Welcome to Incremental Social! Learn more about this project here!
Check out lemmyverse to find more communities to join from here!

scarabic

@scarabic@lemmy.world

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

scarabic ,

That’s it? JFC

Shell Is Immediately Closing All Of Its California Hydrogen Stations | The oil giant is one of the big players in hydrogen globally, but even it can't make its operations work here. (insideevs.com)

Shell Is Immediately Closing All Of Its California Hydrogen Stations | The oil giant is one of the big players in hydrogen globally, but even it can't make its operations work here.::The oil giant is one of the big players in hydrogen globally, but even it can't make its operations work here. All seven of its California stations...

scarabic ,

I was excited for hydrogen back in the day but it seems like we’ve known for years that it isn’t the way to go. Why is anyone still fucking with it? Do these cars get 2,000 mile range or something?

scarabic ,

“Doesn’t require a battery to work” is a fairly meaningless upside when it does require a fuel cell, a moisture exhaust, and a cannister of compressed, flammable gas.

scarabic ,

We'll need hydrogen infrastructure and production anyways for steel smelting as well as the chemical industry, those are things that just don't run on electricity, no way.

I’m curious how you see hydrogen being used in smelting. Hydrogen fuel cells do just produce electricity. Are you talking about something else, like combusting the hydrogen?

scarabic ,

Consumers adopt newer technologies more readily when they aren’t holding back waiting to see which of two competing standards will win.

There are efficiencies to doing things one way versus two ways.

Plus, if one way is clearly superior, having two only adds unnecessary complexity. If hydrogen was competitive I’d say great - let’s do it all. But on its own merits it just doesn’t hold up versus the alternatives. No ones banning it but why should anyone pursue it?

scarabic ,

I thought for a long time that aviation might be the application where hydrogen actually wins out. Density-to-weight is crucial. But I don’t see much activity on that front. It has the same problem as all other applications: you’d need the hydrogen infrastructure to be available everywhere. Batteries will always have one benefit: they’re easier to transition to because we already have electricity pretty much everywhere. Electric autos haven’t been overly handicapped by the lack of charging stations because many can just charge at home. Hydrogen aviation would require large regional or even international coordination to ready the fueling infrastructure. And that little issue about the compressed flammable gas keeps nagging… seems like it would make surviving a plane crash even harder.

scarabic ,

Yep I saw that story as well but it kind of makes my point: the first flight took until 2023 to happen. Thats not what I call “a lot” of activity.

You’re succeeding at favorably comparing the infrastructure challenges of hydrogen aviation to the infrastructure challenges of hydrogen for private cars, but that’s not really the bar to meet. All air infra is more consolidated than that of ground transport. The argument works for batteries just as easily.

scarabic ,

Battery electric cars win over ICE because the infrastructure is right in my house. We’ve spent centuries electrifying the world. It’s also greener and cleaner than ICE. And lower maintenance.

Hydrogen just has a slight density edge. That’s it.

scarabic ,

Your right that my perspective is totally about “me” as long as you consider “me” to be people who have electricity

Instant battery change is also possible but it hasn’t been valued enough to be a factor. Just like instant fueling hasn’t made hydrogen competitive.

I assure you my closed minded layperson bullshit is not the thing that’s holding back hydrogen.

scarabic , (edited )

No, fool, read the words. “Instant change.” You can swap batteries. This has been prototyped for car and trucks but just like with phones, it’s fallen away because people get more out of an integrated battery. More capacity and superior overall design options. We could swap car batteries, but instant refill just isn’t worth making sacrifices for. And that’s exactly where hydrogen is: if that’s its only selling point, it’s not goddamn well enough. And no, you don’t have to be a wealthy homeowner like me to charge a car conveniently. Many apartment buildings and workplaces and even retail centers offer charging stations as well. It turns out that people enjoy charging while their car isn’t being used even more than they like spending a couple of minutes gassing up.

