pjc50

17 ms·

151.
by pjc50 2mo ago
I think these days sending an actual handwritten letter with adequate penmanship would have a substantial impact. (of course if this became popular there would be a service in China you could outsource it to. Probably already is for hanzi)
152.
by pjc50 2mo ago
It does however have a lead time of a day. It's interesting to see how many breakpoints there are on "partially prepared" food though, like the meal kits vs the old cake-in-a-box etc.
153.
by pjc50 2mo ago
Nice little short story. Reminds me of Juicero, which has to be the flagship of this kind of product.
154.
by pjc50 2mo ago
It's advertising. People should be paying us to read it.
155.
by pjc50 2mo ago
Token tax is fairly straightforward to implement on the American AI companies. The international aspects of it are a lot more complicated.
156.
by pjc50 2mo ago
> either it helps us conquer death, or it poses a massive —say, existential- risk to us all Lesson of 2026: there is no "we". Hobbes is dead but still looming over us. The risk is that it helps some people conquer death, whil
157.
by pjc50 2mo ago
> I'm still not seeing the route to that existential risk, not yet anyway. Power consumption needs -> reinstate fossil fuels -> warming above 2C -> clathrate gun
158.
by pjc50 2mo ago
> If you had a governance machine that made your country perform 10% better than other countries, so long as you deferred all decisions to it, you'd defer those decisions or get left behind. This was basically the invention of bure
159.
by pjc50 2mo ago
Just keep watching the US and Chinese petroleum reserves tick downwards. I'm sure it's fine.
160.
by pjc50 2mo ago
Oh, this is advertising blogspam :(
161.
by pjc50 2mo ago
Eh, I think this is overstating the case. Private groups did come before blogs and social media: remember Compuserve and AOL? The underlying tension is the "dark forest". Opening yourself up gets a bigger audience. That feels li
162.
by pjc50 2mo ago
What was the comment of the form "climate change will manifest as a series of phone videos of disasters that get closer and closer until you're the one holding the phone?"
163.
by pjc50 2mo ago
Internet desentitization is real and not good. The accumulation of easily accessed horrors dulls the natural empathy.
164.
by pjc50 2mo ago
Why can't you pay the landlord by standing order?
165.
by pjc50 2mo ago
My point is that people are over focusing on manufacturing of physical goods while ignoring all the other aspects of the balance of payments, or indeed the internal US economy. (Also, if you're trying to reduce imports, that messes up
166.
by pjc50 2mo ago
The insane thing about this discussion is that America does still manufacture a huge amount of products that are used all over the world, and the people that make them are paid salaries that are the envy of the world! Many of the people wor
167.
by pjc50 2mo ago
Scrolling Twitter is a lot easier than visiting a thousand websites, and it auto suggests new content. In its case, the power of suggestion is used for bad, but it's important. Also, replies and retweets.
168.
by pjc50 2mo ago
It is actually annoying that as a UK user of bsky and HN, I hear more about Mamdani than about Sadiq Khan. Mamdani is everywhere . Mind you, I'm also hearing a lot more about the former mayor of Manchester these days.
169.
by pjc50 2mo ago
> illegal immigration is the type of immigration people are upset about here in the UK. most people have no problem with legal migration. People claim that, but you can't read someone's immigration status from their face.
170.
by pjc50 2mo ago
I think the endless labelling of everything rightwingers don't like as "socialism" has backfired. A generation has been told that affordable food and housing, usable public transport, healthcare, not getting shot at school, n
171.
by pjc50 2mo ago
For some reason people get mad about the state owning productive assets.
172.
by pjc50 2mo ago
Probably he lives on Twitter.
173.
by pjc50 2mo ago
Well, the reservoirs are still full of gas. CAES is I think now no longer competitive with batteries, which are a much simpler setup and being widely, quietly, deployed.
174.
by pjc50 2mo ago
It's specifically to prevent the wells being re-opened and thereby raise the cost of re-exploiting the field. Of course, it would always be possible to drill new wells.
175.
by pjc50 2mo ago
> Rather than buy off the Groningers, the cabinet decided to give in to them This doesn't seem to have been tried. We have similar conversations about e.g. pylons for renewable infrastructure and, at even more heightened levels, dat
176.
by pjc50 2mo ago
I think the lessons of 2026 must be: - the dangers of fascism are very real - technological choices won't save you from the snatch squads, although grassroots use of tech by communities can help - fascism is extensively promoted by som
177.
by pjc50 2mo ago
This is how you get the Andy Burnham "don't use disposable BBQs" announcement sent via the emergency system.
178.
by pjc50 2mo ago
I think it was quite good for the 1980s, it just got stuck there.
179.
by pjc50 2mo ago
I think if you think that technologies which were around for decades before social media took off are equivalent to social media, then it's actually on you for missing what the difference is. See HN classics of "No wireless. Less
180.
by pjc50 2mo ago
Whatsapp etc. only took off because SMS is so limited, and the mobile companies are so profit-focused they can't make a decent competitor. (how is whatsapp paid for again?)

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