I’d vote for ToS era Pike over Trump. I’d vote for a candidate who only communicates via ouija board over Trump. I’d vote to not have a president for 4 years before I’d vote for Trump.

It’s crazy that Trump can get convicted of fraud, be found liable for sexual assault, promise to abuse presidential power to get revenge against those who cross him, actively undermine both national and global security, promise to round up millions and put them into camps, attempt to overthrow the election and refuse to not try it again, and so on, and his side is still so loyal they’ll wear solidarity diapers for him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_paradox_of_the_Grand_Hotel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_theseus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus

I like wireless, I just fucking loathe earbuds. Unfortunately, they have completely replaced the wrap around on-ear headphones that were the best for wearing while running errands or exercising.

I don’t want something big and bulky while I’m walking around, but I also don’t like having shit jammed into my ears. And critically, those on ear headphones are just the right size to have a convenient button layout so I can easily pause or go back a few seconds in my audiobook whenever I need to.

But Apple decreed that wireless earbuds were the future and the market for everything else fucking died.

He’s firing from both ends.

What’s really clobbered Firefox has been the rise of smartphones, where Firefox has very limited uptake.

That’s fucking crazy, because Firefox has been far better than the default options for as long as I’ve had a smartphone. I only recently dumped chrome on desktop for Firefox, but I took one look at Chrome when I got an android and immediately dumped that shit.

Not in a million fucking years Sony. I would have gladly given you my money, but apparently that’s not good enough for you.

Every time I see Elon’s picture in one of these posts, my brain tells me he’s wearing an Ant Man costume.

Don’t worry, it might still bubble up to the surface in the hallucinations of an AI.

In the long term, it’s also possible to alter the atmosphere on Venus until it’s approximately the same as Earth. It would be a massive undertaking, but a hell of a lot easier than getting Mars to a comfortably habitable state. And you could potentially get an entire habitable planet out of the deal, which would be nice.

Kurzgesagt had an interesting video on the topic.

Obviously it would take a significant investment of resources that would benefit some future generation, but not our own. So, back to being impossible, at least for now.

Honestly, she wasn’t putting that much thought into it. She was just parroting a myth that’s been around for a long time, and then trying to defend it when challenged by something that didn’t make sense to her by bringing up something else she doesn’t understand just kind of assuming the answer is in there.

If I was actually going back and redoing the conversation, I would have asked her how many revolutions per minute it takes to keep an object in the air when tied to the tip of a rope (demonstrating if necessary) and then follow up by asking how many revolutions per minute the earth has. The myth she’s spouting is enabled by people not understanding that all that speed they are citing at the equator is only part of the equation, and that they have to divide that number by the size of the earth. Reframing the question in terms of revolutions per minute makes it a lot more intuitive, since a single rpm is obviously very, very slow if you want to keep something aloft, and anyone who knows how clocks work can instantly figure out just how much slower the earth’s spin is.

My aunt once mentioned that if the earth wasn’t rotating that we’d all be crushed by gravity, and it’s only the spinning cancelling out that force. I responded by pointing out that gravity is also present at the poles, where you can casually walk faster than the rotation of the earth, and yet no one has been crushed to death there. She responded that it must be something to do with the magnetic fields, and wouldn’t listen to anything I said when I tried to explain the basic concept of angular velocity.

Or even just the meat that isn’t practical to farm. giraffe meat is apparently sweet and was described by many big game hunters as the best tasting meat they’ve had. No one’s starting up giraffe farms around here, but if you can just get a tissue sample and start mass producing it, we can all have giraffe steaks, rhino burgers, and barbequokka™ at our next cookout.

Could be worse. Wheel of Time has “the one power” which is actually two. And then there’s another one…

Ukraine is a major global food supplier. The war has directly impacted food prices. And if Russia succeeds, it will only encourage more conflict of this kind. And that’s ignoring the possibility that this will escalate into an even larger conflict because Putin decides that NATO’s resolve is weak enough that article 5 is no longer a plausible threat.

Also, that stupid argument applies just as much to funding schools, cancer research, fighting climate change and basically all other functions of government that serve the public good. We should do more to address economic issues, but that doesn’t mean we should stop doing everything else.

My dad used to tell me “It’s a lot harder to carpet the world than it is to wear shoes.”

Ambitious redesigns of existing infrastructure are neat, but they are rarely more efficient or practical. Especially when you are overengineering to solve an issue that’s already been dealt with. A self cleaning room requires a lot of additional hardware, all of which has to be designed, built and installed, and has to be powered and run by software that needs to be programmed. It also needs to be maintained, and depending on how it’s cleaning things, it may also be dangerous, or at least capable of damaging property (ever have a motion activated light turnoff while in a bathroom stall? now imagine it triggers steam jets). Not to mention the potential hazards of water damage on a room if anything goes wrong.

Or, you can buy a mop for 0.1% of the price.

Humanoid robots can escape this problem because versatility adds value. The upfront cost may be tens of thousands of dollars, but for that price you’re getting something that solves many, many problems. They can potentially go from task to task, filling a multitude of roles, and ideally with minimal down time.

It also helps that we can use existing processes to train them. They can observe human workers performing a task, attempt to replicate that task, and use feedback to improve. And that’s critical because the hardware is the easier part, it’s software that’s the real challenge.

It’s easier to build a specialized robot for one task than to create a general purpose robot to handle that task. However, as the technology matures, I think it becomes much more practical to create a general purpose robot that’s capable of performing millions of tasks than to create millions of different specialized robots. Not only is that far less to design, source parts for, build and maintain, but it also makes it much easier to repurpose them as needs change. The same basic design can potentially be used for factory work, household chores, new construction, search and rescue operations, food service, vehicle maintenance, mining, caring for kids/elderly/pets, building and maintaining other robots, etc. We’re not there yet, but that’s where this kind of technology could potentially take us.

The advantage of a mostly humanoid robot is that it’s versatile and can use existing solutions built for people. Yes, you could replace the legs with wheels or treads, and you’d probably be just fine for most functions with a Johnny 5 type design, but there will still be exceptions. Being able to climb up or down a ladder for example means that you don’t have to engineer a solution to deal with getting onto a roof or down into a tunnel system. We’ve already spent thousands of years solving those problems for humans.

Ultraviolet. It makes other colors look cool. And it kills stuff.

The problem with messages 1 and 2 is that too many people will not give a shit about other people, and will also assume they can put a mask on correctly. If your goal is to prevent panic buying and hoarding long enough to build an adequate stockpile for medical workers, you probably want to avoid anything that makes those supplies sound superior and valuable.

If I were crafting such a message, I’d say something like this:

"At this time we aren’t recommending the use of disposable masks by the general public. For now, those who will be wearing a mask should wear one that’s made of tight knit, layered cloth, with a fit that fully encloses the nose and mouth. Cloth masks can be cleaned and reused, and will be easier for most people to wear properly, especially when worn for extended periods of time.

These guidelines reflect our current understanding and will be updated as we learn more."

Competition usually isn’t bad. Unfortunately, Apple has a tendency to not only be terribly anti-consumer, but also tends to be a trendsetter. They do shitty things, and other companies learn from their example. Thus, the competition becomes a race to the bottom.

Lying about testing a product in order to get people to buy it so you can get your affiliate revenue sounds like fraud to me. Seems like the kind of thing that should lead to lawsuits and potentially criminal charges. Not that anyone would actually try to do something about this or most other problems facing consumers.