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frezik

@frezik@midwest.social

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frezik ,

Since leftists tend to also condemn those things, as well, what the hell are you on about?

frezik ,

Because we know from long experience that these questions aren't made in good faith.

frezik ,

A bunch of Marxist-Leninist governments turned out to be authoritarian, as well as fermenting cult-like behavior in smaller ML groups. That's a reason to drop that whole branch. Has nothing to do with leftism in the broad view.

frezik ,

If I didn't know it before, I do know it after you posted this little rant.

frezik , (edited )

They exist, but they're crude. Indoor farms tend to be labor intensive, meaning they have a lot of incentive to automate, but nobody has a really good system yet.

Knowing when a tomato is ripe and how to pick it off the plant is one of the better uses for AI image recognition and robotics, IMO.

frezik ,

Commercially pressed discs don't last forever, but longer than burnable discs. IIRC, they used to say 50 years for CDs, but in practice, it was a lot less. More like 20 or 30 if you store and handle them nicely. Easily less than 10 if you don't.

Hard drives go bad over time; I don't like trusting spinning platters much over 7 years. They can be OK, but they can suddenly stop working whenever.

SSDs are about the same as spinning platters.

frezik , (edited )

I upgraded my datahoarding server to a pair of 18TB hard drives on ZFS with mirroring a little while back. It'll be several years before I need to upgrade again, but I expect that when I do, SSDs will be cheap enough to go that route.

Already have a 10Gbps fiber connection to that server, so the hard drives are the bottleneck.

frezik , (edited )

- as opposed to +

WELCOME TO THE RABBIT HOLE

frezik ,

I wouldn't trust it that way, no. They might last decades. They also might not. It's a gamble on any single drive, or even a few mirrored drives.

File system also matters. Modern ZFS has error checking that can handle some level of bit rot. Older formats generally don't.

If it's over 7 years or so, I want to get the data off of there.

frezik , (edited )

Magnetic platters absolutely do break down from sitting around. Bearings and other mechanics can also go bad. For those things, a professional recovery operation could still get the data if you're willing to pay, but the drive itself should be thrown out.

Edit: keep in mind that with bit rot, the drive may superficially function just fine. Your data may even be 99% correct. That 1%, however, could cause unrecoverable problems, such as videos that glitch in the middle.

frezik ,

You keep doing this thing where you presume I don’t know about some issue

Maybe because you way overestimate the reliability of old drives. Yes, 10 year old drives can work. Doesn't mean you should trust them with anything other than getting the data off of it.

frezik ,

Most of the really out there Christian fundamentalists, the ones eating the brain of the US political system, are derived from the Protestant Reformation (or Anglican, which is sorta to the side of the Reformation). Even the more fundamentalist Catholics in the US have opinions that align to the Protestants around them rather than the Pope. Big Bang and evolution, for example.

frezik ,

Most of the really out there Christian fundamentalists, the ones eating the brain of the US political system, are derived from the Protestant Reformation (or Anglican, which is sorta to the side of the Reformation). Even the more fundamentalist Catholics in the US have opinions that align to the Protestants around them rather than the Pope. Big Bang and evolution, for example.

frezik ,

Most of the really out there Christian fundamentalists, the ones eating the brain of the US political system, are derived from the Protestant Reformation (or Anglican, which is sorta to the side of the Reformation). Even the more fundamentalist Catholics in the US have opinions that align to the Protestants around them rather than the Pope. Big Bang and evolution, for example.

frezik ,

Except we have better options than we did 10 years ago.

I'd be all for nuclear if we rolled back the clock to 2010 or so. As it stands, solar/wind/storage/hvdc lines can do the job. The situation moved and my opinion moved.

frezik ,

But the technology to rely entirely on renewables isn't really there either.

Yes, it is.

https://books.google.com/books/about/No_Miracles_Needed.html?id=aVKmEAAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description

This is a book by a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering that goes into the details. We don't need nuclear. All the tech is there.

frezik ,

No, you just pay out the nose up front.

If I had money to invest in the energy sector, I don't know why I should pick nuclear. It's going to double its budget and take 10 years before I see a dime of return. Possibly none if it can't secure funding for the budget overrun, as all my initial investment will be spent.

A solar or wind farm will take 6-12 months and likely come in at or close to its budget. Why the hell would I choose nuclear?

frezik ,

If you're going to do that, then also consider the co2 output of all the concrete needed for nuclear power plants.

frezik ,

... it's currently not possible to store the renewables anywhere

Every time someone argues this, it's immediately obvious they haven't actually paid attention how the storage market has been progressing.

