frezik
@frezik@midwest.social
- Comment on AI Energy Demand Can Keep Fossil Fuels Alive, Tech Backers Promise World’s Two Biggest Oil Producers 16 hours ago:
Large corporations are allergic to capital expenditures. That is, they don’t like investing in new things to make the business run. They want their previous investment to run as long as possible. On occasion, the workers will arrange things to be covered as “maintenance” rather than capital expenditures.
Oil companies have invested in oil pumps and refineries. They could invest in all sorts of other things, but that’s less money in the hands of shareholders. That’s all there is to it. Money spent on new investments isn’t making them richer right now.
- Comment on Put him on the cart. 1 day ago:
New DnD artifact dropped.
- Comment on Put him on the cart. 1 day ago:
Oh, they did. Telling if someone was really dead was difficult until modern medicine figured it out in the last century or so. People got buried alive by unwitting village elders all the time.
- Comment on Bill Gates Bought His Daughter A $16 Million Horse Farm As A Graduation Gift — But Ex-Wife Melinda Says The Kids Were Raised Very 'Middle Class' 1 day ago:
Everyone in the US is middle class. You can be upper middle class or lower middle class, but you can never not be middle class.
- Comment on In heat 3 days ago:
We all know how AI has made things worse, but here’s some context on how it’s outright backwards.
Early search engines had a context problem. To use an example from “Halt and Catch Fire”, if you search for “Texas Cowboy”, do you mean the guys on horseback driving a herd of cows, or do you mean the football team? If you search for “Dallas Cowboys”, should that bias the results towards a different answer? Early, naive search engines gave bad results for cases like that. Spat out whatever keywords happen to hit the most.
Sometimes, it was really bad. In high school, I was showing a history teacher how to use search engines, and he searched for “China golden age”. All results were asian porn. I think we were using Yahoo.
AltaVista largely solved the context problem. We joke about its bad results now, but it was one of the better search engines before Google PageRank.
Now we have AI unsolving the problem.
- Comment on Musician Who Died in 2021 Resurrected as Clump of Brain Matter, Now Composing New Music 4 days ago:
Some brain cells cobbled together from stem cells that have his DNA. None of the life experiences that made his music. You could likely get similar results with the same technique using the DNA of any random person on the street.
- Comment on [deleted] 6 days ago:
TIL boobs look bigger on CRTs
- Comment on Tesla odometer uses “predictive algorithms” to void warranty, lawsuit claims 6 days ago:
If you don’t have an especially long commute, good chance you’re between 12k to 15k per year. That’s a typical yearly amount, and leases are usually set around there.
13k in six months is about twice the average.
- Comment on I feel like if asbestos was banned today there'd be a huge pro-asbestos movement 1 week ago:
Implication is that there are things about as bad as asbestos that should be banned, but aren’t.
- Comment on Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to ‘delete all IP law’ | TechCrunch 1 week ago:
On the contrary, this is pretty close to what we have right now. Companies don’t like to spend much on R&D once they’re out of the startup phase. A good chunk of that startup phase R&D was actually taking place at a university with public funds. This is especially true of pharmaceuticals. So the answer to the question of “when does it get handed off to private industry?” is to just look at what’s happening right now.
The exception is big monopolies. AT&T’s Bell Labs is a legendary R&D department. IBM, Microsoft, and Google all likewise have significant pure R&D going on, and even engineers who don’t like those companies salivate at the opportunity to work in that capacity for them.
But then you’ve got big monopolies on your hands, and that’s a whole other problem.
- Comment on Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to ‘delete all IP law’ | TechCrunch 1 week ago:
In the manufacturing space, people are questioning if patents help them at all. There is no stopping China from copying your design and selling it on Aliexpress. In fact, since you’re almost certainly getting your product manufactured in China in the first place, there is no stopping the very manufacturing plant you’re using from producing extras and undercutting you.
Consider this old EEVblog vid about bringing a product to market, and the #1 tip is “don’t bother with a patent”: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BL1O0xCcY
Patents have evolved to be useful to patent trolls. That’s it.
That’s not what Dorsey and Musk are after, though. They want to kill copyright law because it’s inconvenient for AI training data.
- Comment on The US Secretary of Education referred to AI as ‘A1,’ like the steak sauce 1 week ago:
We have the wife of the world’s most famous pro wrestling promoter, who someone gave the title of Secretary of Education. You may ask why the the wife of the world’s most famous pro wrestling promoter is Secretary of Education. As in, that is a question that may be asked.
