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Nitpick: The early moves in the game are called fuseki. Joseki refers to well-studied local patterns of moves and they appear through the middle game, not just in the early game.

A couple of things I love about go is that you don't need to memorize fuseki, and that applying joseki correctly is as much a matter of judgment as it is of memory.

(I am a 1 dan go player but haven't played much in the last 15 years.)


He could be thinking of shogi (though the kanji is 定跡 where joseki from go is 定石), where joseki refers to the well studied ways to play the opening of the game.


The Wikipedia article says:

"Rock, sand and concrete has a heat capacity about one third of water's. On the other hand, concrete can be heated to much higher temperatures (1200 °C) by for example electrical heating and therefore has a much higher overall volumetric capacity."

and

"Polar Night Energy installed a thermal battery in Finland that stores heat in a mass of sand. It was expected to reduce carbon emissions from the local heating network by as much as 70%. It is about 42 ft (13 m) tall and 50 ft (15 m) wide. It can store 100 MWh, with a round trip efficiency of 90%. Temperatures reach 1,112 ºF (600 ºC). The heat transfer medium is air, which can reach temperatures of 752 ºF (400 ºC) – can produce steam for industrial processes, or it can supply district heating using a heat exchanger."


I learnt some new concepts here, specific heat capacity vs overall volumetric, things I kind of understood intuitively, but now much clearer:

If I add some fixed amount heat to some fixed volume of water, it might rise by 1℃, while the same volume of concrete rises by 3℃. And by the same logic, on release, that fixed volume of water dropping by 1℃ releases 3x as much heat as when that fixed volume of concrete drops by 1℃.

So if you can max heat water to 100℃, and max heat concrete to 1200℃, and on release you let it go to 10℃ (probably the range is less in practice), then the water can drop 90℃ and the concrete 1190℃, so even if the water releases 3x the amount of heat per ℃, the water just releases 270 (per volume) while the concrete releases 1190 (per volume)


Also to add some practicals: you can drive a steam turbine with the concrete temps, but not with the water.

Also, looking at how hot water could theoretically get (decomposes between 2200-3300C), it looks like 1200C is an interesting limit. Above that and you get safety(practical) and cost issues with every material I could find (common salts, pure elements).

Sand just makes sense! Though, don't ever youtube sand battery.


Why not YouTube sand battery? I did it, and nothing much happened.


Previously it was a bunch of overunity nutjobs.


Ahh right, I did see some preppers there, to be fair.


> don't ever youtube sand battery

Huh? I just get stuff related to this article?


The higher temperature output is a good point, you can't get 400C output for industrial processes from a 100C water based heat battery.


a Blast furnace needs closer to 2000° than 400°

in any case, how would you transport high temperatures to the industrial sites? water boils at 100° and few liquids boil above 400°. most liquids will be impractical due to cost or safety (combustibility, toxicity…).


Of course you can't do blast furnace with a sand battery. But there is still a sizable market for industrial heat in between 100c <> 400c.


Pump water through, producing steam to drive a turbine, use turbine to generate electricity, use electricity for industrial process.

Now, in practice you _probably_ don't want to do this, because, in this case, you have district heating demand, which is a far more efficient use of the power.


Steam?


(Off topic.)

Not only that, but Linus's parents were politically active communists and young Linus was a pioneer (like a boy scout but for communists). His father also lived in Moscow for several years on two separate occasions.


> Linus was a pioneer

Being a Young Pioneer or joining the Komsomol was not officially mandatory, but it functioned as a gatekeeper for any kind of advancement. Party membership operated the same way.

So, by themselves, they don't tell you whether the person in question is a communist.


Not in Finland which has never been a communist country. His parents were just political activists who forced young Linus to participate in that as well. Linus has said that the experience made him very apolitical person.


Ah, whoops! I mistook Linus as the name of the Russian developer in question, whose name is actually Denis.

(The whole first name thing in software circles kind of irritates me.)


Well, my use of his first name was kind of a joke. I apologize for the confusion.

There's very few folks in software that can be recognized uniquely, by their first name, but he's one.


I don't think Russia (or China, either) has been truly communist, in a long time.

Not sure there are any real communist nations left. It's one of those ideologies that looks good on paper, but falls apart, as soon as humans get added to the soup.

Idealists never seem to account for base human nature.


