PuddleOfKittens's recent activity

  1. Comment on Congestion pricing = accessible transit in ~transport

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    Sure, we can talk about that. What mobility issue(s) are you referring to? What mobility issues can't be entirely solved by a wheelchair?

    Sure, we can talk about that. What mobility issue(s) are you referring to? What mobility issues can't be entirely solved by a wheelchair?

  2. Comment on China drafts world’s strictest rules to end AI-encouraged suicide, violence in ~tech

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    That's a false dilemma. China is both - with a population of 1.4B, it can fit the entire population of both France and Nigeria thrice over. Even if it's 90% developed, having 140m people in...

    That's a false dilemma. China is both - with a population of 1.4B, it can fit the entire population of both France and Nigeria thrice over. Even if it's 90% developed, having 140m people in third-world conditions is still a huge problem to solve.

    5 votes

  3. Comment on Toll roads are spreading in America in ~transport

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    They were usually part of a privatisation kick, and private companies won't pay big bucks unless they receive a promise you won't build alternatives that could undermine their money fountain....

    What’s wrong with… just having tolls?

    They were usually part of a privatisation kick, and private companies won't pay big bucks unless they receive a promise you won't build alternatives that could undermine their money fountain. Also, said privatisation is often just an excuse to sell a money fountain to the politicians' mates for dirt-cheap (although that won't stop them from demanding the monopoly anyway).

    6 votes

  4. Comment on YouTube is awful. Please use YouTube, though. in ~tech

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link
    I wish someone turned this sentence into an entire article. People are consistently surprised by widely-reported facts. It's kind of a problem that all companies need to do is stall on a subject...

    And, err, we already knew that large language models are trained on YouTube videos, years ago. I wish we could stop looking so surprised when we "rediscover" widely known facts!

    I wish someone turned this sentence into an entire article. People are consistently surprised by widely-reported facts. It's kind of a problem that all companies need to do is stall on a subject and do their best to avoid follow-up reports, and they can get through the scandal with their ill-gotten gains intact. I remember back when it turned out EA had a scandal and they had a policy of "don't reply to journalists whatsoever on the scandal", because they knew that if journalists had a reply from EA then they would turn it into an article, and would ask for a reply-to-a-reply from the aggrieved and so on.

    In other words, it's better to keep your mouth shut and remove all doubt that you're guilty, then to open your mouth and make people think you're maybe guilty.

    2 votes

  5. Comment on What are your predictions for 2026? in ~talk

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    Putin dying won't end the war. The Russian public is bought in on the war because wages are at record highs and Russia is at full employment, and everyone who dislikes the war can just ignore it....

    Putin dies. War in Ukraine ends. EU and Canada participate in rebuilding efforts, sanctioned billions freed up using some kind of legal mechanism agreed upon by some interim leader who takes over from Putin.

    Putin dying won't end the war. The Russian public is bought in on the war because wages are at record highs and Russia is at full employment, and everyone who dislikes the war can just ignore it. Meanwhile, enough Russians have died fighting that "it can't just have been for nothing."

    I would predict the war ends next year though - the Russian economy has to tank eventually, and it's been wobbling for a while. This prediction is necessarily blind and unwarranted, because if we all knew that it would crash on X date next year, then it would crash today (Ukraine would have an easy time raising funds, saying "we just need the funds to last until X date and then we'll win the war", and everyone would know Russia will lose the war and pull out accordingly, which would cause Russia to instantly collapse economically, which would instantly lose them the war).

    5 votes

  6. Comment on The US Government unconstitutionally labels Immigration and Customs Enforcement observers as domestic terrorists in ~society

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    Charge em with attempted murder. People die in car crashes.

    A woman from North Carolina asks an agent why Border Patrol would slam on its brakes at 35 miles per hour, attempting to cause an accident with the ICE observer. He does not deny it. Instead, he says they did it to stop the observers.

    Charge em with attempted murder. People die in car crashes.

