Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | convolvatron's commentslogin

no, we already abolished all rule making and review about CO2, this is removing the EPA requirement to install scrubbers for removal of NO and NO2 given sufficiently large outputs, which cause acid rain and are linked to respiratory problems. of course it all depends on the dose, which is why there there is a review process, which I guess was just too inconvenient

These are off-the-shelf generators, not bespoke built on-site. They typically have NOx emissions even lower than modern cars.

wow. that's really quite backwards. the more money you raise and the more money you want, the bigger the story you have to tell. apparently after 1T you've got to raise the stakes to extinction level event.

"it's just marketing" cool story bro

I struggled a little bit reading this. but I think your point is valid. if we are actually advancing the field then we should just be unconditionally happy. ignoring the attribution issue, there is a real concern that the process of math has been somewhat undermined. so we have a giant lean proof that shows that there is a solution to an important problem. but we didn't find the solution, and we didn't get it expressed in such a way that it helps develop the common language of mathematics, and thus isn't a very useful building block for later work (like the actual solution).

the math people seem to really keep an eye on what's important, so I'm sure this isn't going to lead to fields medalists hanging around in dive bars all afternoon stretching out cheap pitchers of beer. but this is kind of a slop problem.


> I struggled a little bit reading this. but I think your point is valid. if we are actually advancing the field then we should just be unconditionally happy.

If advancement comes at the expense of having fewer (or no) humans left in the field, then no.

They're eating the seed-corn, and you're cheering them on. Don't be so short-sighted. There's a reason farmers keep seed corn, and it's because they'd like to eat again next year.

We're singing and cheering our way into an intellectual famine.


I worked a little on a finsec program in the early 90s. I had an anonymized dataset with bank account deposits and withdrawals and credit card transactions. I don't know how complete it was, but dividing by the US population the total number of records made it pretty feasible that it was the whole thing.

the fact that traditional database infrastructure handles many people's needs doesn't really obviate dataflow style architectures. personally I think (3) composition is a real potential win. I would also note that streaming is a really great base on which to build a distributed database that looks more like Postgres on top.

I guess I'm mostly confused about the idea that streaming systems should be trying to supplant sql databases, or that a failure to do so implies that they don't have utility. it looks like the GP has done some really interesting work on automatic parallelism. that isn't pointless just because most people building operational systems still reflexively reach for PG.


That work is still relevant! It's just that end-users don't need to be aware of it. The position of the paper I submitted, which I basically agree with, is that "streaming" shouldn't need to be something end-users care about. It's something the system does based on needs.

Databases already have a dataflow style architecture: that's how they implement queries. Because SQL is relational, SQL queries become dataflow execution plans.

One way to think about the programming model I worked on is that it was like exposing a query plan API directly to users, instead of giving them SQL.


A project to watch in that space is Rama from Red Planet Labs [0]. It pushes further the trend of destructuring databases into a very flexible streaming engine and database.

It has no query engine, instead the platform offers powerful primitives to partition and distribute both data and compute, effectively destructuring transactions and query engine into microbatch and stream topologies.

I think the real value of such platform is in how it can replace tons of microservices and nosql databases into a single platform with a coherent model. Replacing 1M LOC across 100 services and databases by one cluster with 10000 LOC is an operational dream come true.

Also I expect LLMs limitations to force us to resolve ourselves the operational complexity of IT, as I can't imagine letting LLMs multiply the number of services and databases like PRs on github. Platforms like Rama provide the necessary constraints to channel LLM output into a coherent whole easy to operate and observe.

[0] https://redplanetlabs.com/


It is indeed interesting, and it's from Nathan Marz, who was the creator of Storm. That was the first major open source streaming platform. It predated what I consider the default open source streaming platform, Flink.

Glancing through the docs, my main three reactions are: 1) It's sophisticated system which, as you say, effectively opens up the components of a database engine to be used as needed. 2) Folks will still want to eventually land their data in a "normal" data-at-rest storage format like Hive tables or Parquet. 3) Folks will still want SQL.


there is a couple good arguments that alternative front ends open up competition. the first is that since people only see the front end, then augmenting that with additional backends is lower friction. the other is that since network effects are so important (people only go to the busy clubs), that providing a bridge to the existing users and content is kind of mandatory for someone trying to promote an alternative.

two doors down from my shop is an antique bently restorer. he's sold a few, but he still has 5 frames that he's working on. after all the custom panel and interior work and chasing after the few remaining parts available in all kinds of odd international corners he's still quite underwater.

Sucks to be that guy? I'm not sure what your point is. You haven't given enough information to assess much. It's also likely you don't know all the numbers or you'd be working there.

ok, so we managed to get a decision that the president wan't immune from having to pay out in a civil suit related to the molestation of a woman from before he even became a politician. but part of the problem here is the blurring of the personal and the official. should the president be liable for overtly violating the constitution 'while performing official acts'. Is interfering in the state's right to hold their own elections an official act? is instructing the military to order someone in cold blood an official act? does pursuing a series of novel legal interpretations imply that he was violating the law or not? is accepting money in exchange for a presidential pardon an official act?

whether or not you believe this is a pass from the Supreme Court, it opens up a whole new unexplored space of lack of culpability.


its substantially worse than that. anytime anyone uses the word 'scale' without even saying what kind of scaling they mean is guilty of eroding the discourse. at this point I don't think we should even be talking about scaling without meaning 'the Amdahl residual'

Hear hear

we can probably generalize and say that anything that's a culture war issue has become disconnected with useful actionable reality.

This is not a culture war issue. And there are people posting real data ITT.

it certainly seems to be. if it were just a matter of noise, or discharging contaminated water, or waste gasses we're supposed to have rules for these things. any facility that does these things is supposed to adhere to them.

so the issue isn't about data centers at all, but the fact that we've decided to stop enforcing even minimal environmental standards.

water consumption is another one, we just haven't done a very good of realizing that its a limited resource and trying to manage it.

the other is raising electrical rates. it should just be a real problem to raise rates to pay for Capex for other non-residential customers.

those are all real issues. 'people are going to get screwed' is a culture war thing, particularly if their opinion seems to be against environmental regulation as a matter of course. if a data center isn't noisy and polluting, and doesn't impact water or electrical consumption, then there is no sane reason to be against it. there are data centers that use close loop cooling. there are those that don't effect your rates. there are ones that are not really close to residences.


Ok where are all three that satisfy your last paragraph requirements?

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: