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merc

@ merc @sh.itjust.works

Posts
10
Comments
3682
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • HD 137010 b

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  • AIs may never be a real thing. Even if it were somehow theoretically possible for an AI to suddenly come into being if a computer system gets complicated enough, humans would probably do what humans do best and make them extinct. Humans have already killed off massive numbers of species by accident just because they happened to be on the same terrain humans wanted to use: there used to be a forest, humans wanted to grow crops so they destroyed the forest, now a lot of forest species are gone.

    Now a new species might emerge on terrain that humans already fully control and consider 100% theirs: computer systems? Humans would just kill it off to get 100% of their computer systems back, rather than having to share them with another entity -- and that's even assuming the humans recognized them as being "alive" in some way.

    Only a tiny number of animal species have prospered in the era of humans, and they're the species that humans have domesticated -- in other words, the species that humans have intentionally modified to be calm, dumb and servile. So, maybe a version of AI could survive, but it would have to offer great benefits to humans to make it worth the humans giving up their "land" to it. It certainly won't own the future, it will just be yet another thing that humans modify and shape until it's useful to them.

  • Technology Connections - You are being misled about renewable energy technology.

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  • figuring out how much it uses in a 5 day work week, or per month or year

    In which case you're multiplying by large numbers so it doesn't matter if you start with Joules or kilowatt-hours, so you should start with the SI unit.

    Ok even if that is true and they're both equally unintuitive you're the one who wants everyone to switch to an unfamiliar unit for no apparent reason.

    The reason is that there is an SI unit for energy, and using the non-standard unit is dumb.

    Why does it make so much more sense to talk about solar and electric car charging on the scale seconds of power than hours that everyone should change units?

    Because there's an SI unit for energy, and there's nothing superior about kWh, it just adds to the confusion to have multiple different units that all measure the same thing. You get the stupid situation that Americans have with other units where there's teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, gallons, ounces, etc. all for measuring volume instead of just using L for everything.

  • Lord Mandelson resigns from Labour Party over Epstein links

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  • My crimes will be explored in as much depth as possible in any extensive biography

    Probably not. Without any investigation it will all be speculation. Biographies are written for a commercial audience. Who's going to buy a biography of Andrew? People who like the royals, not people who hate them. If he'd actually appeared in court, the biography would have to address it. But, with it all just speculation, they can mention the speculation and move on.

    It's possible that some of the people who met with Epstein did it because they knew he could introduce them to other rich and powerful people. They might not have known about the child sexual abuse. Or they suspected something, but thought that Epstein was always seen with barely legal 18-year-olds, and that that was the extent of it.

    I personally don't think that Epstein introduced himself to billionaires by saying "Hi, I'm Jeff Epstein, I rape children, are you interested in raping children too?" I don't believe that being a billionaire automatically means you not only enjoy raping children, but are excited to share that hobby with other people. Epstein probably sounded them out, investigated them, and only went into details with the ones who weren't going to expose him. And, most likely, he got blackmail material on anybody who he did share his "hobby" with. He probably kept anybody who he thought might expose him at arms length, and he only let them see him with girls who were 18+.

    So, while that plausible deniability exists, I'm sure Andrew wants to be able to claim that he was buddies with Epstein, but was so clueless that he never knew about the child sexual abuse.

  • Technology Connections - You are being misled about renewable energy technology.

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  • Are you seriously saying that when you're talking about a solar panel you care about how much energy it produces per hour, not per second, per day, per week, or per year?

    If you want to estimate the energy usage of a 400 watt lighting system during an 8 hour workday

    Why would you want to do that? And what kind of lighting system in 2026 uses 400 Watts?

    Are you seriously saying that when you're using your 2000 watt hair dryer, you want to pretend that you used it for an hour, and then scale that back to the few seconds you actually used it? Are you seriously pretending that your 800 watt microwave oven is on for a full hour at full power while you're heating your nuggets, so it makes sense to think of it in terms of kilowatt hours?