Anyway… you can rail against me but you can’t rail against reality. Hydrogen is a loser. You compare me to conservatards who spread negativity about battery EVs but the difference is, those are flourishing. I’m just commentating on hydrogen’s failure entirely post-facto.

OpenAI wants to raise 5-7 trillion dollars. Yes, Trillion (decrypt.co)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in talks with investors, including from the United Arab Emirates, to raise between $5 trillion to $7 trillion in funding. The goal, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, is to increase the world's chip manufacturing capacity and enhance AI capabilities....

scarabic ,

LOL yes I did the same math. Dude had one wish and he blew it!

“No please, Mr. Genie I meant .000000001 not .00000000001%!”

Genie: so $5,000? (Snaps fingers)

scarabic ,

If a leap in world computing capacity is really what’s needed here then it is a tall order. Crypto has been sucking up an increasing share of that in recent years and will probably continue to do so as long as people love money and are idiots. Plus the geopolitics around Taiwan, China, annd the US are a problem as well. I’m not sure how you solve all that even with 5 trillion.

scarabic ,

I’ll never understand how such an obviously true and fairly balanced comment like this can get so downvoted. It can’t be that anyone factually disagrees with you. I guess you’re just not hitting hard enough on the anti-corporate narrative talking points. I mean you did say it could also be a benefit. How dare you!!?? “Boo rich people and their fancy technology!” <— this is what you’re supposed to be typing (on your smartphone lol)

scarabic ,

It may not be bonkers at all though. If we look at it as taking money and food out of people’s mouths for a year then yes it’s a lot. But how much free investment capital is there in the world at any given time? Wealth has been accumulating and accumulating in rich people’s investment portfolios for ever and ever. How many Trillions get allocated in any given year? All Altman is saying is that he wants 5 of those to be allocated here and not somewhere else. It’s not necessarily taking rice out of any children’s mouths.

scarabic ,

Read the last paragraph of the OP at least. This is not asking for $5 trillion to be handed solely to OpenAI to go become a world monopoly on chip manufacture. What he’s really asking is for investors to direct funds to radically increasing world compute capacity, to the profit for the chip manufacturers and likely many others. OpenAI just gets to continue the track it’s on without this constraint. There is nothing here about them monopolistically controlling this entire investment and in fact the opposite is true: it’s framed as a broad partnership venture.

scarabic ,

Generative AI pales in importance compared to General AI but it is still an important development on its own.

scarabic ,

I use it for quick code snippets but it’s not all that important compared to the fact that misuse of generative A.I. is making so much information on the Internet completely worthless.

To be fair we have scare articles galore every day about how this is all ruining the world and killing artists, because fear sells. Meanwhile millions of people like you and me are quietly using this tool to improve our work.

When we compare the relative weight of the two, let’s take the media scare avalanche out of it and just use our personal experiences to judge. I am currently being measurably helped by genAI, and not measurably hurt by it. I just read articles daily about how I’m going to be killed in my sleep by in any second now…

scarabic ,

If it was so hard to make the first one that hundreds of researchers couldn’t do it for years… then how is it so cheap and easy to do today?

scarabic ,

Thanks - and yeah I absolutely pre-suppose that much. I was just hoping for a more specific answer. There could be just as interesting of a story about how it went from prototype —> ubiquity. I personally don’t just wave that process off and say “meh economies of scale.” Production scaling is often quite innovative too. And many lab innovations die on the vine because they can’t cross this chasm. So the fact that this one could, after being such a holy grail for so long, is something I would love to understand more.

scarabic ,

I had to explain to my kids the other day how you don’t ever wish death on anyone. I was just going to ask if OP lives somewhere dry, because that would explain why they’re seeing this with so many foods.

People might be wondering wtf there’s no moisture in dry pasta. But there is: it will absorb moisture content from the surrounding atmosphere.

I had to learn about this effect because of woodworking. Wood absorbs enough moisture to appreciably change in size over the seasons, to the point where your whole table can crack in half if it’s built the wrong way.

scarabic ,

The stock market isn’t the economy.

scarabic , (edited )

$80k is a struggle salary where I live but only if you have the ambition to own property and raise multiple kids. The common narrative is that everyone could do that on manual labor wages back in 1950 but that’s definitely bullshit.

