makomk

15 ms·

121.
by makomk 3y ago
The whoe Cambridge Analytica story was one of the major steps in the descent of the media into partisan ragebait, though. Political campaigns have long had a much more boring but effective way of getting the data they need to get out the vo
122.
by makomk 3y ago
Here in the UK at least, the media has encouraged support for action against climate change by lying about exactly this. They've run talking points like "Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions" that only c
123.
by makomk 3y ago
That gas storage facility got closed down because it didn't make economic sense to operate any more - the big summer-winter price swings that made it viable had ceased to exist (possibly because more widespread use of gas for electrici
124.
by makomk 3y ago
That's not obvious at all. At the time that the UK switched to gas, Norway was pushing resistive electrical heating and not heat pumps - and that only worked for them because nearly all of their electricity came from hydroelectric gene
125.
by makomk 3y ago
I'm pretty sure that legal requirement is not only quite old but was put in place to stop literal, actual fascists from holding marches a few years before World War II.
126.
by makomk 3y ago
Not quite. According to the protestors, they had ties that were supposedly going to be used to secure the placards to things as part of the protest (presumably to railings). Any tie that could be used to secure the pole on a placard to some
127.
by makomk 3y ago
If that's actually such an established principle, there wouldn't be such a problem with the way the law goes after "peaceful actions used by those protesting about human rights and environmental issues" because the peace
128.
by makomk 3y ago
There's already a mostly-working open source SLAM implementation that people have been using on a few of the existing headsets. What complicates matters here is that at least feature extraction seems to run on the PSVR2 headset itself
129.
by makomk 3y ago
The PSVR2 turned out not to actually use VirtualLink, just more-or-less standard DisplayPort + USB 3 + USB PD over USB-C. Most of the compatibility issues seem to be from it requiring parts of the spec that aren't widely implemented at
130.
by makomk 3y ago
It's not just a question of total power - smartphones have limited space and thermal budget for internal power conversion compared to laptops, which means that the fastest charging option often moves some of the work of converting to t
131.
by makomk 3y ago
It's different because banks with liquidity issues can be unwound and the depositors made whole using the proceeds, but that's not possible with these insolvent banks no matter how much time they're given. Sure, maybe they co
132.
by makomk 3y ago
They absolutely are useful analysis. The fact that under fractional reserve banking, banks do not have enough cash on hand to pay out all their deposits at once does not make them insolvent. Every time a bank writes a loan they create an as
133.
by makomk 3y ago
Having any inflation at all is remarkable for Japan - they've basically had deflation since the early 90s. The measures they've been using to keep inflation that low also look unsustainable (their foreign currency reserves are goi
134.
by makomk 3y ago
For almost all goods, price increases will decrease the amount purchased. If there's still insufficient excess supply capacity after substantial price increase and decreases in people's purchasing power and consumption, then the r
135.
by makomk 3y ago
The Victorian-era sewage systems described in this article are actually one of the key reasons that sewage is ending up in rivers and the sea in the first place. Notice how they worked: sewage was collected, pumped, and dumped downstream of
136.
by makomk 3y ago
This isn't a liquidity problem though - the actual fair market value of the assets that they can realistically expect to get has dropped due to interest rates rising. Someone with $10 million to invest in long-duration government bonds
137.
by makomk 3y ago
Your 401k is presumably mostly invested in shares. Banks aren't allowed to structure their investments like that (it's considered too risky). In general they have limited options for investment which are generally bad in times of
138.
by makomk 3y ago
In theory that's true, but a substantial proportion of all US mortgages are fixed rate and originated in the last few years when interest rates were at record lows, so they're still going to be pretty sensitive to interest rate ch
139.
by makomk 3y ago
No we wouldn't. This is not a repeat of 2008, the rules written to keep 2008 from happening again wouldn't have stopped it, and the media has been bullshitting people about this for, basically, partisan reasons. 2008 was caused by
140.
by makomk 3y ago
Yup, that is basically inherent. In order to hedge their interest rate exposure they'd have to find some counterparty that can afford to do it - there is no magic hedging or insurance fairy - which with previous interest rates would pr
141.
by makomk 3y ago
Older cheaper voltage regulators are typically more like 2V drop and the optimum input voltage is somewhere around 7-9V for a 5V output. In practice a lot of devices used 9V power supplies because that was the lowest widely-available voltag
142.
by makomk 3y ago
The filaments will run off either AC or DC because they're basically just heaters. AC became the norm in mains-powered devices after electrification took off, but a lot of the early radios were powered by DC from batteries - initially
143.
by makomk 3y ago
Those labour shortages are happening throught Europe and the developed world though - both general shortages of labour and the specific shortages of, for example, medical staff. The argument I've sometimes seen made is that sure, the E
144.
by makomk 3y ago
It's not even Brexit really - the whole of Europe is poorer on a real, practical level because its economies cannot produce the same amount of stuff. Brexit put some additional barriers to exporting and importing stuff from Europe, but
145.
by makomk 3y ago
It's for both as far as I understand it - Philips built a bunch of CPAP devices and ventilators which all had the same basic flaw.
146.
by makomk 4y ago
This test launch was never planned to actually make orbit. It was an "orbital test flight" only in the sense that it was intended to demonstrate system performance that would basically have been enough to reach orbit; the original
147.
by makomk 4y ago
The trouble is that there's a strong tendency in UK journalism these days to treat anything the UK is doing as obviously wrong and any alternative as obviously better and ignore evidence that contradicts this, and the Guardian is one o
148.
by makomk 4y ago
As far as I know, OPV isn't used in childhood immunization programs in developed countries any more, but it used to be and I think every successful polio eradication program in countries where it's no longer endemic relied on it.
149.
by makomk 4y ago
No, Russia did not remain a stable producer and it wasn't the West's "sanctions and sabotage" that did the real damage. Russia turned off the taps, plain and simple - in fact they started turning down exports and drainin
150.
by makomk 4y ago
Bear in mind that a bunch of Americans have been sold on public single-payer healthcare as the solution to the problems with their healthcare system based on the amount the UK spends on the NHS after all those cuts (which are more like spen

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