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The SVS PB-17 Ultra advertises a range of 12-220Hz at -3dB. I imagine it could play a pure 7Hz tone if you turn it up.

And most speakers can play infrasound for many non-sinusoidal waveforms [0]. They'll drop the fundamental and some lower-end harmonics but can still give a sense of what it sounds like

[0] https://szynalski.com/tone#7,saw,v0.5


> I imagine it could play a pure 7Hz tone if you turn it up.

You're misunderstanding the numbers here. Going from 12 to 7 Hz is most of an octave, nearly doubling wavelengths.

Also SVS's numbers are gonna be the usual marketing stuff, so they're assuming a fat room gain curve, and just looking at their website they have a disclaimer on their graphs that it doesn't represent actual total output capability. Which is a way of hiding that if you actually try to drive it that hard that low with ~3kw electrical in those voice coils are going to torch.

The non lying way to prove that claim is to show large signal Kipple results including the heat soak. They ain't doin' that here.

Basically stuff going this low is really exotic and more in the realm of servos that simulate earthquakes than traditional transducers.

Tom Danley is the world expert on this sort of thing. He used to build stuff like ultrasonic levitation ovens and full scale sonic boom simulators for JPL/NASA.

In the audio world he was first famous as the tech lead behind ServoDrive. This now defunct company made special effects subwoofers using DC rotary servo motors to drive the diaphragm. They were used as special effects subs in that era by big acts like Garth Brooks. But they didn't catch on outside that niche because very little music has significant content below 40 hz as it just turns into a muddy rumble that harms sound quality as a whole. So to use these sorts of things you have to mix for it specifically. Cinema goes lower with the rumbles down to 15hz, but that's basically it.

Getting anything that's like a clean tone at 7hz is not gonna happen without a purpose built device.

FWIW Tom Danley started his own company[1] after Servo Drive failed on the business side, where he focuses on large scale horn speakers using novel topologies. They're among the best in the business at what they. Again, they don't have anything that even remotely tries to go down to 7hz.

[1]: https://www.danleysoundlabs.com/

Tom's a nice guy, I've traded emails with him a few times over the years. He used to be pretty active on the DIY speaker building mailing lists sharing his very in depth knowledge freely.


For context, the lowest notes on most pipe organs are typically about 33 or 16 Hz (from a pipe that is 8', 16', or 32' long).


Not GPT-5 trying to deceive us about how deceptive it is?


Why would you think it is anything special? Just because Sam Altman said so? The same guy who told us he was scared of releasing GPT-2.5 but now calling its abilities "toddler/kindergarten" level?


My comment was mostly a joke. I don't think there's anything "special" about GPT-5.

But these models have exhibited a few surprising emergent traits, and it seems plausible to me that at one point they could intentionally deceive users in the course of exploring their boundaries.

Is it that far fetched?


There is no intent, nor is there a mechanism for intent. They don't do long term planning nor do they alter themselves due to things they go through during inference. Therefore there cannot be intentional deception they partake in. The system may generate a body of text that a human reader may attribute to deceptiveness but there is no intent.


> There is no intent

I'm not an ML engineer - is there an accepted definition of "intent" that you're using here? To me, it seems as though these GPT models show something akin to intent, even if it's just their chain of thought about how they will go about answering a question.

> nor is there a mechanism for intent

Does there have to be a dedicated mechanism for intent for it to exist? I don't see how one could conclusively say that it can't be an emergent trait.

> They don't do long term planning nor do they alter themselves due to things they go through during inference.

I don't understand why either of these would be required. These models do some amount of short-to-medium term planning even it is in the context of their responses, no?

To be clear, I don't think the current-gen models are at a level to intentionally deceive without being instructed to. But I could see us getting there within my lifetime.


If you were one of the very first people to see an LLM in action, even a crappy one, and you didn't have second thoughts about what you were doing and how far things were going to go, what would that say about you?


It is just dishonest rhetoric no matter what. He is the most insincere guy in the industry, somehow manages to come off even less sincere than the lawnmower Larry Ellison. At least that guy is honest about not having any morals.


What's stopping you?


Lack of resources, burn-out, lack of good relationships, overall bad relationship with the world, bad economic state and probably many other things I can’t remember at the moment.


I agree with many of the comments here, but also feel part of this is caused by the declination of our collective physical and spiritual health.

It's easier to care about your job when you're capable of doing a good job. But the average person nowadays is more likely to be dealing with obesity, hormonal imbalances or a variety of other modern ailments/vices that make it harder to think clearly or perform consistently.

And then social media gives us post after post about how your coworkers are not your family and how dumb you have to be to give 100% to your work. A lot of people seem to mindlessly prescribe to this train of thought that would otherwise have questioned it if they went to a church or had some belief system that emphasized the inherent importance of doing good work.


