Posts

How Much Have I Been Playing? 2024-03-12T02:10:06.621Z
Replacing the Water Heater's Anode 2024-03-11T00:00:10.796Z
MA E-ZPass Without a Car? 2024-03-09T02:40:08.425Z
Boston's Line 1 2024-03-04T19:30:06.723Z
Attending Sold-Out Beantown Stomp 2024-03-03T21:30:05.052Z
Ugo Conti's Whistle-Controlled Synthesizer 2024-03-02T02:50:05.221Z
Adding Sensors to Mandolin? 2024-03-01T02:10:06.930Z
Tour Retrospective February 2024 2024-02-29T03:50:04.019Z
Band Lessons? 2024-02-28T03:00:05.381Z
Balancing Games 2024-02-24T14:40:04.237Z
Gut Renovating Another Bathroom 2024-02-21T03:00:04.787Z
Retirement Accounts and Short Timelines 2024-02-19T18:50:05.231Z
Evaluating Solar 2024-02-17T21:50:04.783Z
Kingfisher Winter Tour 2024 2024-02-16T21:40:15.784Z
Experimenting With Footboard Piezos 2024-02-11T03:00:05.131Z
A Strange ACH Corner Case 2024-02-10T03:00:05.930Z
Running the Numbers on a Heat Pump 2024-02-09T03:00:04.920Z
Full Driving Engagement Optional 2024-02-07T02:30:04.776Z
On Not Requiring Vaccination 2024-02-01T19:20:12.657Z
Sequencing Swabs 2024-02-01T01:50:17.938Z
Stacked Laptop Monitor 2024-01-26T14:10:05.297Z
Importing a Python File by Name 2024-01-25T16:00:13.210Z
Making a Secular Solstice Songbook 2024-01-23T19:40:05.055Z
Who Organizes Dances? 2024-01-22T14:30:06.045Z
When Does Altruism Strengthen Altruism? 2024-01-21T18:50:05.424Z
I Want XMP But I Know Why I Can't Have It 2024-01-19T15:30:07.492Z
More Usable Recipes 2024-01-18T17:40:05.292Z
Live Sound: Big-O Improvements 2024-01-15T19:50:06.329Z
Vote With Your Face 2024-01-14T03:30:06.009Z
Eliminating Cookie Banners is Hard 2024-01-13T03:00:04.843Z
Introduce a Speed Maximum 2024-01-11T02:50:04.284Z
Bent or Blunt Hoods? 2024-01-09T20:10:11.545Z
Better Anomia 2024-01-08T18:40:05.236Z
Sledding Among Hazards 2024-01-08T03:30:08.463Z
Screen-supported Portable Monitor 2024-01-04T13:50:06.179Z
Fact Checking and Retaliation Against Sources 2024-01-04T00:41:07.134Z
Trading off Lives 2024-01-03T03:40:05.603Z
Boston Solstice 2023 Retrospective 2024-01-02T03:10:05.694Z
Rhythm Stage Setup Components 2024-01-01T03:10:15.625Z
Flagging Potentially Unfair Parenting 2023-12-26T12:40:05.099Z
Freeze Dried Raspberry Truffles 2023-12-25T14:10:06.336Z
Viral Guessing Game 2023-12-24T13:10:11.917Z
The Next Right Token 2023-12-23T03:20:07.131Z
Pseudonymity and Accusations 2023-12-21T19:20:19.944Z
Brighter Than Today Versions 2023-12-20T18:20:04.785Z
Chording "The Next Right Thing" 2023-12-19T15:40:07.029Z
Reviving a 2015 MacBook 2023-12-17T21:00:08.729Z
The Serendipity of Density 2023-12-17T03:50:04.824Z
Red Line Ashmont Train is Now Approaching 2023-12-14T02:50:11.382Z
Yamaha P-Series Overview 2023-12-12T20:30:09.428Z

Comments

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Toward a Broader Conception of Adverse Selection · 2024-03-17T11:21:48.564Z · LW · GW

A common experience in parenting is that a little kid will strongly prefer to play with toys that other kids are playing with, even when there are lots of others sitting around totally available. Conditional on another kid having chosen this toy out of all the options it's probably a better toy!

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Ceiling Air Purifier · 2024-03-07T01:23:13.257Z · LW · GW

My guess is it's just that the fan is really big?