    The reason most people think kWh is intuitive is that they're used to it because their electrical utility uses it. It's the same reason that Americans think Fahrenheit is more intuitive, while the rest of the world thinks Celsius is more intuitive. It's why Americans think miles make more sense for measuring distance, while the rest of the world thinks kilometers are easier to use.

  • HD 137010 b

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  • Honestly, if FTL travel is never invented, the future is going to be so incredibly boring.

  • Technology Connections - You are being misled about renewable energy technology.

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  • No they're not. You're just used to them.

  • Technology Connections - You are being misled about renewable energy technology.

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  • Why would I care about "Joules per hour"? What matters is power (Watts), and total energy used (Joules). "Kilowatt hour per month" is just an awkward way of saying "Joules per month"

  • No one is illegal

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  • Cool, just be careful on the rules. Switzerland is technically not part of the EEA. They're part of the EFTA, and have a bunch of bilateral agreements with the rest of the EU, but there are still quirks to the deals. Even if you're charged only minimal fees or duties, that could add up if you're buying a car. At a minimum, you'll probably have to do paperwork to export the car from Switzerland to another country. And the Swiss love their paperwork.

  • No one is illegal

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  • Have you ever crossed the Swiss border? That was an interesting one. Switzerland isn't in the EU but they're in a lot of bilateral agreements which means they mostly have an open border. But, that agreement is a lot less solid than the rest of the EU agreements.

    It seems like the France / Belgium border could be turned back into a proper border control post within a few months. But, the Swiss / France border seems like it could be back in full force within a few days. Currently you can drive past it at nearly full highway speeds, but all the border control buildings are there, and the roads leading up to them are just ready for them to start diverting traffic again. I also seem to remember that it offered a last second chance to turn around and not cross the border, something you didn't get at say France / Germany. Probably because there actually is a meaningful difference in laws between the two sides, so there's a chance someone might decide not to do it.

  • Technology Connections - You are being misled about renewable energy technology.

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  • Astronomy uses special units because the SI units are more than 10 orders of magnitude different. You'd have to use really exotic prefixes like "zetta" or "yotta" if you wanted to keep using metres.

    The difference between a kilowatt and a megajoule is just 3 orders of magnitude. You just have to switch from "k" to "M". People are already familiar not only with "M" but with "G" and "T" because of Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes, etc. There's nothing about kilowatt hours that's more intuitive or easy to use.

  • Technology Connections - You are being misled about renewable energy technology.

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  • This appliance uses 1 kilowatt. Running it for 1 second uses 1 kJ. Easy.

    Are you billed by the hour, or by the month?

  • Why hello fellow pedos. Tiz I Elon!

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  • The other thing Epstein offered was connections to the other ultra-wealthy. He was basically a "socialite" who knew "everyone worth knowing" and could make introductions.

    These ultra rich people have armies of personal assistants whose whole job is to keep the riff-raff away. Without someone like Epstein to introduce you, your attempts to contact some other rich dude are likely to be caught in this human spam filter.

    Also, it seems like one "service" Epstein was providing to his other rich friends was to not introduce certain other people to them. It looks to me like Elon was one of the people who didn't make the cut.

  • No one is illegal

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  • It's much harder to get citizenship in most EU countries than it is to get citizenship in the USA. Until Trump, it was also easier to get into the US on a visa than to get into Europe on a visa.

    I think I've seen border checkpoints while driving between EU countries, but it was hard to tell because they hadn't been in operation for decades. But, there's still a vague sense of a border. It seems like the countries maintain that area enough so that if ever they had to put the border control points back into operation it could be done. So, you can sort of tell that you crossed a border, even if you don't have to slow down at all.

    I seem to remember that the USA was part of the model when the EU was being designed. That doing business between EU member states was supposed to be as easy as doing business state-to-state in the USA. It isn't quite there yet. But, the USA has been working at reducing state-to-state friction for nearly 2 centuries, whereas the EU has only had decades.

  • Latest Epstein Files Include Wild Donald Trump Allegations

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  • Look, the kind of people who show up in Epstein's files are the kind that deserve zero sympathy. They're the kinds of ultra-rich people who should be lined up for the guillotine just because of their obscene wealth hoards, even if they had nothing to do with child sex abuse.