Next, you'll probably talk about problems with lithium, as if it's the only storage technology.

frezik ,

Then we just move the problem. Why should we do something that's going to take longer and use more labor? Especially skilled labor.

Money is an imperfect proxy for the underlying resources in many ways, but it about lines up in this case. To force the issue, there would have to be a compelling reason beyond straight money.

That reason ain't getting to 100% clean energy in a short time. There is another: building plants to use up existing waste rather than burying it.

frezik ,

Nuclear is nothing bog standard. If it was, it wouldn't take 10 years. Almost every plant is a boutique job that requires lots of specialists. The Westinghouse AP1000 reactor design was meant to get around this. It didn't.

The experts can stay where they are: maintaining existing nuclear power.

Renewables don't take much skilled labor at all. It's putting solar panels on racks in a field, or hoisting wind blades up a tower (crane operation is a specialty, but not on the level of nuclear engineering).

frezik ,

And 5 years is what nuclear projects have promised at the start over the years. Everyone involved knows this is a gross lie.

frezik ,

China built a few Ap1000 designs. The Sanmen station started in 2009 with completion expected in 2014 (2015 for the second unit). It went into 2019. The second, Haiyang, went about the same.

This is pretty similar to what happened in the US with Volgte.

frezik ,

The problem Marx didn't foresee is that capitalism can sustain itself until it destroys us all. In Nazi Germany, this left the country a bombed out pile of rubble. In modern times, it's global warming.

frezik ,

If capitalism worked, then those workers would be a flood of cheap labor that could be used to build cheap housing (among other things).

frezik ,

Gmail and other big providers tend to consider new domains to be spam until they've proven otherwise. Can't prove otherwise until you've been up and running for a while. Catch-22. The way out of that is to host with an existing provider for a few years.

Does it cut down on spam? Perhaps. Does it favor existing providers like Gmail? Yes, definitely.

Honestly, hosting email has long been difficult to setup, and all the more so if you don't want your box to be a spam host within three seconds of plugging it in.

frezik ,

You know who is most fed up with YouTube's policies? Content creators on YouTube. They're locked in, they know it, and they hate it.

frezik ,

Good chance you could at this point.

OneDrive automatically backups folders in Windows 11 without users' permissions (windowsreport.com)

According to the latest reports, Windows 11 has made an independent choice by automatically turning on OneDrive folder backup for Desktop, Pictures, Documents, Music, and Video folders without your permission. This signifies that, whether you approve or not, everything is becoming coordinated with the cloud....

frezik ,

Vote this up higher. I wouldn't be surprised at all if everything ends up in their models.

frezik ,

Coincidentally, they make it harder to use a local account with every update.

frezik ,

Not how that should work. They don't get permission to all that unless I say so.

frezik ,

I wonder about Microsoft's liability on this one. People store all sorts of things in there, some personal, and some corporate things that are at least non-public, if not outright sensitive. Yeah, people should be using an encrypted drive for especially sensitive info (not that this would stop Microsoft when they own the OS), but they don't, and it's not for Microsoft to force the issue.

Did their legal department actually sign off on this? Or did someone in MS legal just shit a brick when they saw the headlines?

frezik ,

Alrighty then.

unzips

frezik ,

Lots of coat hangers in there.

frezik ,

It could be true. Catalytic converters do a pretty good job of filtering out most pollutants. They also increase CO2 emissions in a variety of direct and indirect ways. Everything else is lower, though.

The way to make EV tires pollute less is to not chase 600+ mile range. Keep them around 300-400 miles, and use further battery improvements to reduce weight. There's no reason EVs have to be heavier forever. With better charging infrastructure, 400 miles is more than enough.

The way to fix everything else wrong with them is to not make cars the default mode of transportation.

frezik , (edited )

Hardly a stretch. The comparison isn't to the power density of gas, but overall curb weight. EVs are roughly 10% heavier than an ICE equivalent. Batteries are the main reason for that (electric motors and the electronics to support them aren't that much). Batteries have also been improving Wh/kg by 5-8% per year. It only takes a few years of improvements to get there.

In fact, since the 10% number has been the case since around 2020 or so, the battery tech might already be there and we just need to get them into new models.

