Posts by DoctorNine

Re: Madness

My observation, after so many years of empiric data collection, is that many times, those who go into lawyering do so, because their head is a little too soft for mathematics and science, but they still want to be able to piss on the plebes from an ivory tower someplace. And bless them, but they do. Copiously.

Re: They fucked up the web browser?

To be fair, having a rail all around the room to mount one or more devices could be quite convenient...

Re: China blocked exports of gallium, germanium, and antimony

There are many ways to get germanium and gallium besides the normal method of native sulfide deposits and as a byproduct of zinc mining. The large stores of flyash which the US has from old coal powerplants are probably useful as a source, once the price gets to appropriate levels. Antimony is found in lead. There are a bunch of sources for that in Oklahama, where there are huge supplies of old lead tailings from ammunition production during WW II.

So is a hernia. And after you get one, you can't ever lift heavy things again.

Re: Another Alternative

Well that accounts nicely for how to put a limit on the cap-ex for machine upgrades, but still doesn't address the op-ex of the 'lectrical tax on them little buggers. It's not insignificant.

NSA. Under Clapper. Same thing though, really.

Re: I still have no idea...

Who is modular and also high-quality? Framework. I bought my last Apple laptop in the 20 teens. The last three for my group were Framework laptops.

Re: When stuck in a hole

We've decided you need to give us more money. See this new toy? We are going to fix things so your old toys won't work unless you buy it. Now gimme.

Re: ...Or it could be a fishing trawler

It's a fairly common strategy when a marginalized nationstate wants to disrupt the free world's economic activity, to have a 'fishing trawler' or 'containerized cargo ship' do the actual deed. The strategy is simple: Plausible deniability. "We most certainly DID NOT want that to happen. There are always accidents in commercial shipping!"

Re: Ironic

I suspect this AI was trained on surreptitious recordings of conversations I had with my parents while growing up.

Re: Stop with the useless A better than B crap

Jeebus... Reading that gave me the same sort of sensation as those dreams of highschool where you're standing naked outside your locker, and you realize you didn't do your math homework.

Some people just want to see the world burn.

Re: They need to hire the Chair of Unwritten Runes

It's almost like there might be a famous programming aphorism we could apply here... regarding garbage, and how it flows...

Your observation was going to be my comment as well. This is exactly how I would expect a Finn to act. What really gives me a chuckle, are people who think that this somehow comes from the US, or that it is being directed by the North Americans. Finns are generally quite vocal about aggressive Russian behavior. They certainly don't need someone from another continent to remind them how to deal with Russians.

Re: Within a factor of two anyway

I think the concern is that using that energy for containment means that there is 715MW of energy lost to waste heat someplace. And that is quite a large source of ambient heat to deal with. Especially in urban areas.

Re: So what is the solution?

The safest solution would be deep well geothermal at scale. At least until fusion comes online. It easily could be done with national or international funding. While we were at it, we could also legally mandate provision of energy and its infrastructure to the state itself. By doing so we could eliminate taxes entirely, and run the government on the profits from energy production. The economic reasons for the desirability of such an arrangement include the inability of large corporations to avoid taxation, because they would effectively be taxed at exactly their rates of resource usage; also there would be an increase in economic activity / velocity of money supply as the parasitic drag from income taxes is removed from small businesses and consumers. As an old dude, I really hope my children and my children's children can escape the grasp of contemporary oligarchs, who are rapidly cobbling together a new feudalism. Good luck my friends.

Re: As ever, seriously cool

There is an interstellar mission planned from Johns Hopkins in 2030 I think. You can look it up if you are interested.

Re: Five year old PCs need replacing :o

The upgrade in compute power and thus electricity consumption in our Brave New AI World begs the question of how everyone is going to be running our powerful new AI computers, CryptoCoin generators, electric vehicles, and personal wearables, without melting the planet by simple waste heat. In a fairly large 5K - 10K member corporation, what is the electric and HVAC utility tax for moving up? What productivity gain is needed to get the actuaries to authorize it? Does anyone besides NVIDIA and Microsoft actually benefit from this? If not, why are we just going along with it? Can't we please just stop with the proprietary greed, and settle on a nice Linux standard instead, since everyone is already so tired of the shenanigans?

Re: The tribalisation of the internet.

Speak for yourself. All my nuclei are trained in the latest martial arts.

Re: ... and a slap on the wrist settlement to follow.

Well historically, these kinds of lawsuits happen in East Texas, because someone is looking for a deep pocket to pick. In this case, GM. And politically, the conservative AG gets to wank over a notable Democrat supporter. There are House and Senate seats to consider. It would be more likely that the State of Texas gets the payday at the end of the game. But yes. No mere plebes are going to see any serious money. Maybe a buck and a half if you send in the right form to the AG.

Re: A lesson to us all

I'm with you on that one. You what Freud said. “Love and work….work and love, that’s all there is.”

Government and Transnational corporations

The power to resist large corporations doing business throughout the whole world can only exist where those corporations are not afforded the same rights as individual humans. Much of the bonkers stuff we see in litigation in the States, is directly due to that onerous fiction. We are likely only to see progress in humans fighting monopolistic practices when and where representative governments understand this moral imperative. The next most worisome case, will be the rights of artificial beings. Bring the popcorn. That will be a spectacle of monumental proportions.