papasquat's recent activity
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Comment on Government-appointed Norwegian Nuclear Committee says no to nuclear power – should build up expertise that will make it easier to make such a decision in the future in ~enviro
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Comment on Amazon killing purchasing, borrowing and downloading books for older Kindles in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentYes, I could understand a device that requires internet access needing support for security updates. That fact is very convinient for manufacturers that want to sell support agreements and new...Yes, I could understand a device that requires internet access needing support for security updates. That fact is very convinient for manufacturers that want to sell support agreements and new hardware to you over and over forever; but it is unfortunately a fact nonetheless.
There's no reason that an e-reader requires "support" though. It doesn't require internet access to do it's job. It's not a tempting target for attackers. It's just an appliance, so this move is pure, undisguised greed, nothing else.
It's no different than if my oven decided it could no longer bake pies because it's no longer supported, or if my lawnmower stopped running because it lacks critical security updates. Stuff like this should be blatantly illegal, but because it fuels the US economy, it won't be.
I wish we could govern in a way that forced companies to do actual productive work, instead of just finding new creative way to extract people's money by fucking them over.
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Comment on Donald Trump posted on Truth Social this morning that "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" as his threatened attacks on Iranian infrastructure loom ahead of deadline in ~society
papasquat Link ParentI agree with you, but I was responding to your comment about people thinking he was not going to do this. The "this" people are thinking he's not going to do, is genocide. His tweet very...I agree with you, but I was responding to your comment about people thinking he was not going to do this.
The "this" people are thinking he's not going to do, is genocide.
His tweet very unambiguously states that he's going to commit genocide tonight, and that's what people are doubting is going to happen, not that he's not going to bomb some bridges and power plants.Destroying bridges and power plants doesn't make a civilization die. Killing all of them does.
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Comment on Wireless Festival cancelled after Kanye West blocked from coming to UK in ~music
papasquat Link ParentI understand how serious of a disease it is. I understand that the disease can explain some of the things he's said and done. He's still responsible for those things though. If you have a disease...I understand how serious of a disease it is. I understand that the disease can explain some of the things he's said and done. He's still responsible for those things though.
If you have a disease who's symptoms have the capacity to harm other people, it's your responsibility to manage those symptoms; especially if you're in such a position of influence. Alcoholics are still responsible when their drunk driving kills someone. Kanye spent years not managing the symptoms of his disease as it was actively harming multitudes of people.
There are plenty of people with bipolar who are able manage their symptoms such that they don't cause great harm to other people. Most people with bipolar don't become neo-nazis and forment hatred against vulnerable people. Kanye did though, and he should have to live with the consequences of that, apology or not, disease or not.
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Comment on Wireless Festival cancelled after Kanye West blocked from coming to UK in ~music
papasquat LinkI'm all for forgiving people who have seen the error of their ways. I do appreciate Kanye seeming to come to his senses, getting treatment for whatever mental issues have plagued him, and making...I'm all for forgiving people who have seen the error of their ways. I do appreciate Kanye seeming to come to his senses, getting treatment for whatever mental issues have plagued him, and making an effort to apologize for the harm he's done.
The thing is though, you still have to face consequences. Apologizing for something doesn't suddenly mean everyone has to forgive you and those bad things you did are erased.
People should have learned this in kindergarten. Just because you apologized for hitting your sister doesn't mean you don't get put in time out.
Kanye has irreparably damaged his image, his legacy, and his career. It's good that he seems to want to atone for the things he's done and said, and I hope he feels genuine remorse and isn't just doing it because his income has slowed, but that doesn't mean he should automatically get it all back.
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Comment on Donald Trump posted on Truth Social this morning that "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" as his threatened attacks on Iranian infrastructure loom ahead of deadline in ~society
papasquat Link ParentBlowing people up is different than a civilization dying. The Iranian civilization is one of the oldest and most resilient in the world, with over 7000 years of continuous history. In order for it...Blowing people up is different than a civilization dying. The Iranian civilization is one of the oldest and most resilient in the world, with over 7000 years of continuous history.
