wat10000

31 ms·

901.
by wat10000 6mo ago
For a few years before the LLM era, there was a joke about disposing of used car batteries by throwing them into the ocean, and how it was good for the wildlife because electric eels could use them to recharge. This got picked up by Google&
902.
by wat10000 6mo ago
What is the answer to why Jews are historically persecuted, if not "people are awful and minorities are convenient scapegoats"?
903.
by wat10000 6mo ago
We need a name for this genre where some heinous idea is presented as if it was obviously correct, with no evidence because apparently it's so obvious it doesn't even need any.
904.
by wat10000 6mo ago
People do not understand this stuff at all. So many times I've seen people post the output from one of these services with full confidence that it has to be correct because it came from a computer.
905.
by wat10000 6mo ago
People don't know anything about anything, generally. Any sort of political discussion is incredibly frustrating because there's no agreement on very basic facts. We can't even get to the point where we discuss our values or
906.
by wat10000 6mo ago
That's easily answered. They think California is a hellhole that everyone with means is fleeing. "Vote for Democrats to turn your state into California" is a great way to get people on both sides to vote for their own preferr
907.
by wat10000 6mo ago
I'm not a big fan of Democrats, but at least they're somewhat trying. Obamacare should have at least had a public option, but they got a big thing done there. Student loan cancellation was done poorly but it was attempted. And eac
908.
by wat10000 6mo ago
Hayes solved it by requiring +++ to have a one-second pause on either side. Normal data transmission won't pause at that boundary, so the two never get confused. The reason it was a problem at all is because Hayes patented their soluti
909.
by wat10000 6mo ago
I don't think it's directly connected. etymonline.com says it started with the meaning of fingers, then numerals derived from that meaning since numerals are counted on fingers, then the type of circuit derived from the meaning of
910.
by wat10000 6mo ago
They've also been cooperating on blockading Gaza for a couple of decades. Israel gets most of the attention for that, mostly rightfully so, but people seem to forget that there's a border with Egypt too and that has also had very
911.
by wat10000 6mo ago
A better way to put this is: if it’s free, you’re the product.
912.
by wat10000 6mo ago
I wonder how much of this is testing people's eyes/brains, and how much is testing their screens.
913.
by wat10000 6mo ago
That says a lot more about the sensitivity of the instruments than about the severity of the accident.
914.
by wat10000 6mo ago
In addition to that, if a quarter of animals die prematurely from some horrible disease, that’s just Tuesday. People tend to get upset when that happens among humans. For a long time there was a serious debate over whether wild animals actu
915.
by wat10000 6mo ago
A large scale exercise like that nearly started WWIII back in 1983. The Soviets had become extremely worried about an American first strike and were watching for any signs that one might be imminent. Then a bunch of high-level NATO people d
916.
by wat10000 6mo ago
The difference is intelligence, which might be a better word than “intent.” A fence was built by someone with some measure of intelligence. An evolved feature is randomness combined with selection pressures, and sometimes it’s only there be
917.
by wat10000 6mo ago
Chesterton’s Fence is a thing because a fence is something that was definitely placed with intent. It’s possible the intent is no longer applicable or was just plain stupid, but it didn’t happen by chance, so you need to make sure the origi
918.
by wat10000 6mo ago
If you used UTF-8 then you can probably fix those pretty easily. UTF-8 is sufficiently structured that it’s extremely unlikely for a string that’s written in another encoding to be valid UTF-8 by accident. If you write some code to try deco
919.
by wat10000 6mo ago
Well, obviously. What do you think the U stands for? When we make contact with aliens, we’ll find them using it too.
920.
by wat10000 6mo ago
If the weather service starts an investigation into Tuesday’s rain shower, that should be reported. But if that rain shower was completely within the normal range of weather for that location and time of year, that should also be part of th
921.
by wat10000 6mo ago
The critical thinking skills you need are the understanding that people die sometimes, and the question is how it compares to the normal rate of death among this population.
922.
by wat10000 6mo ago
The most complicated known object in the universe, and a disease that attacks the one thing that sets it apart from everything else. No surprise progress is slow in coming.
923.
by wat10000 6mo ago
77 million people thought he should be in charge. Nearly 40% of Americans still think he's doing a fine job. I'll be glad to see the back of him, but it won't solve the problem.
924.
by wat10000 6mo ago
It’s funny with someone coming from Mandarin. There’s no separate he/she/it in spoken Mandarin, so they tend to mix up “he” and “she.” It sounds very strange and gives me some idea of what French speakers must go through when they
925.
by wat10000 6mo ago
Any sort of GUI took a minute or two to boot. My laptop today is ready to go before I get the lid fully open.
926.
by wat10000 6mo ago
This is how old-school TCP figures out how fast it can send data, regardless of the underlying transport. It ramps up the speed until it starts seeing packet loss, then backs off. It will try increasing speed again after a bit, in case ther
927.
by wat10000 6mo ago
I saw a story once, which may well be completely made up, about why AT&T got out of the cell phone business. They had a research project, but reliability was an issue. They couldn't see a way to do better than 1 dropped call in 10,
928.
by wat10000 6mo ago
I always like the differences in the ads. SFO: "Use our AI startup!" DCA: "Buy our warship!"
929.
by wat10000 6mo ago
Nobody got "dragged" in. Being that NATO is a defensive pact, no country was under any obligation to participate. There is exactly one time in history when a NATO country has actually invoked the treaty that requires help from oth
930.
by wat10000 6mo ago
There's a big difference between helping an ally that's been attacked or intervening in a civil war, and attacking countries for no good reason at all. Afghanistan and Libya don't merit the "warmonger" label, but Ir

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