Thanks! I played around with this and was able to get the same behavior, though it doesn't happen with how I normally use the touchpad.

I think what I would want here is something where scroll-snap never undoes scrolling, and is generally lighter touch? Like, snapping to the target if you've made an ambiguous flick, but not fighting you.

I'm only looking at reusable respirators, with the idea that in an extended pandemic you'd need ones that continued to give a good seal across many uses.

I wouldn't compare to a KN95, but other disposable N95 respirators (which should all seal well, though not each mask model to each face shape).

What browser?

Presumably they wanted to be able to include both "Google" the the Google logo on the same pages, and a font that can do both is a reasonable way to do that.

Creating the font was reasonable, it was the choice to use it outside of their own web pages, and especially to apply it to user controlled text, that was a bag call.

That's right! The suppressing accurate information about someone's training is negative, but when considering the rest of the student loan situation I think this is a context where it could be worth it on balance.

Currently you can't discharge student loans in bankruptcy. I think it would be good if you could. But then people might declare bankruptcy immediately after graduating, to the point that people wouldn't be able to get student loans. Allowing lenders to repossess degrees in bankruptcy would be one way to mostly resolve this.

I wonder how call booths manage this? I essentially just want a call booth on its side.

Very exciting; thanks for writing!

I know this is minor, but the image on the bottom of the website looks distractingly wrong to me -- the lighting doesn't match where real population centers are. It would be a lot better with something either clearly adapted from the real world or something clearly created, but this is pretty uncanny valley

Problems I'd expect:

• The filter moves a lot of air, so you need quite long pipes.
• You need pipes on both the input and output
• Some of the noise will be vibration of the purifier body, so you might need to enclose that too

Pictures on lesswrong do work, including in comments.  Here's one I inserted by using the WYSIWYG editor ("LessWrong Docs") and pasting an image:

I wouldn't expect that to work well for an air purifier?

That is a quick test, but a better one is checking how well it removes particles from the air.

I built and tested a prototype and it works well: https://www.jefftk.com/p/ceiling-air-purifier

Introducing deterministic non-captures (where there are a a class of particles not captured), can be a problem, as those will not be affected by the purifier.

With something like a MERV 14 HVAC filter there aren't any particle sizes that it deterministically doesn't capture, though it does have lower efficiency at some sizes (75% at worst performing size).

EA works to restrict the number of jobs capable of providing that validation, and to undermine any attempt to establish a sense that one’s job is good enough

I don't think so? Pledging 10% and earning to give in general have been common in EA from the beginning. There was a bit in 2018-2022 when this approach to impact was emphasized less, but that reversed with the post-FTX need for more funding diversity. And this is a widely accessible path to impact.

I did see your comment on FB! I'm still thinking about what I want to try next. I'm worried that silicone with your method would tear, though.

If I only ever ssh'd into a single EC2 instance (aws-ec2-compute) then that would work, but I have several. Since Host ec2-*.compute-1.amazonaws.com matches any EC2 instance, and there's no way to tell from the hostname whether this is the one I'm calling ec2_0, ec2_1, ec2_2 etc, I can't do this through the .ssh/config.

I don't see how I could put them in .ssh/config? Lets say I have three hosts, with instance IDs i-0abcdabcd, i-1abcdabcd, and i-2abcdabcd. I start them with commands like start_ec2 0, start_ec2 1 etc where start_ec2 knows my alias-to-instance ID mapping and does aws --profile sb ec2 start-instances --instance-ids <alias>. Then to ssh in I have commands like ssh_ec2 0 which looks up the hostname for the instance and then ssh's to it.

They're weird: input and output in the same jack. They're for connecting to external effects, often through a cable that splits TRS to dual TS.

do you already know that a piezo signal is much improved by a preamp with >1 meg ohm input impedance?

Very much so, yes! And input impedance this high pretty much requires an active circuit.

I have never met anyone, nor heard of anyone, who was somehow under the impression that cream cheese frosting is in any way incongruous or weird.