- Comment on Ubisoft says you "cannot complain" it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren't "deceived" by the lack of an offline version 1 week ago:
Will they? A lot of “live service” games are failing of late.
- Comment on How likely is it that Trump will be the first President assassinated since Kennedy? 1 week ago:
Calling it now: it will be one of his MAGA supporters who feels betrayed somehow.
- Comment on Ubisoft says you "cannot complain" it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren't "deceived" by the lack of an offline version 1 week ago:
When does Ubisoft realize that “you never owned it” and “you can’t complain” are arguments for not buying their next game?
- Comment on Framework temporarily pausing some laptop sales in the US due to tariffs 2 weeks ago:
Also, the United Parcel Service.
Tried shipping a GPU to PR from mainland USA once. UPS wanted $60 because they think of PR as international. The USPS will do it for a flat rate shipping box of like $15.
- Comment on When someone finally gives you the back story 2 weeks ago:
“Obiwan, I’m pregnant”
“Ahh, fuck, tell Anakin it’s his”
- Comment on Orange flavored recession is superior to the DeMoNCRaTs!!!1!1!! 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on Sadly, Stupid Hat is also his only friend 2 weeks ago:
As a Wisconsinite, that’s our dumb hat. He can’t have it, and we had a vote on this.
- Comment on Coin-sized nuclear 3V battery with 50-year lifespan enters mass production 2 weeks ago:
An RTC that you want to leave on its own for a very long time. Like underwater.
- Comment on Coin-sized nuclear 3V battery with 50-year lifespan enters mass production 2 weeks ago:
These aren’t new.
They have tiny current output. Only suitable for a few niche applications. The company’s claim to fame is making them cheaper, but don’t expect much.
- Comment on Coin-sized nuclear 3V battery with 50-year lifespan enters mass production 2 weeks ago:
Technology Connections, we need you to make another video.
- Comment on Maybe it's just a human thing. 2 weeks ago:
My thought exactly. Most of the “feminists” who do fit that stereotype ended up becoming Feminist Appropriating Reactionary Transphobes.
- Comment on Maybe it's just a human thing. 2 weeks ago:
Prefer the Norman Rockwell version of Rosie the Rivitor:
www.nrm.org/rosie-the-riveter/
The Norman Rockwell Museum are cowards. The photo crops out the bottom, where she’s using Mein Kampf as a footstool.
- Comment on Clean butt 2 weeks ago:
I like the bidet’s we have at home, but I don’t get the ones that are separate from the toilet. Saw this type when visiting San Juan, PR once. Their plumbing system can’t handle toilet paper very well, so it’s all bidets with a stack of washed towels.
Not only do they take up extra space in the bathroom, but are you supposed to waddle over to this thing with a dingleberry hanging out?
The one argument I’ve heard in their favor is from people with vaginas who don’t like the idea of the built-in sprayer catching bits of poop that’ll get in their cootch.
- Comment on OpenWrt Two will be a higher-performance router with 10 Gigabit LAN and WiFi 7 support - Liliputing 3 weeks ago:
I think a lot of the reports of high bandwidth/cheap rates around Europe are cherry picked. When I looked a nationwide averages, it doesn’t seem particularly better or worse than much of the US. At least, not in the populated areas of the US. Rural access is another issue.
- Comment on OpenWrt Two will be a higher-performance router with 10 Gigabit LAN and WiFi 7 support - Liliputing 3 weeks ago:
A router is also a open-by-default device. It’s not something you would usually use at home unless you’re into that sort of thing. Things we tend to call a “router” are all-in-one router/firewall/switch/access points.
- Comment on Virgin Physicists 3 weeks ago:
That level of precision in a resistor would literally be thrown off if you breathed on it. If you actually needed that, then you need to build an extremely controlled environment around it. Even then, the heat from the electricity itself would throw it off. Maybe in a liquid nitrogen bath?
- Comment on DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Codebase in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse 3 weeks ago:
It has to function the same. It has to follow the same laws as before.
Bur more likely, they know this and it’s all part of privatizing social security.
- Comment on Aptera’s production-intent solar EV completed its first road trip traversing over 300 miles 3 weeks ago:
Can-Am Spyders don’t roll over easily. You have to put them into reverse while cranking the wheel and pulling the e-brake.