Chris Billington

10.2K posts

Chris Billington

@Chrisbilbo

Working on embedded and automation software for portable atomic clocks at Adelaide University, former atomic physicist, generally a nerd

Melbourne, Australia Katılım Aralık 2009

211 Takip Edilen5.9K Takipçiler

Chris Billington retweetledi

Ben@BenShindel·16 Eki

I did a deep dive into this CR investigation for my blog. Their reporting has a number of concerning errors that completely undermine their findings. Chief among these is a reliance on CA's pseudo-scientific daily lead limits that are far lower than average human intake.

paris martineau@parismartineau

my latest investigation for @ConsumerReports is based on months of reporting and 60+ lab tests of leading protein supplements we found that most protein powders and shakes have more lead in one serving than our experts say is safe to have in a day — some by more than 10 times !

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Chris Billington@Chrisbilbo·16 Tem

@summer_of_bliss I imagine rent assistance is simply a distortion - not correcting for one - just somewhat less so than other approaches. But if we're going to have welfare at all then most forms are going to be somewhat distortionary, and we just have to pick our poison.

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Chris Billington@Chrisbilbo·16 Tem

@summer_of_bliss Yeah, I get that. Perhaps more comprehensive means-testing would give equal amounts whether someone's paying a mortgage or renting, but not to e.g. a retiree that owns their home outright. Non-earmarked money but with less-distorted means-testing might make sense.

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Chris Billington@Chrisbilbo·16 Tem

Rent assistance is broadly favoured by economists over most housing affordability interventions, it was a recommendation of the 2010 Henry Tax Review, and of the 2022 National Housing and Homelessness Agreement review from the Productivity Commission.

Rational Aussie@rationalaussie

There it is folks. Like clockwork. Rent assistance on the way. If you understand how the system works, predicting what happens next actually isn't that hard.

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Chris Billington@Chrisbilbo·16 Tem

@summer_of_bliss You can check out what Henry has to say here: treasury.gov.au/sites/default/… And the Housing and Homelessness Agreement review here: pc.gov.au/inquiries/comp…

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Chris Billington@Chrisbilbo·16 Tem

@summer_of_bliss it is inflationary, all else equal, agreed. But so is all welfare, and so is public housing in terms of inflating construction costs - economists just seem to think voucher systems and plugging into the private rental system is more efficient than public housing.

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Chris Billington@Chrisbilbo·13 Tem

@politicalmath A decline to 50% coverage any time soon may be implausible, but it's also a total overkill assumption. Measles has an R0 that's usually cited as 12-18, meaning a 100% effective vaccine needs north of 90% coverage to prevent spread. So a much smaller decline is still a concern.

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PoIiMath@politicalmath·12 Tem

People would trust public health experts more if they all stopped treating us like a bunch of idiots

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Chris Billington@Chrisbilbo·12 Tem

@42irrationalist Verdict: pretty much yes. Sounds like there are two singly-peaked functions, but only one is relevant at any given time depending on lighting conditions en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_…

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Chris Billington@Chrisbilbo·12 Tem

@42irrationalist I haven't checked, but registering the prediction that this is an artifact of the luminosity calculation, and that human eye sensitivity by wavelength is actually a singly peaked function (I do know we're most sensitive to green, but not whether there are other peaks)

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curious irrationalist@42irrationalist·12 Tem

it's interesting that you can clearly see the 7 rainbow colours as dark or light peaks there it looks like the seven-colour model of a rainbow might be a natural kind and not a social construct

Cube Flipper@cube_flipper

@eshear @algekalipso to be 100% clear about what i mean, if you take the luminosity channel of a maximally-saturated color wheel, yellow is the most luminous.

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Chris Billington retweetledi

Chana@ChanaMessinger·9 Tem

The AI 2027 scenario is terrifying and important. More people should be thinking about how radical change might come over the next few years, how likely it is, and how a sane world would be reacting to it. We want to bring you into the story, and the conversation. Video here:

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Chris Billington@Chrisbilbo·9 Tem

Confused by the disdain the timeline seems to have for speed dating. It's not a substitute for dates, it's a substitute for swiping. it's swiping but with gender parity, being forced to spend 5m on each person, filtered for people who bothered to leave the house and aren't bots

Jakeup@myhandle

F: hey would you enjoy going a date but there's 90% chance I'll reject you and I gotta run 5 minutes after we start M: wtf no that sounds awful F: ok how about 10 of these in a row?

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Chris Billington@Chrisbilbo·8 Tem

If it were about environmentalism, Europeans would all have AC as a side effect of using heat pumps for heating, unless deliberately crippled to not to be able to run in reverse. The environmentalism angle seems pretty BS if they're wasting energy by not even using heat pumps

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Chris Billington@Chrisbilbo·6 Tem

@peterwildeford except: return Maybe I should just ban Claude from any and all exception handling

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Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀@peterwildeford·6 Tem

Claude code: you either get flawless genius where 5 hours of work are done in about 30 minutes, or you get boneheaded stupidity. I'm never sure which one is going to strike.

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Chris Billington@Chrisbilbo·6 Tem

@JMannhart @k3nn3h @JosephPolitano But I seem to be in a minority here! To be fair, true free software zealots don't use twitter

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Jonathan Mannhart 🔎🔸@JMannhart·6 Tem

@Chrisbilbo @k3nn3h @JosephPolitano (I think I‘m updating to agnostic here, don’t have enough experience with open source vs trademark things. Thanks for updating me & apologies for speaking somewhat confidently at first, I‘ll add an epistemic status qualifier.)

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Joey Politano 🏳️‍🌈@JosephPolitano·6 Tem

Cremieux the "race scientist" has been stealing my newsletter's chart style—I DMed him to stop because I don't want to be associated with him, even incidentally, & now he's crashing out on main about it, posting the "theme_politano" he copied & telling others to take credit

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Chris Billington@Chrisbilbo·6 Tem

@JMannhart @k3nn3h @JosephPolitano And yes, precisely, disagree on a norm like that having relevance because I see the license as implying strong norms otherwise.

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Keşfet

@summer_of_bliss @politicalmath @42irrationalist @peterwildeford @JMannhart @k3nn3h @JosephPolitano @elonmusk