phil21

8 ms·

91.
by phil21 3mo ago
These sorts of things done remotely close to residential areas are very rare in the grand scheme. And I agree these specific projects are a major problem. It’s just not representative of the bigger picture when there are a dozen horrible pr
92.
by phil21 3mo ago
The fact there is not the social media and political outrage there is on stuff that is literally 10-1000x the water usage is what outs folks as being unserious on the topic. Collectively speaking, people do not give a shit about water usage
93.
by phil21 3mo ago
> I would say that speaks more to apathy than activism And I would say that speaks more to your disconnect with most of US society. Very few folks actually trust activists for good reason. Trump is like the most mild form of what is to
94.
by phil21 3mo ago
What instability has been attributed towards datacenter - or even any - large 24x7 predictable load industrial consumers of electricity in your area? The exact opposite is typically true, so this is surprising to me!
95.
by phil21 3mo ago
Literally have lived within 1500 feet of a datacenter. Zero of my my non techie friends ever knew. It’s a non-issue. It’s like complaining about a vacant but well maintained warehouse next door. If you mean living next door to a power plant
96.
by phil21 3mo ago
Why? If you want this policy make it for the entire grid, not some random consumer. Electricity should function as a common carrier like any other utility. If you want to pay for the watts you get the watts regardless of who you happen to b
97.
by phil21 3mo ago
What about fan noise is low pitched? I generally agree that I would not like to live across the street from a datacenter. Having worked inside of dozens of them, I could not care less if I lived half a mile from one. Most people who live wi
98.
by phil21 3mo ago
As I get older I realize how the news works. You are talking about a single incident that has been reported 500 times by different organizations. And that single instance still hasn’t actually been traced back to the datacenter in question.
99.
by phil21 3mo ago
Water usage in this context is a rounding error on a rounding error on top of a rounding error when it comes to corn production for ethanol. Anyone bringing it up does not actually care about the water usage. It’s just a politically easy to
100.
by phil21 3mo ago
All… three of them if you really try hard? Really only two qualify as disasters to me. Three Mile Island wasn’t great, but certainly not a disaster on any level I can figure.
101.
by phil21 3mo ago
Manias are required for humans to develop a new technology. It’s just part of the human condition. Tilting at windmills over the stupidity of it is just something I’m trying to get over and not care about at a personal level. Nothing I can
102.
by phil21 3mo ago
I sort of agree. But I kind of think it misses the point. Bike shedding means no decision is made. That is the worst possible outcome as it provides absolutely zero value. Even a wrong decision provides at least some value even if it fail
103.
by phil21 3mo ago
In such environments everyone is constantly missing things and not replying until they get followed up with. So that sort of thing is already normalized. An LLM is unlikely to be worse than a human. There is no accountability either way sin
104.
by phil21 3mo ago
> As for LLMs... outside of a few precious professions you could live your life and not notice they are there. And old folks said the same thing about the internet and smart phones. Fads that would pass. While the younger generations liv
105.
by phil21 3mo ago
For a lot of folks summarizing a few days of work email and especially slack chats is way more than 5 minutes. Some work environments do not have great communication hygiene so it can be overwhelming to try to keep up with 500 emails a day
106.
by phil21 3mo ago
> This has been a long running "heads we win tails you lose" with the older generations toying with the future dating back ~50+ years Yep. I call it the old eating their young. Society cannot exist in such a condition for very
107.
by phil21 3mo ago
> I struggle to find any national policy implemented in the last few decades that has truly disrupted the kind of upper middle class voter that has a lot of money in a 401k. Capping SALT deductions was a big one. For upper middle class f
108.
by phil21 3mo ago
The date was always in the 2030-2040 range since I started reading about it in the 90's. At my first job I planned my retirement around the trust fund running out by the time I retired, and benefits being cut passively via cost of livi
109.
by phil21 3mo ago
As we saw with the whole DOGE fiasco, a substantial portion of the population would love to tear down current entitlement programs. Social Security is (or was?) unique in that it was politically untouchable by either side of the aisle. No o
110.
by phil21 3mo ago
Social Security will not run out. It simply won't be taxing current workers enough to pay current retirees. This demographic problem was easily foreseen which is why there is a trust fund to "run out" to begin with. For quite
111.
by phil21 3mo ago
> Why paint the sides of the rails? Well you can paint the tops, but it tends to gum up the wheels and get worn off. Tops of rails are already pretty shiny for any mainline track seeing a couple dozen trains a day. I'd bet they are
112.
by phil21 3mo ago
It means that there will not be this level of memory demand for much longer. I tend to agree. Right now there is far more demand than supply, so they are cashing in while they can. It will be resolved one way or another eventually, current
113.
by phil21 3mo ago
> Summarising emails that then misses the crucial information is not saving any time. Ironically due to an overloaded inbox these days, I've been using a LLM as the world's most inefficient e-mail filter. It does a decent job a
114.
by phil21 3mo ago
> That's also likely to be a small pool of people relative to the number of people interacting with AI Perhaps small now. But overall this seems to be what most have done in my small social circle. Small uses of AI here and there, s
115.
by phil21 3mo ago
Yep. This is how I view the world these days too. All systems will inevitable devolve into corruption and centralized power. The best system I suppose is the one that starts with the most distributed means of power possible, and then that g
116.
by phil21 3mo ago
> You don't need to do anything, nobody is making you do this. Hey, you just figured out the entire point of buying a mid-life crisis car! It's a joke to begin with, but if you are actually curious: One day you wake up and real
117.
by phil21 3mo ago
When you're young and dumb and full of energy, you can get a whole lot of experiences accomplished in the space of a single summer.
118.
by phil21 3mo ago
I am quite familiar with it. It’s supposedly fermented leaf. Either way the impact is similar, and nothing like the natural leaf in effect or potency. Fermentation is its own form of chemical alteration. It’s certainly not ground up leaf pu
119.
by phil21 3mo ago
Feel Free (and similar) extracts like this are especially onerous. It's no longer Kratom powder that takes a lot of effort to get into trouble with. These extracts are not very well studied, and may be stronger than many Schedule II op
120.
by phil21 3mo ago
No. This is how crony-capitalism works. You could make a decent argument that capitalism will very likely end-game devolve into crony-capitalism as it's typical failure mode, but I don't think it's written in stone. It's

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