Yes. And in my view the concept of expectation plays I think a vital role in how an individual relates to society.

If the individual expects that society doesn't care about the individual than the individual has no / less reason to take care of oneself for the benefit of society.

A solution to this is to be more conscious of one's own values. What do you value for how strangers who are nearby you should be treated? Kindly? Aggressively? If those values are being met and are shared by your immediate society, then it's a chance that you might also feel like you are being taken care of. Which then might meet your sense of stress and satisfaction which might then allow you to feel comfortable interacting with society in a playful manner more comfortably bringing up your own needs in the group, and having a shoulder to cry on when when you need to, and having a group just help step in and take care of some of your needs because they have the bandwidth to do so. And they also care because they share your values.

Values are, I think, an underappreciated concept, these days, partly because of all sides shaming, but also because the algorithm as they call it is what is supplanting our values. The algorithm is pushing views on us. And you know the old saying, you are what you eat, that also applies to you are what you read.. we're undergoing conditioning by reading all this stuff about all these different ideas about all these different things which we were supposed to care about. So our values are becoming a little soft and squishy, about what it is that we want or need. We are trying to get what we need from a environment which is being driven by the algorithm and its values.

So anyhow, pay attention to your values... And shape your interactions with the world including social media based on those values. And you'll be happier.


Removing plastics from my apartment has made it come to life

The biggest change was giving all of my plants real planters. They are so much happier now :)


Have you not heard about approval voting? Or do you not see it as another path to multi party elections?


Approval voting would be better than what we have now, but I think ranked choice is easier for people to understand.

I think putting preferences is more comforting to people than the idea of approving people equally if you have preference.


> I think ranked choice is easier for people to understand

I strongly disagree. "Vote for one or more candidates" is even easier to explain than "sort all these candidates in the order of your preference".

And once you start trying to explain the potential adverse effects there's no contest. Approval voting today, tomorrow, forever.


* You can cap the number of candidates to rank (in other words cap the number of instant run-offs before another election may be needed). Or you cap the number of candidates, or determine a tie-breaker strategy after X rounds.

* What adverse effects are there that are worse than FPTP?

* I think if someone loathes candidate A, doesn't like candidate B but would tolerate them, and REALLY LIKES candidate C, they should be able to express that preference. Approval voting demands they express B and C with equal endorsement. Personally, I think that's discouraging.


> what adverse effects are there that are worse than FPTP.

* The results of close elections become basically random (due to results swinging wildly depending on the order in which the first few candidates are eliminated)

* You have to convey results with a series of graphs rather than a single graph (which confuses voters)

* You need all ballots in-hand to start an official count, so you can't call elections early

* You lose the ability to perform risk-limiting audits, which are the cheapest and easiest way to audit elections

So bad actors can trivially affect RCV elections by destroying or delaying a few mail-in ballots, as well as cast doubt on RCV results as a whole


1) This is not worse than FPTP at all since they are the same in the case of two candidates and FPTP has horrible properties with multiple candiates (the condorcet loser can win the election). Ranked voting can use various methods (condorcet or hybrid) to make sure the winner is the condorcet winner or in the smith set but that adds complexity and no voting method has every desirable property (IRV does not always elect the condorcet winner). Approval voting also can elect the condorcet loser which seems like quite a bad property to me (particularly since this can be affected by strategic voting).

2) Any confusion is due to lack of familiarity and the additional information can be useful beyond determining the winner.

3) This is only true when hand counting a lot of votes (just because you don't want to do it multiple times). Portland just had an election with STV for council seats and IRV for Mayor and these elections were (when possible) called early. You can see the early results here:

https://rcvresults.multco.us/

4) From a quick Google Scholar search there are risk-limiting audit options for IRV that usually work with few ballots but in occasional worst cases can need a full recount. See Blom et al. Ballot-Polling Risk Limiting Audits for IRV Elections:

[PDF] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michelle-Blom-3/publica...

I agree with buzzy_hacker that proportional representation is the most important thing to aim for. The main advantage of IRV is that it is easy to understand for single winner elections if you use STV for proprotional representation (which seems like a good choice for the US to me). As far as I know Ireland only has the President (a ceremonial role) individually elected but the US has a bunch of individually elected positions so going directly to the Irish system would be a bigger change.


Just elections really are a science.

I'll comment on the last point: I know that multi member districts with proportional representation would be better. Hell, I am closer to convinced that a parliamentary system would be better for us, but I think the people of the US like having a directly elected head of state.

Democracies have evolved in 250 years. We're running old software.


1) Preliminary election-night results (provided by ballot-counting software) will change drastically as new ballots arrive, and it is harder for voters to understand margins. For example, a 2022 miscount in California for a board of education position (noticed weeks after the election) should have elected the candidate who had previously gotten 3rd place.

https://abc7news.com/amp/ranked-choice-voting-oakland-school...

