Posts by Charlie Clark 13433 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2007
That's a bit reductivist. Yes, Bentham's ideas were, and still are, very influential, but by the time 1984 was written things had moved on technologically and politically and dystopias were becoming more common as the horrors of the supposed utopias became clearer. So, give HG Wells, Joseph Conrad, and maybe even Ambrose Bierce, credit for really getting this started, but also more contemporary authors such as Karel Capek.
I think it still remains a reasonable idea for temporary deployment in emergency areas, though this is probably not commercially attractive. For all the hype, satellite-based systems are significantly more expensive and, potentially, just as vulnerable to bad actors. It's just not presented as this as, in usual Silicon Valley chutzpah, every effort is spent on achieving a near-monopoly position.
I actually quite liked Google's approach, though I never used it to things that it was easier to do manually and didn't require data harvesting. At the time, chatbots could only really worked in vertical domains, but quickly became a replacement for many tedious telephone menus "press one for technical support, two for accounts, etc.…" and this is where Google quietly made some money by selling them to industry.
LLM means, in theory, that it's easier to provide more general support and, of course, the assistants provided a treasure trove of "conversations" on which to train them.
fraudulent and outright insane "research"
Ooh, fraudulent research. Apart from the obviously semantic problems with the very idea, I can point you in the direction of the "research" carried out on behalf of and paid for by various industries, the US sugar industry springs to mind, to come up with conclusions that nicely coincide with their financial interests. And then there are the states that are busy banning things like the teaching of evolution or anything like climate change…
Congress is due to go into recess and many Republicans have been "advised" not to hold town hall meetings with their voters. Mind you, away from the Canadian border, I suspect that the potential damage to the economy and their own personal situation hasn't shown up yet. That might be coming if Elon gets his way with some of the welfare, over which the Executive has zero control, or the revenue. But this might all be part of the plan to fuck things up so much that people will scream for a saviour, even one with a fake tan and a hair weave…
The consitution does exactly what you suggestion it shouldn't: it empowers the courts to stop any actions they consider illegal or unconstitutional. If plaintiffs disagree they have the right to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court; the executive also has the opportunity, with Congress, to change the law.
What's worrying at the moment is that the executive has started ignorning many of these rulings, knowing that it can play for time at which point any decisions may be moot. In addition, SCOTUS gave the president almost infinite leverage to break the law, which he may well interpret as allowing him to ignore court judgements.
There's an overlap with some of the more extreme forms of "libertarianism", which why Thiel, Altman, et al. think that all data (copyright, health records, etc.) should be available to them to make commercial products from and any form of state regulation is anathema. They dream of essentially pay-to-play republics where everything is organised technically and the beneficient dictator only occasionally has to intervene. I think Thiel was getting ready to do this on island of Honduras and somewhere in California there are plans for "freedom cities". This is why Musk can admit to being a pot-smoking, ketamine-chugging nerd while he plants an enormous KEEP OFF THE GRASS (no pun intended) sign on his lawn.
Yes, but that's not the same kind of geothermal they're talking about here. I think the English term is "ground-sourced" thermal storage and I'm all for it, see above. These want to go deeper to get more power and they know the "hyperscale" data centre operators have deep enough pockets and few enough scruples to be interested.
You don't bury any heat exchangers, just fairly conductive piping: the length of the piping turns this into a large heat-sync. But, as with many things, you probably need to look at the right scale: because of the digging it's very expensive per house, but could quickly become economical for a "street" – not a very precise measure I know – which could provide district heating/cooling – solarthermal cooling really is cool, in a technical sense – with everything buried under a (playing-field).
As for how much you can store, I think you can use the specific heat capacity of water (4.2 j/cc if memory serves) to get a reasonable idea but the general recommendation is an area twice that of the building you want to heat. For a really large site, it might even make sense to build an underwater reservoir of saltwater which would give you cubic metres of storage. The earth would then act as an additional insulator. I've seen report This might sound a lot, but if you remember that this would also provide cooling in the summer and compare it with other proposed solutions, it's not oulandish, just unusual.
