rgmerk

6 ms·

61.
by rgmerk 9mo ago
Not happening any time soon, sorry. Car manufacturers want that sweet sweet subscription revenue.
62.
by rgmerk 9mo ago
Key difference being that there is only a certain amount of food that a person can physically eat before they get sick. I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis that the amount of software written if it was, say, 20% of its present cost to writ
63.
by rgmerk 9mo ago
You don’t need more gas to reindustrialise. The biggest single thing the US could do to bring down power prices quickly is let people put solar panels on their home roofs more easily.
64.
by rgmerk 9mo ago
US emissions have been declining - not fast enough, and from a very high baseline - for the last 20 years before this year’s result. Europe’s emissions have been declining since the 1990s. China’s emissions may have peaked in 2025, or are
65.
by rgmerk 9mo ago
There’s also the possibility that you’re not omniscient and the project succeeds.
66.
by rgmerk 9mo ago
See my OP. In short, the appalling treatment of renters in Australia is due to the chronic undersupply of housing; if landlords had to compete for tenants it would not be possible to mistreat them in the way many currently do. There is also
67.
by rgmerk 9mo ago
YIMBYs would argue (and in my view rightly) that if you allow townhouses and apartments to be built, the market will build them where there is a demand.
68.
by rgmerk 9mo ago
Australia is so big that there's still plenty of land available where you could build new cities (and not just in the desert). It's just that everyone[1], given a choice, would like to live near the beach in Sydney's easter
69.
by rgmerk 9mo ago
You would feel that, but you would be wrong. Small businesses are often just as ruthless as large ones, just less competent. In any case, most rental properties are managed through agencies, who are soulless profit-optimisers.
70.
by rgmerk 9mo ago
It will make very little difference in the end. Australia's land tax system makes it effectively impossible for large corporations to own large chunks of residential property, but our real estate is amongst the world's most expens
71.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
All the vaguely plausible industrial use cases for CO2 are a rounding error compared to the amount coming out of vent stacks and engine exhausts. The one exception is making synthetic fuels, but in the vast majority of applications it’ll be
72.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
It’s worth noting here that premature deaths were routine back when these decisions were made, in a way that we would find almost unimaginable. While smallpox was no longer a major threat, influenza, polio, whooping cough and a bunch of oth
73.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
Harsh but accurate.
74.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
Depends what you're trying to hide. If the redaction is a person's name, and there's nothing else to give the person's identity away, single word redaction probably works reasonably well, AI or no AI.
75.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
Also, parasitic losses in engines tend to be proportionally lower as the engines get bigger. Compare the thermal efficiency of marine diesel engines to their automotive equivalents, for instance.
76.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
You might not care, but plenty of people clearly do. The current speaker of the US House of Representatives apparently cares a great deal: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/06/speaker-mike...
77.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
You might know that. I might know that. I can assure you that there are lots of people out there who don't realise it.
78.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
(sarcasm on) Woohoo, we're almost all of the way there! Now all you need to do is ensure that the formal specification you are proving that the software implements is a complete and accurate description of the requirements (which are
79.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
It’s not just drilling deep enough, it’s whether they can keep the wells open and flowing long enough to make the whole thing economic. Some deep geothermal projects have failed because the wells wouldn’t stay open. Maybe this generation o
80.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
From a global perspective, people living in temperate areas are actually the exception, not the rule (if a disproportionately economically successful exception). The likely implication of this is that, long term, unless wind power starts go
81.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
Curious - any references for those “rocket turbine” motors, particularly for this application? I’ve not seen that idea before.
82.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
In cold places district heating solutions with seasonal storage, like this one, make a lot of sense: https://www.vantaanenergia.fi/en/about-us/projects/varanto-t...
83.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
The economics are pretty strikingly in favour of renewables and batteries, and one thing China does not have is cheap natural gas.
84.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
We can and do, and there are detailed plans based on those weather scenarios (eg for the Australian east coast grid; there is AEMO’s Integrated System Plan). Things in the US are a bit more of a mixed bag, for better or worse, but there hav
85.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
To be fair, you end up needing insane amounts of batteries if you want to run 24/7/365 just on solar, particularly if you insist on building your data centres in places with dark winters.
86.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
You missed the iron law of the universe, which is never get between a capitalist and the possibility of a bucket of money.
87.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
That’s not how the maths works unfortunately. Basically, you end up having to overbuild to crazy levels, or build insane amounts of battery storage, which only gets used a few days a year.
88.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
It's not clear (yet) what a 100% clean energy powered world would use to cover the last couple of percent of demand when loads peak and/or variable generation troughs for extended periods. It'll be some combination of demand
89.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
Reactor fuel remains radioactive even when the reactor isn't operating. And the proposal was a containerised nuclear reactor, so you're going to irradiate the surrounding containers in the process. Nuclear submarines and aircraft
90.
by rgmerk 10mo ago
Seriously? This couldn't be more "jumping on the AI hype train" if it tried.

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