Since writing this I've learned more about how the air flows around ceiling fans, and I expect that (a) using slightly taller filters that extend below the blades and (b) adding a cowl would help a lot.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Retirement Accounts and Short Timelines · 2024-02-29T01:34:37.122Z · LW · GW

But your accounts would be up so much that you'd only need a tiny fraction of them to fund your immediate consumption

Maybe you want to use the money altruistically? To spend on labor, compute, etc?

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Retirement Accounts and Short Timelines · 2024-02-28T21:29:00.907Z · LW · GW

I think a lot of this depends on your distribution of potential futures:

  • What sort of returns (or inflation) do you expect, in worlds where you need the money at various ages?

  • What future legal changes do you expect?

  • How likely are you to have a 5y warning before you'll want to spend the money you've put in a traditional 401k?

  • What are your current and future tax brackets?

  • How likely are you to be in a situation where means testing means you lose a large portion of non-protected money?

  • How likely are you to lose a lawsuit for more than your (unprotected) net worth or otherwise go bankrupt?

The first version of this post (which I didn't finish) tried to include a modeling component, but it gets very complex and people have a range of assumptions so I left it as qualitative.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Band Lessons? · 2024-02-28T16:59:39.961Z · LW · GW

The third example I give is exactly that, where Andrew produced our CD, so a lot of overlap!

Helping you be a better live band in the moment, though, seems like it's usually not going to come out of working with a record producer?

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Retirement Accounts and Short Timelines · 2024-02-27T02:51:53.560Z · LW · GW

This is subtle and I may be missing something, but it seems to me that using a pretax 401k helps some but not that much, and the Roth scenario is only slightly worse than the regular investment account. Compare the three, chosen to be maximally favorable to your scenario:

  1. You contribute to your pre-tax 401k, it grows (and inflates) 2x. You roll it over into a Roth IRA, paying taxes on the conversion. Over the next five years it grows 1.3x. You withdraw the contribution and leave the gains.

  2. You contribute to your post-tax Roth 401k, it grows (and inflates) 2x, and then another 1.3x. You withdraw the same amount as in scenario #1.

  3. You put it in a regular investment account.

Let's assume your marginal tax rates are 24% for regular income and 15% for capital gains.

In #1 if you start with $100k then it's $200k at the time you convert, and you pay $48k (24%) in taxes leaving you with $152k in your Roth 401k. It grows to $198k, you withdraw $152k and you have $46k of gains in your Roth 401k.

In #2 your $100k is taxed and $76k (less the 24%) starts in the Roth. When it's time to withdraw it's grown to $198k. Of that, your $76k of contributions are tax and penalty free, leaving you with $122k of gains. To end up with $152k in your bank account you withdraw $115k, paying $28k (24%) in taxes and $12k (10%) in penalties. You have $7k of gains still in your Roth.

In #3 your $100k is taxed to $76k when you earn it, and then grows to $198k. You sell $179k, paying 15% LTCG, and end up with $152k after taxes and $19k still invested (but subject to 15% tax when you eventually sell, so perhaps consider it as $16k).

So you're better off in #1 than #3 than #2, but the difference between #3 and #2 is relatively small, and this is a scenario relatively unfavorable to Roths.

My claim isn't "Roth 401(k)s are strictly better than putting the money in investment accounts" or "Roth 401(k)s are strictly better than pre-tax 401(k)s" but instead "when you consider the range of possible futures, for most people Roth 401(k)s are better than non-protected accounts and other protected accounts may be even better".

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Sequencing Swabs · 2024-02-27T01:32:55.484Z · LW · GW

The original version of this post had results from a simulation where the key results were off by a factor of 100. See the update at the top of the post for more.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Balancing Games · 2024-02-25T16:45:02.837Z · LW · GW

Many cooperative board games run into a problem where if there are people of differing skill levels on the same team than the strongest player ends up doing most of the playing. Hanabi is the only multiplayer game I've tried that successfully avoids this, where every player needs to be engaged and trying their best.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Retirement Accounts and Short Timelines · 2024-02-22T12:06:34.197Z · LW · GW

Often, but not always: your plan might not allow in-service withdrawals, so taking the money out right away might require leaving your company.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Retirement Accounts and Short Timelines · 2024-02-20T00:52:56.507Z · LW · GW

In your 50% of worlds where we get AGI in the next 3y, do you have important uses for the money?

How does your remaining 50% smear across "soon but >3y" through "AI fizzle"?

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Retirement Accounts and Short Timelines · 2024-02-19T20:53:28.046Z · LW · GW

Saving, but avoiding protected "retirement" plans so you can invest in traditional taxed assets. This is very hard to justify, for the reasons you give. I'd classify as mostly dumb.