    7 votes

  7. Comment on EU drops 2035 combustion engine ban as global electric vehicle shift faces reset in ~transport

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    Yes, it is a lot like them. Although I don't think they're a great model for mimicking - they're all generally car-centric, just with teeny cars. I think that cars currently occupy a niche of bulk...

    Yes, it is a lot like them. Although I don't think they're a great model for mimicking - they're all generally car-centric, just with teeny cars. I think that cars currently occupy a niche of bulk movement that they're currently way-overbuilt for. I think their redundant car roads are mostly only there for people who can't give up their car (be it due to visiting from elsewhere/passing through, or 'muh car' ideology), and they could ditch their car roads if they wanted to.

  8. Comment on Donald Trump administration moves to cut off transgender care for US children in ~lgbt

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    Everyone knows how to handle the constant liar - simply take him off the pedestal and be bluntly truthful with the wording. "The federal govt theoretically must XYZ, but the Trump presidency keeps...

    Everyone knows how to handle the constant liar - simply take him off the pedestal and be bluntly truthful with the wording. "The federal govt theoretically must XYZ, but the Trump presidency keeps ignoring the law and getting away with it so we don't know if they actually will XYZ."

    The problem is that nobody wants to do so, because they fear the political blowback - either directly from the presidency and Rs, or indirectly via accusations of bias.

    5 votes

  9. Comment on EU drops 2035 combustion engine ban as global electric vehicle shift faces reset in ~transport

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    In light of @skybrian's comment bringing up the subject of cars in cities, I have a radical proposal for a far, far greater efficiency improvement: Lower the speed limit to 30KM/h. Air resistance...

    The biggest efficiency improvements are from more aerodynamic vehicles.

    solar stuff

    In light of @skybrian's comment bringing up the subject of cars in cities, I have a radical proposal for a far, far greater efficiency improvement:

    Lower the speed limit to 30KM/h.

    Air resistance goes up proportional to speed squared IIRC, so halving the speed from the typical 60KM/h will reduce drag 4x. Reducing speed also reduces the stress on the vehicle, permitting it to be far lighter, and also massively reduces the danger of crashes - which permits even more weight be stripped out (from safety-feature overbuilding to handle a total of 120KM/h speed difference in a 60KM/h zone), while still being far safer.

    There's also less need to overbuild the engine to handle 0-60 in 3 seconds flat, when you're only going up to 30. This permits even more efficiency gains - both from lighter engines, and from more engines that don't have to optimize across a wider range of speeds, and thus are more efficient at the speeds they do operate at.

    And of course, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts - having less motor/batteries means the whole car is lighter, which means it can have a lighter frame, which means it can have even less motor/batteries.

    And lastly, once far lower power draw is needed, solar becomes a major factor and can displace a substantial portion of the battery!

    A car with a max speed of 30KM/h has a cost of <$1k. Less power usage both reduces costs, and also reduces the needed infrastructure - if you can rely heavily enough on solar, you might not even need to plug in the car!

    4 votes

  10. Comment on EU drops 2035 combustion engine ban as global electric vehicle shift faces reset in ~transport

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    The magnets are optional, even - you can do all sorts of fun things with electromagnets. Also you can literally pull the electric motor out of a washing machine and use it in a car.

    They're not. At all. They're far less complicated than an ICE engine. Wind some wire around a stator, slap some magnets on a rotor, apply voltage and you get locomotion.

    The magnets are optional, even - you can do all sorts of fun things with electromagnets.

    Also you can literally pull the electric motor out of a washing machine and use it in a car.

    4 votes

  11. Comment on Your grocery store is a bewildering sea of overly processed food. Here’s why and what to do. in ~health

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    IMO it's honestly insane that we expect everyone to cook. We have a perfectly functional professionalized model - restaurants. A restaurant chef cooking a huge-ass dish to feed 10+ people at a...

    IMO it's honestly insane that we expect everyone to cook. We have a perfectly functional professionalized model - restaurants. A restaurant chef cooking a huge-ass dish to feed 10+ people at a time will basically inevitably be more efficient than every single, couple, or family of 4 cooking their own tiny little meal. Instead, we have restaurants charging high prices for one of several dozen different meals, which has no real economy of scale.