The really exciting stuff will come if small-scale thermal-to-X units ever become possible, which I think isn't beyond the realms of possibility. Then you just do what the plants do and create hydrocarbons using solar energy, though the potential yield with solarthermal is much higher. This would, of course, be ideal for remote locations.
If you're close enough to large source of geothermal heat, you're probably in active volcanic area. As systems in Iceland and elsewhere have shown, this can be a good and reliable source of both heat and power, but you generally don't build the power station too close to any centres of population. This could make the idea interesting for some sites for data centres, but other options are probably both technically and economically preferable.
One area currently underused, at least for heating, is the idea of a local heat reservoir: around 2m down you lay heat exchange systems which you warm using solarthermal energy in the summer and reverse in the winter. This scales reasonably and could provide a reasonably long term storage of energy with reduced demand for electricity in winter. But it's reliable low-tech and, therefore, not very interesting for the VC brigade. This is a pity because there are quite a few related technologies that could do with investment.
He doesn't because the deck is stacked to "reward" him for reaching certain goals. If those goals aren't met, then there is no reward. However, judge decided that principle/agent conflict in setting the goals, and particularly the reward, made it invalid.
Tesla stockprice is really a new kind of scam. The sad thing is how many individuals are keen to play along.
We will be doing just that. Interesting was the discussion with the agency that buys and manages the stuff for us when I pointed out that Cisco was basically saying that they were incompetent.
Looking at the market and I see the usual cluster of copycat, VC-funded companies all offering essentially the same thing. But there do seem to be alternatives for combined firewall/virus/spam. Suggestions welcome.
Well, yes, but I didn't want to get into the details, which is why I included the reference to The Martian. Take it with a pinch of salt but it's a good place to start.
Another approach which might make more sense once it becomes technically possible would be a winch from orbit. I know still oodles of problems to solve but nano-tube ropes could be made in orbit.
That's not the issue. NASA has long suffered from political interference, often making long term missions impossible whilst not saving any money. Things could be about to get a lot worse.
Rocket Lab has been getting a lot of things right and probably does deserve more credit than it gets. But, remember the successful Ariane 6 launch from last week? Thought not: didn't get a mention here while the most recent SpaceX failures did.
Why not just give the job of NASA boss to Elon? What could possibly go wrong?
Gravity is about 40%. But that's only part of your problem: you also have to take all your oxidation compound with you as there is no oxygen on Mars. But then again, you don't need to go anything like as high to be in orbit
Andy Weir's The Martian has some reasonably based pseudo-science on the kind of rocket that would be needed to escape the gravity well.
There isn't a one-size fits all solution and the "studies" cited were mainly self-selecting. Other "studies" have shown what we all know: some people are good at organising themselves and working independently, others less so. SWMBO as the boss works from home one day a week and is at her most productive then. But the other days in the office she's constantly interrupted by employees who need help and advice, many of whom prefer working in the office to being at home, despite long commutes.
I'm not saying this initiative isn't another poorly disguised attempt to get some employees to leave voluntarily, but the reporting has been pretty one-sided so far.
Any additional kit will add to the volume and weight and increase costs.
I think it's the low gravity and lack of atmosphere that's the problem: bouncing is inevitable and there is no friction to limit the inevitable twisting and the centre of gravity has a much more limited effect. This is very hard to model, but having it happen twice suggests that they haven't learned all the lessons, the first of which is getting there in one piece is better than adding capability.
I'm not sure of the details of their file format, but for DTP you could always use Postscript. But if you can't run in even in a VM, then the point is moot. The last time I used it, was as PagePlus in a Windows VM because the printer only hat GDI drivers. It was worth this for the job at the time.
I've been using my readers for over a decade and I think they're great. Many devices aren't subsidised by content and continue to get software updates.
If days of battery and usability in bright sunlight is niche, then I'm niche!
But I also know people with devices like the ReMarkable that they much prefer over tablets of similar size.
The commercial companies you list depend upon government contracts for success and you even qualify your analysis that you "presume" they will be subjected to commercial pressure. Looks more and more like it could be a duopoly and the US might use its "extraterritorial" jurisprudence to try and enforce something like Exclusive Economic Zones in orbit and elsewhere, such as the moon.
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