Strange; I've run into this multiple times. Most memorably, when my five year old younger sister was really upset that her birthday cake has cream cheese frosting -- "cream cheese goes on bagels". At a time when she already had had and liked cheesecake.

That's elegant in some sense, but somehow doesn't feel like the right way to do it.

I like this idea a lot, but I'm nervous about setting the right CPU threshold. Too low and it never shuts off, too high and it shuts down in the middle of something when waiting for a slow download. But possibly if I looked at load logs I'd see it's so clearly either ~zero or >>zero that it's not fussy?

Why?

Fixed! I was missing a comma.

Interesting! That Boston Public Schools switched from this mechanism to Gale-Shapley seems like it might be useful in convincing our school board (which is separate from the BPS school board, since schools are municipality-level here) to switch.

Their definition of "Price gouging occurs in a competitive market when lowering the price from the market-clearing level would increase total Utilitarian welfare" is a bit sneaky: it means that any time I say "here's an example of where price gouging helps improve disaster response" they can just say "but that's not real price gouging, since a lower price wouldn't increase welfare".

It also doesn't look to me like the paper's approach gives a good framework for thinking about long-term investment incentives and preparation for future disasters, or people selling/renting possessions they wouldn't normally put on the market sell (air purifiers, renting spare rooms).

The paper's division of circumstances into price gouging vs not isn't a good match for the real world, and leads them to support policies like the current ones that normally don't do anything and then suddenly make large impacts in a disaster. Instead I'd like to see recognition that it's hard to determine welfare-maximizing pricing in real time and that price signals can reach very far, and instead use a mechanism that allows price increases to occur but redistributes some of the profits.

I think you might find the pushback in the FB comments even more illustrative. Including one where a commenter doesn't want the new construction because it could lure NIMBYs to move in.

Other side of the room, about ten feet from the stove. Same place each time, yes.

I had seen ideas along these lines, and I wish I had remembered this before shaving my beard off!

I'd be happy to give you good odds on, conditional on this policy being enacted, it not expanding to comprise more than 0.1% of total US taxation.

I don't trust my measurements as much in the stubble case, because of the risk of particles leaking into the bag through its exit. So presenting the other cases as relative to stubble risks compounding error.

If the relevant counterfactual is not masking, then I think I'm giving these reductions the right way around?

This was one of the places where I really disliked her campaigning was doing (even though I preferred her overall). The basic proposal (though they were vague) was to make a federal law that would act similarly to the various existing state laws, but then she campaigned as if it would do something about current grocery prices. Which doesn't make sense: the grocery price changes really don't look like they're covered by any of the state laws, and a law that did cover them would be a huge (and quite bad) change.

Is your model that what's covered by "price gouging" would end up expanding if a proposal like mine were implemented?

Hmm. The change here is from "illegal" to "legal but taxed". So it seems to me that people should only ever be exposed to this additional tax complexity of they "opt in" by doing something they previously couldn't?

The thing that I think would be overall better (no price controls) is politically unpopular, strongly socially discouraged, and often illegal. This is a proposal that tries to move us in a direction I think is better, while addressing some of what price gouging opponents dislike.

one of the things the public hates more than price increases during a shortage is higher taxes any time

Maybe? Though in this case what we're taxing is the disliked activity--price increases during a shortage. So possibly this would be popular, like taxes on alcohol, tobacco, or gambling?

make emergencies a tax holiday

The main good bit of market pricing this would miss is the demand reduction and reallocation caused by the higher prices. I might be willing to buy 100lb of ice at $1/lb but only 10lb of ice at $5/lb: it's easier for me to just dump a bunch of ice into my fridge, but if I prioritize and put the important stuff into a cooler I can make do with much less. If the government is subsidizing suppliers to keep the price at the pre-disaster rate I don't have this incentive to ice more efficiently.

A new air purifier is $150, but mine have been hanging around my house collecting dust and viruses; I don't think a used air purifier would have gone for $150 pre-emergency. Let's say the used value was $75. To get the same benefit as selling for $300 with no surcharge I'd need to charge $525: 2x my $300, less the $75 used value.