>> It's one of those ideologies that looks good on paper, but falls apart, as soon as humans get added...

Name an ideology where this doesn't happen.


Constitutional democracies with a free market have had a long run so far. We shall see if they last.


Curious how we're defining "democracy" and "free market" with this one. I wonder how countries with a pure democracy and an actually free market compare to the republic and regulated market we have in the US.


The US is a constitutional democracy with a free market and I consider it successful.

The definitions of these words can be the predominant use of these words in the English language. But if you want "constitutional democracy" here use this: https://civiced.org/lesson-plans/constitutional-democracy

And for free market here, use this: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/freemarket.asp

People frequently misunderstand "constitutional democracy" as being substantially different from "republic" but that's usually an ESL error that can be fixed quickly.


The vast majority of markets in the US are hardly free. Every single large company in the US is heavily government subsidized, market protectionism is rife, and regulatory capture and artificial moat-building is the norm. I think it's quite a stretch to day we have a free market. Maybe a 'free-er' market.


So be it. s/free/free-er/g in comments above if that will lead to convergence.


> The US is a constitutional democracy with a free market and I consider it successful.

Out of all the definitions you gave, I feel you left out the most important. How exactly are you defining “successful”? Considering the current state of the US, that one seems really important.


> The free market is an economic system based on supply and demand with little or no government control.

Given the amount of government subsidy and regulation that exists in our markets I assume this, too, is a simply ESL error that can be fixed quickly?


>I wonder how countries with a pure democracy and an actually free market compare to the republic and regulated market we have in the US.

They don't exist.


Yeah, someone should make one of those. Would be interesting to see how they compare to the current 'free market' 'democracies'.


It'll wind up mired into something close to what we have now before long. "There atta be a law" and "Think of the children"... That said, I'm fairly pragmatic about it... I don't think you can have free markets with nations that heavily manipulate their markets, or significantly different quality of life goals or regulation.

That said, I much prefer the free-er market systems and a constitutional republic over what the Quasi-Mauists seem to be pushing for.


True, dat…


> Not sure there are any real communist nations left. It's one of those ideologies that looks good on paper, but falls apart, as soon as humans get added to the soup.

> Idealists never seem to account for base human nature.

Are the implicit “in practice” (cf on paper) and “base human nature” weird synonyms for America invading or doing a coup?


Doesn't stop idealists from pushing their new, "real" version of it... or "Rules for radicals" and Maoist inspired updates to Communism along the way.


Don't forget about North Korea.

China is still pretty communist, even if you define it purely economically rather than by all the other traits too (e.g. heavy censorship). The list of largest employers in the world has a lot of state owned Chinese firms.


Your parent comment labeled themselves off-topic but I'd say they were still pretty on it, but you're like way too off-topic. The point isn't whether some country or some people are real communists or not, but that an individual shouldn't be harassed for maintaining open source software and can somehow be linked to some rival of the West.


Fair point.

But, to be fair, the note about not taking human nature into account, applies everywhere.

I think that we've all seen very smart people fail to account for human nature, and things go badly.

Open source/free work is very human, and I have found it important to keep human nature in mind, as I work.


I agree that ignoring human nature is a bad move. In fact, a recipe for disaster for many reasons. Repress or disrespect it, and it will come back roaring with a vengeance.

I also agree that empirically, communism is always a disaster.

But I would also say that communism doesn't even look good on paper. It looks terrifying! To naive and frankly clueless young minds with no appreciation of human nature, human society, and so on, a superficial acquaintance with the subject matter might seem nice, as it might play on tropes and juvenile grievances, envies, and sentiments. But an honest look at it by an intellectually properly formed and informed mind will inspire horror. It is a dehumanizing ideology.

Now, that doesn't mean our hyperindividualist, capitalistic, and liberal consumerist societies don't have their share of poison. They do, and again, to a good degree because they misconstrue human nature. But communism or even socialism are no solution to these ills.

(JPII's "Centesimus Annus"[0], among more academic works by him and others, addresses some of this. People often pay attention to his anti-socialist, anti-communist legacy, but remain unaware of his critical stance toward capitalism and liberalism.)

[0] https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d...


> But I would also say that communism doesn't even look good on paper. It looks terrifying! To naive and frankly clueless young minds with no appreciation of human nature, human society, and so on, a superficial acquaintance with the subject matter might seem nice, as it might play on tropes and juvenile grievances, envies, and sentiments. But an honest look at it by an intellectually properly formed and informed mind will inspire horror. It is a dehumanizing ideology.