Edit: another way to think about it is what's been taken out of an ICE and replaced with something else. It's not just the engine, but an entire engine life support system. Coolant radiator, oil, transmission, gas tank, and ignition system. Possibly differentials, as well, depending on the electric drive train. It's replaced with motors (which don't weigh much for the power they output compared to ICEs), some electronics (which do need to be beefy to handle the current involved, but also don't weigh that much, relatively speaking), the battery (major source of weight), and the battery does usually need a cooling system, as well. So you don't need to compare it to the energy density of gas, but of all the stuff you replaced.

frezik ,

Hydrogen is probably going to get pushed out of every niche where it might be viable. Batteries tend to get better by 5-8% per year, and there's every reason to believe that will continue to be the case. Run that forward for another decade or so, and even things like heavy construction equipment and transpacific airplanes are viable on battery power.

It's a waste of time and money at this point.

frezik ,

It's how journalists apply pressure to companies to respond. "We have statements x, y, and z from the public about you. Do you care to respond? We need to go to press with it in two hours." Companies can ignore it if they want, but the statements will go uncontested.

frezik ,

There really shouldn't need to be a 12V battery at all. Stepping the voltage down isn't that complicated, but the supply chain for the necessary parts aren't there for the car industry.

Plus, it'd be really nice if everything could run off a 48V line instead of 12V. The wires can be thinner due to less current draw. Getting that to work across all the electronics for everything is a whole separate level, though.

frezik ,

Compared to what the main batt can provide, there's barely any draw from the other electronics.

frezik ,

Battery management electronics don't let you drain lithium batteries to 0%. It's a severe design flaw if it does.

frezik ,

Lots of the book is just "old man yells at cloud", even though Bradbury wasn't particularly old at the time. Not chronologically, anyway.

I do think he made a good point about porches. Places where you hang out and invite your neighbors to just come by. Houses aren't really made that way anymore; my house has a small concrete block out front that's barely enough to fit two chairs comfortably. Setback requirements in zoning mean it's legally impossible to add anything else, at least as the city zoning code stands right now.

There's a definite change in how my parents' generation interacts with people compared to my generation. It was more normal just to drop by and talk, though perhaps with a phone call to check in first. My friends would consider that weird.

frezik ,

Not every problem is amenable to GPUs. If it has a lot of branching, or needs to fetch back and forth from memory a lot, GPUs don't help.

Now, does this thing have exactly the same limitations? I'm guessing yes, but it's all too vague to know for sure. It's sounds like they're doing what superscalar CPUs have done for a while. On x86, that starts with the original Pentium from 1993, and Crays going back to the '60s. What are they doing to supercharge this idea?

Does this avoid some of security problems that have popped up with superscalar archs? For example, some kernel code running at ring 0 is running alongside userspace code, and it all gets the same ring 0 level as a result.

frezik ,

Leadership is valid when you're elevated there by the consensus of your peers. That person might have the title of CEO or President. In a lefty organization that's still in a society with currency, they wouldn't have 10,000x the pay of the median worker. They might not even have 10x the pay.

I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again — Ludicity (ludic.mataroa.blog)

How stupid do you have to be to believe that only 8% of companies have seen failed AI projects? We can't manage this consistently with CRUD apps and people think that this number isn't laughable? Some companies have seen benefits during the LLM craze, but not 92% of them. 34% of companies report that generative AI specifically...

frezik ,

College? Pythagorean Theorem is mid-level high school math.

I did once talk to a high school math teacher about a graphics program I was hacking away on at the time, and she was surprised that I actually use the stuff she teaches. Which is to say that I wouldn't expect most programmers to know it exactly off the top of their head, but I would expect they've been exposed to it and can look it up if needed. I happen to have it pretty well ingrained in my brain.

frezik ,

I feel dirty saying it, but Walmart store brand Oreos are really good.

frezik ,

It's a no brainier, until you deal with standardizing the battery and attachment mechanisms across many manufacturers. Then figuring out the machines necessary to automate the process of removing the battery and swapping in a new one. Then dealing with people who abuse their battery and bringing them to EOL early. Then deploying all of that nationwide.

Oh, and it limits where you can place the battery. You can't integrate it into the frame, which has some big advantages in reducing weight.

Conversely, charging stations are relatively easy. You need to standardize the plug, which ain't nothing, but it's far easier than an entire battery release mechanism. The charge stations themselves aren't much more than a transformer, some high voltage electronics, and some controls. Again, not nothing, but way easier than an automated garage for battery replacement.

Charge stations were always going to be able to race way ahead in deployment timelines, and we still don't have enough of them. If we had focused on battery swap stations, we'd be even further behind.

frezik ,

Fine, we'll make it three, but only if you promise not to play blue.

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