This is the only one I'm trying to argue against in the post, fwiw.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Evaluating Solar · 2024-02-18T03:28:17.573Z · LW · GW

My biggest concern with future solar panels is that net metering rules for new installs might get substantially less favorable.

(In general, net metering is kind of absurd. The idea that power I draw from the grid whenever is most convenient to me is worth the same amount as power I send to the grid whenever is most convenient to me is very far from correct.)

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Running the Numbers on a Heat Pump · 2024-02-09T18:43:01.873Z · LW · GW

If you ran that $2/therm gas (~$0.07/kWh) through a reasonably efficient (~40%) natural gas genset it would produce electricity cheaper than what you currently pay for power, and you would have 2/3rds of the gas energy left over as heat.

I was curious about this, and here are the numbers I got. I looked around and even a 23% efficient Generac 7171 comes out ahead. It's rated for 9kW at full output on natural gas. They say it uses 127 ft3/hr which is 1.37 or 39kWh. This is $0.304/kWh.

Of course this ignores the cost of the generator, maintenance, lower efficiency when run below full capacity, etc. but it's still pretty weird!

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Electric heat pumps (Mini-Splits) vs Natural gas boilers · 2024-02-09T13:27:22.622Z · LW · GW

the power company locally should be able to buy natural gas generators and fuel for around the same price as a power company anywhere else

I don't think this is true. Getting natural gas into this part of the country is very expensive. We don't have enough pipeline capacity, and voters are strongly against building more, so the marginal therm arrives on LNG tankers.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Electric heat pumps (Mini-Splits) vs Natural gas boilers · 2024-02-09T13:24:57.624Z · LW · GW

Given tariff asymmetries between feeding-in and drawing power locally to/from the grid, there tends to exist a strong self-consumption incentive

MA has net metering, so unless you are producing more electricity than your house consumes averaged over the year, this isn't a consideration in favor of adding additional self-consumption.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Running the Numbers on a Heat Pump · 2024-02-09T03:32:24.300Z · LW · GW

Interesting: comparing the DLCPRBH18AAK you linked to the MXZ-SM42NAMHZ2 I was quoted for, yours has maximum efficiency at a relatively high output level while mine has maximum efficiency at it's lowest output level. And yours even is even labeled as able to put out more heat at 5F than 17F, without losing COP, which is pretty weird?

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on On Not Requiring Vaccination · 2024-02-03T21:21:33.203Z · LW · GW

I think what confuses me the most about your model is:

a. I'm pretty sure the immunity you get from having had an iteration of the virus and from having had the imperfect vaccine are similar.

b. Then the selection pressures of vaccination vs infection are quite similar.

(Separately, if it were actually the case that annual imperfect vaccination made things worse for the people not getting the vaccine, which in the US is a large majority, then it seems like the CDC should not be recommending them. What do they, and other public health authorities, think of these evolutionary arguments?)

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on On Not Requiring Vaccination · 2024-02-03T12:41:15.648Z · LW · GW

Reading the paper you linked, the idea is that vaccination that doesn't result in eradication contributes to the evolution of the pathogen. They propose targeting vaccines toward virulence antigens (markers highly correlated to the pathogen being unpleasant) to influence the pathogen to evolve to lower virulence.

Their successful examples are all bacterial, which makes sense: it's much easier to separate the functions of a bacterial pathogen. Their viral example is HPV, where they discuss the idea of targeting vaccines to make it less likely to cause cancer. But, as they say, for most viruses we don't know what the virulence antigens are.

I may have missed this in the paper, but I don't see a reason to expect that randomly selected antigens would push virulence in one direction or another, so I don't know why you would expect the current covid vaccines to increase virulence?

Note that all of the above is just based on reading this one 2001 paper; I don't know if the field has made progress since then?

(But any costs or benefits here are quite low: in the US under 20% of people have the recent ("updated") booster, and globally it's surely lower. So the evolution of covid is overwhelmingly driven by escaping natural immunity from previous infections.)

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on On Not Requiring Vaccination · 2024-02-03T12:17:24.720Z · LW · GW

The LW/EA overlap with contra is pretty much only in the younger crowd, driven mostly (I think) by LW/EA being younger overall.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on On Not Requiring Vaccination · 2024-02-02T19:30:14.246Z · LW · GW

That seems pretty unlikely to be popular.

