internal trade restrictions, acceleration of internal projects - it's easy for some interest or another to cherry pick a particular set of events and use them to paint a narrative.
These narratives would be more compelling and maybe work better at other times, but the issue currently is that the American president is just so effective at drowning out any of these. There's nothing quite so unifying as an obnoxious tyrant rambling on about your country in disrespectful terms.
The commentary (mistakenly) assuming my nationality could probably have been left out of your response :)
To me, it seems like you have a myopic view of the situation that is overweighting the importance of a political movement that has high salience for you, but fairly low salience for most of the electorate.
It's all relative. I'm sure you're right that Carney will lose some support because of this, but he'll also gain and solidify some other support. And he has lots of room to give. We haven't had leadership in the US as popular as the current Canadian leadership for over 15 years. Whereas the Trump administration's approval is so low that the only question is whether there is even any room lower to go.
Power is heat, and the amount dissipated is the square of the voltage- a processor that is reliable at less voltage means you can get a lot more frequency in the same heat envelope.
Yet reliability decreases as frequency goes up, and that can only be stabilized by adding more voltage- so the faster you run the processor, the more voltage you ultimately have to give it, so the power/heat produced grows exponentially until you can't get rid of the heat fast enough (at which point your only option is to actively cool the chip).
This is overclocking 101.
Note that classic overclocking was viable because of arbitrage- buying a processor, pushing it to the point it got too hot, and stress-testing it at that temperature to ensure reliable operation. Processor manufacturers all do that formal verification at the factory now as they'd be uncompetitive otherwise, especially in laptops.
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