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@takeheart@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If a mysterious force secretly changed EVERY clock worldwide one minute forward, how long would it take until people notice, and how would people/governments react?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of software is reliant on very precise timing. The world at large would notice immediately due to the many disconnects, glitches, bugs, desyncs, not to say anything of all the physical processes controlled by machines going wrong. As a simple example consider an industrial oven (or any process really) that is programmed to shut down at 4:39:20 but at 4:39:15 the 1 minute skip happens. An airplanes auto pilot that is suddenly missing the last minute of sensor data to. base its micro steering on. Any big internet service that has to deal with thousands to millions of clients trying to reconnect at once because their previous connection timed out. Bad stuff.

  This would be immediate world wide chaos and likely panic as the cause for all the chaos would be unknown and forever would be. Economic crash likely.

  Think of all the attention and effort the year 2k problem got, but this one is worse and there is no prep whatsoever.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨So, is the USA screwed?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hmmm, it seems the modern way for autocracies to deal with elections is to control the information space. I don’t see election being called off, but major social media platforms boosting one side while attenuating the other goes a long way. We know Musk is all in on this and the other big players like Zuckerberg & Co seem all too happy to oblige. Tiktok is an open ended question at this point.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do the ultra-rich consume popular media?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, for many things there’s a deluxe version (clothing, cars, food, housing) but they tend to be physical. Since media is largely digital these days and has fantastic marginal distribution costs the rich consume the same stuff when it comes to popular media. Ie there isn’t an alternate Hollywood studio just for the rich, itunes doesn’t have a separate server, the new york times website is the same for all, etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #2992: UK Coal⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s quite relevant if you consider that coal mining is concentrated to a much smaller area really. Besides the destroyed habitat, the pollution, the dangers of sinkholes and the cost of renaturation you also have to contend with rain and ground water constantly filling in the mining pits.

  Don’t know about the UK but in West Germany’s Rhein-Ruhr area, a former coal mining hotspot, the energy used to operate the pumps that keep the water out will eventually be greater than the energy gained from burning all the coal. Can’t find a source on the quick but I think it might have happened already. Of course it’s not a simple subtraction as all that energy was used to generate more infrastructure and capital that can now pay for the pumps. According to this German source their operation costs around 300 million euros yearly which gives you a rough idea of just how expensive that is.