It also requires producing far more vaccine than if you just spray it in people's noses, and gives up control of the dosage and timing.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on On Not Requiring Vaccination · 2024-02-02T19:29:02.610Z · LW · GW

I'm guessing contra dance attendees skew younger than zen center attendees

Nationally I suspect this isn't the case; I'd guess 80% of contra dancers are baby boomers. But some communities have much younger demographics.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on On Not Requiring Vaccination · 2024-02-02T14:19:05.905Z · LW · GW

reduced your chance of giving it to others after you were sick.

What makes you confident?

I've seen a lot of reporting of this over the years, which I think is going back to seeing lower viral loads for vaccinated people? Here's an example study, which I've only looked at the abstract of: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8982774/

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Stacked Laptop Monitor · 2024-01-29T22:46:07.763Z · LW · GW

How does it clip on?

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Importing a Python File by Name · 2024-01-27T18:09:51.668Z · LW · GW

I want to call the section from two different pieces of code I'm experimenting with right now. At some point some of it will likely end up in a real system, but right now it's all very exploratory.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Stacked Laptop Monitor · 2024-01-26T20:58:22.814Z · LW · GW

In my case, a big reason that I want the setup I now have is that I really like the laptop's keyboard and trackpad.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Importing a Python File by Name · 2024-01-26T13:35:37.430Z · LW · GW

You mean with open("/path/to/foo.py") as inf: exec(inf.read())? I'd expect that to work, but:

  • It doesn't do namespacing (so instead of being foo.bar any symbols in foo will just end up as bar)

  • I'd really prefer not to use exec: there are so many ways to misuse it, and it's hard to tell if it's being used properly from looking at it. Much less of an issue in research code, but I'd still rather not.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Making a Secular Solstice Songbook · 2024-01-24T12:00:33.925Z · LW · GW

If you think they're very good songs, and especially if you think we're likely going to want to sing them at a future Boston Solstice?

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Make more land · 2024-01-19T21:14:03.164Z · LW · GW

The Reber plan was a very different proposal, involving barriers farther North. This is a much simpler proposal, which doesn't create any freshwater lakes.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on The impossible problem of due process · 2024-01-17T12:15:33.797Z · LW · GW

There are a bunch of problems with this even if implemented in good faith, but an obvious attack is that you convince a friend external to the community to (meet the minimum qualifications for membership and) accuse your target. This gets your target and your friend banned without investigation, but of course your friend does not care about getting banned.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on The impossible problem of due process · 2024-01-17T12:10:26.957Z · LW · GW

Creating a 501c3 is not the hard part. The hard part would be convincing a decentralized and informal community that they should accept the proposed central organization, including trusting it when it said who they should associate with.

(Which people are naturally wary of!)

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Eliminating Cookie Banners is Hard · 2024-01-16T15:19:01.502Z · LW · GW

in any way other than market competition forcing all major browsers to implement the feature, in which case it doesn’t practically matter whether the implementation requirement has legal weight.

I think it does matter? It's not clear that browsers can be required to do this, and even if it were legal to require them to it's not a good precedent. On the other hand, browsers working together with regulators and site owners to make a new technical standard (to communicate shared browser status) + rules (so it's legal to use the technical standard to not prompt about cookies) so users can have a better experience would be clearly legal and a great precedent.

(I have maybe a bit of special knowledge, in that I worked with a browser team and regulatory lawyers 2020-2022 but I'm not claiming to be an expert on how regulations and browsers change!)

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Griffin Island · 2024-01-15T19:47:35.952Z · LW · GW

After writing this I learned that the sign had been put up by Stephanie, a local parent and safer-streets advocate.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Introduce a Speed Maximum · 2024-01-15T16:04:50.918Z · LW · GW

Sorry, I actually just misread your post as saying "maximum" where you wrote "minimum".

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Eliminating Cookie Banners is Hard · 2024-01-14T18:52:08.987Z · LW · GW

I don't think you need to mandate browser features: a big reason we don't have this sort of thing today is that even if the browser offered this setting it wouldn't be enough to satisfy the regulation. The regulation could say something vaguely like "web browsers may offer their users a choice between three profiles [insert your description] and communicate to websites which setting the user has chosen. If a website receives this information, it may save information to the client device etc"

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Eliminating Cookie Banners is Hard · 2024-01-14T03:33:09.446Z · LW · GW

To the extent that the goal is to give privacy between multiple users, a way to explicitly say "this browser is just for me" and then not see cookie banners would be pretty great.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Eliminating Cookie Banners is Hard · 2024-01-14T01:58:34.695Z · LW · GW

I haven’t personally needed to pay super close attention to the e-Privacy regulations but I thought they exclusively focused on cookies as a specific technology?