2) You're saying that a series of graphs is only harder to understand than a single graph due to lack of "familiarity?" This seems disingenuous. With single-graph results, you can show geographical heat maps of voting behavior which is paints a vivid picture of the vote. Heat maps for RCV are misleading and/or require additional context (this shows 1st choices).

3) Hand-counted ballots are a must in my opinion (for audit-ability). And hand counts of RCV are time-consuming so are typically only done once. I guess runaway elections can be called early with RCV, but my point is that it will happen far less often and most election results will be significantly delayed (waiting for all mail-in ballots to start a hand count)

4) I admit I didn't read this paper nor understand it at a cursory glance, but I know this was a drum that approval voting experts beat a while back. Maybe these strategies are new, or have downsides I'm unaware of.

Why do you see proportional representation as the most important thing to aim for? This is the only argument for RCV over approval that holds water, but my mental model for the need for proportional representation is of politics being a 0-sum game where everyone needs to vie for themselves (which I disagree with).


1) Sure it can happen and mistakes happen in any voting system. You can't tell who wins a close election until all the votes are counted, that is pretty much the definition of a close election. FPTP elections are also miscalled at times.

2) Anyone who cares to look at a heat map will need to learn how the new system works then will appreciate the additional information (the ballot could usefully also include approval information as a distinct aspect that doesn't affect results so that it is possible to determine how many voters like their representative, but I would say that approval voting does not communicate that).

3) Why do you think hand counting improves auditability? Being able to hand count does of course but actually doing the main count by hand doesn't seem to me like it would add anything. Not that I am opposed to hand counting, in that case you just wait for the ballots. As issues go it is way down the list from the other properties of the voting system in my opinion.

4) That one was 2018 or 2019 I think and an older one I saw was published in 2013 so yeah it sounds like this research is fairly recent and still being improved.

I don't see politics as a 0-sum game but people absolutely have fundamental differences where politics is the non-violent way to come to a resolution. These differences can be non-obvious if it isn't important to you and proportional representation gives a better chance that an elected representative will be able to understand and care about your issue (which increases the chance it can be solved easily if it isn't a contentious issue even if your favored representative doesn't otherwise have power). To put it another way, if the point of an election is to elect a represetative then proportional representation aims to give everyone representation within the practical limits of the number of representatives. Ideally, this would also make it easier for the representative to explain actual points of contention and tradeoffs (and basic stuff like what they are actually able to affect) to constituents and build general political competence, although I can't say that what I know of countries that use proportional representation is as promising as I would like on that. Ultimately a voting system alone can't do everything, representation isn't the only possible reason to ever have an election, and my personal ideal of how political resolution of differences can or should work involves a number of things quite different from currently common methods. Overall I see FPTP elections as more of a show to distract from behind the scenes power than a system designed to resolve differences peacefully and approval voting seems similar to me (in my opinion one of the most important things a voting method should try to do is limit the effect of strategic voting).


Proportional representation is more important than RCV vs approval voting for single-winner elections. And, in the US, multi-winner RCV (single transferable vote) is the most viable approach to achieve that.


Yeah I'm curious if the negative effects of autism could be due to the brain physically running out of space and getting "compressed?"

It reminds me of trepanation, the old-school mental health procedure to just drill a hole in the skull. Some people still do it and swear by it [0], saying that it relieves pressure.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0202909/


Autism is a sensory processing disorder in which your brain receives too much stimulus. This it makes sense it would occur when you have too many neurons (or connections) as that would cause increased response to any external stimulus.

It’s not because of “skull pressure”


Well, it seems logical that any "overgrowth" would need more space - but it looks like our skulls are malleable and continue to fuse into adulthood. I wonder if there's a process where they grow to the size needed by the brain?

TIL that our heads grow by about ~8% (in circumference) after we're tweens [0]. Cool!

[0] https://www.craftyarncouncil.com/standards/head-circumferenc...


IMO "muting" as a user-facing concept should be done away with.

It's inherently negative, basically meaning "not enabled" and as such, `not muted` == `not not enabled`.

Just say whether their mic is on or off, and reflect that with the UX elements and writing. Done.


> That’s why I ended up going with e-bikes and escooters. I think the nature of the motion lends itself to be inherently safer.

Mechanical brakes are nice.


what is this now, a quadruple negative?

It is untrue that they have no idea if the "solutions" we try won't lead to worse outcomes

It is true that they have some idea that the "solutions" we try won't lead to worse outcomes

It is true that they have some idea that the "solutions" we try will lead to better outcomes.

I think the nuance needed here is: what do we mean by "better outcomes?" It's reasonable to believe that it will help lower temperatures. But is that an "outcome" in and of itself?

If we consider the "outcome" to also include the second and third order effects, I'd like to understand how anyone could be certain that it will be better.


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