The real travesty is that my kids teachers are pulling down $25k - absolutely ridiculous.

Not only that: once, I went to take the qualifying exam for California teachers and the room was full of people yammering about that sweet $25k they were about to start making in just two short years when they get their credential. That’s poor.

scarabic ,

At this point there are more people trying to reject data based arguments with that cliche than there are people making bogus cases according to it.

scarabic ,

Now, I’ve upvoted some of your comments here but I’m gonna stop you on this one. Yeah, the economy should support literally everyone. Yeah, there should be change as long as there’s any poverty. It’s called having a floor and basic human dignity. Does every single policy have to be aimed at the worst off? No. But you came dangerously close here to saying that it doesn’t matter if only some people are suffering.

scarabic ,

You can say that the economy failed for you. Not that, to you, the whole economy is a failure. That makes no sense.

scarabic ,

It’s important to remember that for tech companies, labor is the single biggest cost by far. In many cases it’s the only significant cost. Tech companies don’t buy raw materials and sell finished goods. They hire expensive people and sell finished goods.

So layoffs aren’t just show. They actually count. And in a speculative area of the economy that’s still largely held up by lending, and where interest rates are sky high, it is in fact truly meaningful to show that your primary costs are under control. There was also legitimate frenzy hiring because of COVID that a lot of tech companies have to face the music on now.

This isn’t all empty theater for rich people. It’s actual cost of doing business math.

scarabic ,

Same. It’s expensive, but there’s absolutely no question that I use YouTube enough to justify it. If some can’t afford it I understand and that’s different.

scarabic ,

I’m interested. It’s a real shame they just paywall the entire app and don’t give you a chance to explore what’s there a little.

scarabic ,

And bleaching all materials in the room. And slowly destroying anything made of paper or plastic or wood.

scarabic ,

This article is a longer version of “bleach kills it fast - what if that could be brought inside the body somehow?”

scarabic ,

Occulus sold more headsets than Microsoft sold Xboxes. And that’s 2021. https://x.com/JackSoslow/status/1471549480595955716?s=20

scarabic ,

We can argue that this product has no continuity with anything anyone has ever used, or we can admit that it is a new kind of immersive screen for a world where people are absolutely hooked to screens. It’s pretty simple.

And the very concept of virtual reality has been an inevitability for decades. This is something people have been fantasizing about for a long time, thought they underestimated the technical challenges and limitations of it all. We’re getting close to overcoming most of them now.

While the whole world laughs at Mark Zuckerburg, Occulus headsets are selling in rapidly increasing numbers. They sold more headsets in 2021 than Microsoft sold Xboxes. So to use your own words, yes, this product is a foray into a space that is rapidly growing in popularity.

scarabic ,

Why are you talking about whether people will feel good walking around in public with headsets on? The Apple Vision doesn’t even do that. You realize it’s tethered by a wire, and is closer in usage to an iMac than Google Glass, right?

You seem to have your own speech about headsets you want to espouse but it is not connected to reality or this thread or this product.

scarabic ,

Embrace, extend, destroy is a thing though.

scarabic ,

Defederating from known-bad-actor corporations during the “embrace” phase seems like a perfectly wise choice to me. Keeps them from getting to stage 2.

scarabic ,

Practical answer: because they haven’t installed concrete wheel stops on the ground in that parking lot. If that’s a used walkway, they should.

I know, people are assholes, etc. I’m just mentioning a solution that is actually available, where unassholing everyone isn’t.

scarabic ,

I didn’t realize anyone earned anything on Twitter ever. Is this just video views? Is this new?

Also, fuck Musk, etc.

scarabic ,

He's thinking "what does music have to do with me getting sex as quickly s possible?"

scarabic ,

Yep the fight for Reddit is lost. All we can do is make an example of them.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • incremental_games
  • meta
  • All magazines
    •