    Half the problem is the standard saving-money advice of "cook your own meals!", which is basically grassroots austerity, and just as bad as regular government-policy austerity - decreasing market participation destroys jobs, drives the remaining sellers upmarket and destroys economy of scale. Fuck austerity.

    5 votes

  12. Comment on How NVIDIA turned 'gaming GPUs go brrr' into 'actually we can read the language of life now' (part 1 of 2) in ~science

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    FWIW I just copied the title directly.

    FWIW I just copied the title directly.

    1 vote

  13. Comment on The Windows 11 crisis in ~tech

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    Maybe edit the title and also add "link in comments", or even ping @deimos to just modify the post if you can't do it yourself. Seriously, @herson just mis-used the system, and made a self-post...

    Maybe edit the title and also add "link in comments", or even ping @deimos to just modify the post if you can't do it yourself.

    Seriously, @herson just mis-used the system, and made a self-post when it should've been a link post. We shouldn't be afraid to fix the mistake on procedural grounds.

    1 vote

  14. Comment on How NVIDIA turned 'gaming GPUs go brrr' into 'actually we can read the language of life now' (part 1 of 2) in ~science

  16. Comment on The Windows 11 crisis in ~tech

  17. Comment on Twenty years of digital life, gone in an instant, thanks to Apple in ~tech

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    I tried to set up Samba on my NAS and I couldn't get it to work - I can't tell whether it's Samba breaking, the dolphin integration that's breaking, or the connection between the two that's...

    A basic Linux box with Samba and whatever other basic file sharing daemon is pretty turnkey after you’ve set it up so long as your distro doesn’t push breaking updates (looking at you, Ubuntu).

    I tried to set up Samba on my NAS and I couldn't get it to work - I can't tell whether it's Samba breaking, the dolphin integration that's breaking, or the connection between the two that's breaking. To be fair it might be easier if I didn't try to do it with Nix. I've been ignoring the thing since I moved and got stuck with a horribly misconfigured router from 2010 and I haven't switched on my NAS in a year or so.

    Ironically I chose Nix because I wanted a Linux server that would be fairly turnkey (and very stable - I love the idea of Nix, and if I wait long enough for someone to write the documentation then it might work out well in practice, too).

    2 votes

  18. Comment on Twenty years of digital life, gone in an instant, thanks to Apple in ~tech

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    The problem is that it takes time, and every anti-corporate timesink you dive into means less time for all the other anti-corporate timesinks needed to avoid other corporate ratfucking.

    It's your data you want to save, it is up to you to do it.

    The problem is that it takes time, and every anti-corporate timesink you dive into means less time for all the other anti-corporate timesinks needed to avoid other corporate ratfucking.

    7 votes

  19. Comment on The iconic ‘Home Alone’ house is being renovated by its new owner (The interior is being restored to match its appearance in the original 1990 film) in ~movies

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    White is good for lighting, it helps make natural light go further. Small-seeming furniture (e.g. no headrests) make the house look larger by comparison and therefore pricier. And white/beige goes...

    The ultra white minimalist look just won't die. I don't know why so many people apparently want to live inside a cleanroom.

    White is good for lighting, it helps make natural light go further. Small-seeming furniture (e.g. no headrests) make the house look larger by comparison and therefore pricier. And white/beige goes well with all the Ikea furniture you'll buy - furniture which is only sold in beige or flax (a slightly yellowy beige) or beige-y green or the ugliest shade of red you've ever seen.

  20. Comment on China’s growth is coming at the rest of the world’s expense in ~society

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    Is this the case for China in specific though? China isn't a Free Market, and is famously restrictive of Chinese people trying to move their money overseas.

    A country that exports more than it imports is increasing its investments in other countries (since they don't do it for free)

    Is this the case for China in specific though? China isn't a Free Market, and is famously restrictive of Chinese people trying to move their money overseas.

    4 votes