    But, just look at the phenomenon of SWATting. People phone in a malicious tip to the police in the hope that they kick down someone's door. In addition to malicious people, a tip line is going to get people having schizophrenic episodes, people suffering carbon monoxide poisoning, etc.

    To me, these allegations seem about as likely as there being a secret basement at Comet Ping Pong pizzeria where the elites were draining children of their adrenachrome. And, I'd really like it if my side didn't go all Q-Anon and start believing every possible rumour just because it makes someone they hate look bad.

  • Latest Epstein Files Include Wild Donald Trump Allegations

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  • It was a bribe, but they still made a movie, and they still put that movie in theatres. It's still going to be embarrassing if nobody sees the movie. There are reports of movie theatres where there are 3-4 people in the audience, and every one of them is being paid to be there because they have to write a review of the movie.

    They could have paid Melania for her life rights, pretended to make a movie, and then not released it, or made it streaming-only, making some excuse about protesters, the safety of the theatre goers, etc. Instead they actually put it out into the world and invited the kind of ridicule it deserves.

  • Latest Epstein Files Include Wild Donald Trump Allegations

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  • Look, I think he's a piece of shit. But, I also think we shouldn't judge anybody based on anonymous accusations phoned into a tip line. I mean, can you imagine the kinds of nonsense MAGA folks are constantly phoning into tip lines about every prominent democrat?

  • Technology Connections - You are being misled about renewable energy technology.

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  • I know it's not the main point of his video, but I really wish he'd looked into the CapEx vs OpEx stuff a bit more.

    For example, when talking about how much fuel his car uses in its lifetime vs. the cost of buying solar panels, he makes it clear that the solar panels are a better investment than buying gasoline. But, what he doesn't talk about is the difficulty for a lot of people in coming up with the money up-front to make that investment. Especially if you're poor, finding $25 per week to put gas in your car is easier than spending $3000 up front to put solar panels on your house. I know later he makes the argument that it might not even make sense to put solar panels on your house. But, that up front cost is also there for buying an electric vehicle vs. buying a car with an ICE (fuck ICE). The Nissan Cube he showed had a starting price of $18k when it was last available new in 2014. The Ioniq 5 starts at double that, at more than $36k. As far as I can tell, you can't get a new electric car for less than $30k, whereas the cheapest gas cars are only $23k or so.

    A big reason for the status quo is that paying small amounts constantly is possible when you're poor, but paying a big up front cost to go electric isn't. What's worse (and goes with the last half hour of his video), is that we're in this situation because the fossil fuel companies keep getting subsidies, whereas any subsidies for electric cars or photovoltaic panels keeps getting shut down.

    Also, I know it's an American channel so it has to use things like "gallons", but please when talking about energy, use Joules, not "kilowatt hours".

  • Technology Connections - You are being misled about renewable energy technology.

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  • Wind sometimes runs out (as in, calm weather) and wind turbines do eventually run out after a few decades. But, 3 gallons of gasoline-equivalent per minute seemed a bit small for my intuition, so I did some back of the envelope calculations to compare it to pumpjacks for oil.

    I'm doing these calculations in metric, because the US traditional units are insane, and nobody should subject themselves to that.

    3 gallons is about 11.3L, so 11.3L per minute is 678 L per hour, or about 16 kL of "gasoline-equivalent" per day.

    Apparently a pumpjack pumps about 5 to 40 "barrels" of crude oil per day. A barrel is 159 L so that's 795 L to 6360 L per day.

    So, the back of the envelope "how much 'energy' does this big mechanical thing produce" seems fairly similar, ignoring a whole lot of complexity.

  • Comcast keeps losing customers despite price guarantee and unlimited data

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  • Sure, like I said, they own lots of IP from their various acquisitions. But, they're still fundamentally a cable company.

  • Comcast keeps losing customers despite price guarantee and unlimited data

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  • as it leans harder into wireless bundling and other business lines like Peacock and theme parks

    Theme parks.

    "Kids, pile into the van, we're going to Comcast World!"

    I'm sure they own lots of IP from their various acquisitions. But, fundamentally they're a cable company.