Notice the abundance of adjectives and complete lack of argumentation.


If you're too lazy to read the linked encyclical, just say so. Don't hide behind vacuous moralizing.


If you’re too lazy to make your own argument, just-- well you already said so.


_Miles_ from the ocean? Budapest is 620 miles from the nearest ocean at the mouth of Elbe.

(Incidentally exactly 1000 km.)


Made that same comment to friends when I first came across the article.

Technically correct, I guess: it is miles (quite many of them).


You can turn them on in the workspace admin settings: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11954883-legacy-model-ac...


I could be blind, but (as a workspace admin, in admin settings) there's no "Models" setting available in our Team account.


You are absolutely right, I cannot see it there either! Sorry for the misdirection.


That exchange sounded very gpt-like.


It took me a while but I think the difference between Vertex and Gemini APIs is that Vertex is meant for existing GCP users and Gemini API for everyone else. If you are already using GCP then Vertex API works like everything else there. If you are not, then Gemini API is much easier. But they really should spell it out, currently it's really confusing.

Also they should make it clearer which SDKs, documents, pricing, SLAs etc apply to each. I still get confused when I google up some detail and end up reading the wrong document.


> I think the difference between Vertex and Gemini APIs is that Vertex is meant for existing GCP users and Gemini API for everyone else

Nahh, not really - Vertex has a HUGE feature surface, and can run a ton of models and frameworks. Gemini happens to be one of them, but you could also run non-google LLMs, non LLM stuff, run notebooks against your dataset, manage data flow and storage, and and and…

Gemini is “just” an LLM.


The other difference is that reliability for the gemini api is garbage, whereas for vertex ai it is fantastic.


The key to running LLM services in prod is setting up Gemini in Vertex, Anthropic models on AWS Bedrock and OpenAI models on Azure. It's a completely different world in terms of uptime, latency and output performance.


Have you had any luck getting your Claude quota bumped on Bedrock? I tried working through AWS support but got nowhere. Gave up and used Vertex + Gemini


Does OpenAI on azure still have that insane latency for content filtering? Last time I checked it added a huge # to time to first token, making azure hosting for real time scenarios impractical.


Yes.

Unless you convince MS to let you at the "Provisioned Throughput" model. Which also requires being big enough for sales to listen to you.


Ex-googler here. Google shipped their org hierarchy here.

Vertex API is managed by Vertex team in Google Cloud. This is a production ready infrastructure that is SRE managed but usually one or two steps from the bleeding edge.

Gemini API, Jules etc are built by Google Labs. This is close to the bleeding edge but not as production ready.


Which would all be fine except some models like Imagen 4 only work on vertex.


Also it is one party (The Finns) presenting a rail initiative competing with their government partner's (National Coalition) older initiative. It is very unlikely that they both will be implemented.


Stray thought: Why 4 and 9? Because the joke is funniest if the number is completely ordinary.

0 and 1 are special and so are all prime numbers. 6 is out because it's the maximum die throw. And one figure is more ordinary than two figures, or negatives, or decimals. That leaves 4 and 9.


That makes 4 and 9 the only two uninteresting numbers, which is interesting, so they’re out too!

Douglas Adams said the same about 42. It’s the answer because it’s completely banal.


Everyone knows that six is the most boring number. https://youtu.be/G4OTRRmyTAA?feature=shared


How come prime numbers are special but squares aren’t? 4 and 9 both being squares seems to be a more striking commonality than your logic here…


Yeah. Alternative explanation: I'd say 3 and 7 are out because they often come up in fairy takes etc as magical. 5 is out because it's half of ten and the number of fingers. 2 is out because it is too small.


The perfect squares are the most ordinary?


What about 8?


Maximum throw for a battle axe in 5e d&d, of course.

I dunno actually. Maybe because 4*2=8? The two picks have the property of not being related really.


8, 16, 32, 64 pop up a lot in computer circles.


Oh, right! I forgot about it. I guess 8 would do too.


The article is about choosing 12 colors from the 4096-color palette.



I highly recommend the 1990 Polish stop motion TV series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moomins_(TV_series). The only one that, to me, captures the magic of the books.


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