But I agree: the air purifiers situation is still improved when moving from the status quo (illegal) to the proposal (taxed). My point with that footnote is that the proposal still does some to discourage supply increases relative to a world without this regulation.

Pretty sure the salary transparency law doesn't apply to us, because you need 25+ MA employees. Even if it did, though, I think it would mostly mean giving moderately wider salary ranges? Which I expect would be fine; our two current open positions [1][2] have ranges of 23% and 30%.

[1] https://securebio.org/careers/2024-lab-tech/

[2] https://securebio.org/careers/2024-director-operations/

You're more likely to gain some reputation or a job or a spouse if the reader goes to your website and sees your name there at the top.

Right! I agree there are advantages to getting people onto your site beyond the opportunity to show them ads or convince them to buy a subscription. The post, though, is about the consequences of being in the fortunate position of not needing to do this.

It's open; no door.

Sorry for assuming you were also in the US!

since the scale of damages in the upper tail exceeds almost everyone's accessible wealth

Car insurance is [edit: in the US] bounded: a standard policy will cover you up to some cap (ex: $50k). I think maybe your comment is a better argument for umbrella insurance, though that is also not infinite.

While it's nice to know the mechanism, I think all we really need in this case is the empirically determined performance curve.

Other, more targeted risks, such as bioweapons, pandemics and viral outbreaks would be better served by these shelters

I think they could maybe be appropriate for some bioweapons, but for most pathogen scenarios you don't need anywhere near the fourteen logs this seems to be designed for. So I do think it's important to be clear about the target threat: I expect designing for fourteen logs if you actually only need three or something makes it way more expensive.

Filtering liquids is pretty different from air, because a HEPA filter captures very small particles by diffusion. This means the worst performance is typically at ~0.3um (too small for ideal diffusion capture, too large for ideal interception and impaction) and is better on both bigger and smaller particles. The reported 99.97% efficiency (2.5 logs) is at this 0.3um nadir, though.

It's not really an edge thing, it's a top vs inside thing. So I wouldn't expect more side surface area to help?

This is good! But note that many things we call 'insurance' are not only about reducing the risk of excessive drawdowns by moving risk around:

• There can be a collective bargaining component. For example, health insurance generally includes a network of providers who have agreed to lower rates. Even if your bankroll were as large as the insurance company's, this could still make taking insurance worth it for access to their negotiated rates.

• An insurance company is often better suited to learn about how to avoid risks than individuals. My homeowner's insurance company requires various things to reduce their risk: maybe I don't know whether to check for Federal Pacific breaker panels, but my insurance company does. Title insurance companies maintain databases. Specialty insurers develop expertise in rare risks.

• Insurance can surface cases where people don't agree on how high the risk is, and force them to explicitly account for it on balance sheets.

• Insurance can be a scapegoat, allowing people to set limits on otherwise very high expenses. Society (though less LW, which I think is eroding a net-positive arrangement) generally agree that if a parent buys health insurance for their child then if the insurance company says no to some treatment we should perhaps blame the insurance company for being uncaring but not blame the parent for not paying out of pocket. This lets the insurance company put downward pressure on costs without individuals needing to make this kind of painful decision.

• Relatedly, agreeing in advance how to handle a wide range of scenarios is difficult, and you can offload this to insurance. Maybe two people would find it challenging to agree in the moment under which circumstances it's worth spending money on a shared pet's health, but can agree to split the payment for pet health insurance. You can use insurance requirements instead of questioning someone else's judgement, or as a way to turn down a risky proposition.

Short story about this from a few years ago: Your DietBet Destroyed the World. Mirror bacteria developed to produce L-Glucose, everything is fine until there's an accident.

Here is a now-public example of how a biological infection could kill us all: Biological Risk from the Mirror World.

I don't think this makes much sense. In a regulated industry, you want to build up a positive reputation and working relationship with the regulators, where they know what to expect from you, are familiar with your work and approach, have a sense of where you're going, and generally like and trust you. Engaging with them early and then repeatedly over a long period seems like a way better strategy than waiting until you have something extremely ambitious to try to get them to approve.

Funny! I almost deleted the cross-post because it seemed too short to be interesting here.