For better or worse, the e-privacy directive is not specific to cookies: it covers any form of client side data storage. For example, "Users should have the opportunity to refuse to have a cookie or similar device stored on their terminal equipment."

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Introduce a Speed Maximum · 2024-01-14T01:54:31.381Z · LW · GW

I actually just completely misread my parents post and thought they wrote "maximum" and not "minimum".

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Introduce a Speed Maximum · 2024-01-13T13:14:41.993Z · LW · GW

I cannot recall having seen any recently but do recall seeing minimum speed limits posted on highways in the USA.

Could you be thinking of Canadian speed limit signs, which say "maximum"?

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Introduce a Speed Maximum · 2024-01-12T02:31:22.479Z · LW · GW

How about instead of doing some random proposed change with speed limit maximums and what not we do some AB testing and figure out what's safer?

Rolling out this proposal on some randomly selected matched pairs of high-fatality roads and comparing outcomes would be relatively cheap.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Introduce a Speed Maximum · 2024-01-11T14:40:03.973Z · LW · GW

In large parts of the country, there's nowhere that it's legal to drive anywhere near that fast

Nowhere legal on public roads; you could take your car to a track.

wouldn't it also be better if normal cars just weren't capable of going over, say, 90mph?

I mean, probably, but isn't people driving 100mph+ a tiny fraction of deaths from speeding?

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Sledding Among Hazards · 2024-01-09T20:07:27.890Z · LW · GW

What's the issue with tubes if you always bail if (a) you end up rotated so you can't see or (b) you're on track for an obstacle?

(I don't think the 'bounce' makes them safer; not arguing that.)

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Sledding Among Hazards · 2024-01-09T14:02:59.495Z · LW · GW

One of the hills around here is very steep, leading down to a fence. After someone died, hitting the fence pretty hard (not the first time, just the most recent), they started putting hay bales at the bottom every year.

You could do something like that on this hill, but it gets much less sledding traffic and is much less dangerous than the other one, so it's less clear it's worth it.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Screen-supported Portable Monitor · 2024-01-05T14:59:11.534Z · LW · GW

Thanks for finding this! That build was a lot more DIY than what I'm doing: almost the whole video is them building things that I got essentially "for free" with the screen I chose. I think the relevant bit is they used hinges to attach the additional monitor to a metal panel the size of the laptop screen, and then velcro'd that panel to the back of the laptop screen. They used custom 3d-printed hinges, and a kickstand to support the additional weight.

I do think I want something with hinges, or else I end up with a portable monitor + adapter setup which is awkwardly large. I think I may be able to find existing hinges (a door hinge?) that have the right properties without needing to 3d print something.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Fact Checking and Retaliation Against Sources · 2024-01-05T00:58:00.012Z · LW · GW

When I referenced this post on the EA Forum Jason commented:

... If the would-be author knows prior to publication that the sources have retracted, that could significantly increase the defamation-liability risk ...

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Screen-supported Portable Monitor · 2024-01-04T15:34:44.879Z · LW · GW

Another option would be a tripod stand that goes down to the floor (ex).  It's bulky, but I could work with this at a chair with no desk, for example if I needed to get a bunch done while traveling.  Wouldn't work for airplanes or quick use, though.

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Screen-supported Portable Monitor · 2024-01-04T15:29:10.394Z · LW · GW

I don't think duct tape would work: I'd need something rigid. But duct tape and something strong and light would work.

(I probably also would want a tape that doesn't leave a residue.)

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Screen-supported Portable Monitor · 2024-01-04T14:51:17.402Z · LW · GW

I'm imagining positioning this so that it's vertical and balanced, and isn't loading the hinge very much towards either opening further or closing?

Consider that it's designed to hold the normal-weight screen in whatever position you leave it, including the maximum-leverage nearly-closed position, and it seems like it should be able to handle a somewhat heavier weight when close to the ideal angle?

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Screen-supported Portable Monitor · 2024-01-04T14:17:01.422Z · LW · GW

I see people doing this with side monitors (ex) but possibly these all have kickstands?

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Trading off Lives · 2024-01-04T12:15:41.679Z · LW · GW

Yes, as a passenger

Comment by jefftk (jkaufman) on Trading off Lives · 2024-01-04T00:19:13.224Z · LW · GW

I'm coming from a starting place of assuming that if a bunch of people are doing X and would loudly protest if you told them to stop doing X, then preventing them from doing X is a cost to them. This assumption can be overruled with sufficient evidence that preventing them from doing X actually helps them, but I don't see that here?