rgmerk

17 ms·

271.
by rgmerk 3y ago
I doubt it. For some people, at least, the fantasy won’t be complete without the knowledge that real people actually did/are doing whatever act it is that floats their personal boat.
272.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Part of the problem is that utilities are in many cases not incentivised to minimise their costs. The electricity rates they charge are determined by government-appointed commissioners, and the basis of that calculation has historically bee
273.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Can anybody explain to me like I'm five why this isn't just Keynesianism working as expected, as it did globally in 2008 (where the world didn't do enough of it in retrospect) and 2020-21 (where the world did a bit too much i
274.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Are Taiwanese labour costs significantly lower than Japan these days?
275.
by rgmerk 3y ago
The claim that small platforms are better at moderation needs some nuance. In terms of content that is annoying or worse to the forum’s users, it’s probably broadly true. But it’s not necessarily true for content that the users of the foru
276.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Last I looked into this there’s very little evidence that personality tests are useful as a hiring tool. Where there were statistically significant correlations with job performance, they were so weak that they have no practical use.
277.
by rgmerk 3y ago
One of them was called Xerox: American Samurai, and dates from 1986 (I read it when I was a teenager in the early 1990s, I think). There was another one from the early 1990s, I believe. This book lauded Xerox's success at reforming it
278.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Have you worked at a large (say 500+ employee) company that you would say isn't "deeply f'ed"? I once read a fascinating corporate history of Xerox, and that company became deeply, deeply f'ed up in ways that are of
279.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Not having done any GPU programming...is most of the code out there tied to the Nvidia architecture? I mean, if AMD or somebody else builds a better mousetrap, how much work would it be to switch?
280.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Dunno about Ethiopia, but I expect some of the smaller island states will start to do away with ICE vehicles pretty soon. I visited Vanuatu recently. Everything imported is very expensive because of shipping costs, including fuel. The long
281.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Not unless they're properly compensated. However, it's already possible in some jurisdictions to play in the wholesale market with a home battery, and the same should apply for V2G. If they were offering, say, $2/kwh for the
282.
by rgmerk 3y ago
No special insight into Russia but live by the sword (or the polonium tea) and you often die by the sword.
283.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Putin spends his life looking over his shoulder waiting for somebody to put the knife in his back. I wouldn’t swap his life for mine.
284.
by rgmerk 3y ago
I haven’t bothered to dig through the details of this report, but the total energy use in petroleum refining is about 4% of US total energy consumption. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/7261027 Even making conservative assu
285.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Efficiency is great! However, most models suggest that electricity consumption will significantly increase over the next couple of decades. Efficiency isn’t going to go close to covering the extra demand from EVs and electrifying heating.
286.
by rgmerk 3y ago
That’s why I threw Putin into the mix. As well as spending the resources of the Russian state to fund houses and whatnot as elaborate as American billionaires, he has his enemies murdered in fairly spectacular fashion (polonium, nerve agen
287.
by rgmerk 3y ago
When you’ve got however many billions Zuck has, an extra 25 billion in paper wealth is going to make no difference whatsoever to his life. None. The problems he faces at work are the same. He will be treated the same by the people he inte
288.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Australian capitalism isn’t that different to American capitalism, and the interaction of government incentives and market players has produced all manner of disasters here too (child and aged care are but two examples). But in the case of
289.
by rgmerk 3y ago
These numbers smell like there’s at least one faulty assumption in there. A) How much of this debt could have been avoided with industry best practice as now understood? B) how much of this debt could have been avoided with industry best pr
290.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Pretty sure it's the same vehicle (plane? boat?) proposed for this one.
291.
by rgmerk 3y ago
She’s also told me (and I know from other fields) that promising results in individual proteins are a dime a dozen, and generally not worth paying attention to unless you’re one of the very few scientists working in that specific field.
292.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Good for these scientists, but… First they have to make something that works in a whole cancer cell. If they get that far, you then have to show it works in animals. If it works in animals, you then have to do phase 1, phase 2, and phase 3
293.
by rgmerk 3y ago
I hope you’ve thought long and hard about the ways in which this is going to be abused and considered how you might mitigate it.
294.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Heh. I saw “loader” and was expecting a reimplementation of the Ocean Loader: https://youtu.be/njTxV8blffc?si=HxTbACcLCZYDmvig
295.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Aren’t the Japanese conglomerates perpetually underperforming businesses that get away with it because Japanese shareholders are toothless?
296.
by rgmerk 3y ago
It’s a matter of degree. Are they supposed to run a chip fab to make all the chips that go into their plane? That said, fuselages do seem to be a core aspect of making planes!
297.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Ruined or not, Boeing is too big to fail. No way in the world will airlines, or the US government, accept a world where Airbus is the only company able to sell you a passenger airliner. Nor would they accept a word where the alternative to
298.
by rgmerk 3y ago
It was the United Arab Emirates. The odds of dying in a traffic accident in that country are considerably higher than in the United States, and much higher than in other developed countries (sorry USA, you suck at road safety, but not as
299.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Modern space launch vehicles are liquid fuelled because it’s the most energy-dense fuel and you can shut the rocket down if necessary. In SpaceX’s case, you can also refuel the rocket for reuse. But you have to fuel it for a couple of hour
300.
by rgmerk 3y ago
The USA has effectively excluded Chinese cars from its home market. In Europe and Asia the Chinese makers are rapidly increasing market share, to the considerable chagrin of other manufacturers.

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