In order for it to "die", it would require nothing short of total nuclear anihliation. I think that's what people are thinking (hoping?) he's not going to do. It's almost a given that he'll continue to strike Iran with conventional weapons.
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Comment on Used electric vehicles are a bargain right now in ~transport
papasquat Link ParentThey're mostly not lead acid batteries anymore. They're LIons just like the main batteries. You could definitely use a buck converter to step down to 12v from the high voltage system, but the...They're mostly not lead acid batteries anymore. They're LIons just like the main batteries.
You could definitely use a buck converter to step down to 12v from the high voltage system, but the battery isn't there because they couldn't figure out a better way to get 12v. It's there as an auxiliary power system.
If the high voltage system fails, you still want to be able to power the display systems, computers, BMS, emergency communications systems and so on so that the driver doesn't just get a completely dead, unresponsive car. Otherwise, if your battery overheats and shuts down in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, you'd have a car which would just go completely dark. No warning lights, no headlights or cabin lights, no diagnostic message, no heater, just a dark, dead car.
If cells are in critical states, you want an independent system to be able to cut power without cutting power to itself.
I suspect that the exact opposite will happen as time goes on, rather than eliminating 12v batteries in EVs, we'll get higher voltage auxiliary power systems as more and more of the cars functions are electrically powered, like steer by wire systems and so on.
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Comment on What if AI just makes us work harder? in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentThe thing about the traditional definition of socialism (the workers own the means of production) is that it's very binary. There are a lot of means of production, so what percentage of means of...The thing about the traditional definition of socialism (the workers own the means of production) is that it's very binary. There are a lot of means of production, so what percentage of means of production owning does a society need to hit to be considered socialist? Because if it's any, every developed country in the world is socialist. If it's all, then the only way you're going to get there is with a strict authoritarian regime which makes it illegal for individuals to start businesses.
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Comment on What if AI just makes us work harder? in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentWell, I think that part of the issue with communist movements is their ideological purity testing. I think most people outside of extremist fringes agree that a purely command economy is a bad...Well, I think that part of the issue with communist movements is their ideological purity testing.
I think most people outside of extremist fringes agree that a purely command economy is a bad idea, just as a pure laissez-faire market economy is a bad idea. The issue with every communist movement is that those command economy extremists are the ones leading them, and ultimately running the countries which have had successful revolutions.
Communist societies often contrast themselves with capitalist ones as a way to highlight the downsides of market economies, but the countries they're criticizing are moderate; they don't have pure market economies, because outside of fringe anarcho-capitalists with zero political relevance, there's no significant movement that seriously advocates for zero control of market economies in capitalist countries.
The US still had social security, public schools and utilities and so on during the Cold War. There are a lot of northern and western European countries with strong welfare states and decent wealth distribution.
That's not good enough for communist movements though, it's either the means of production, and all of the means of production are owned by the people or nothing.
We've seen countless times that when these societies go from rigid ideological purity to softening, and implementing market economy reforms, the quality of life of their citizens almost universally improves. If that's not an indicator of the strengths of market versus command economies, I don't know what is.
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Comment on Used electric vehicles are a bargain right now in ~transport
papasquat Link ParentWell, that, and they tend to be quite a bit heavier than comparable ICE vehiclesWell, that, and they tend to be quite a bit heavier than comparable ICE vehicles
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Comment on I miss technology that was meant to be used as a tool in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentThere's a difference between "should" and "can realistically expect". Like, okay, you care about the options the software and hardware you use give you, most people don't though. Do you also care...There's a difference between "should" and "can realistically expect". Like, okay, you care about the options the software and hardware you use give you, most people don't though.
Do you also care enough about where your food supply chain comes from? Do you spend hours researching and visiting farms where the stuff from your grocery store is grown/harvested? Because some people do that too. Most don't, but some do.
Do you care about how your power is being generated, or do you just flip a switch and expect it to be on? There are people who research their local power plants and utility energy mix and lobby to get it changed.
Do you care about how police enforce laws in your city? Do you map out crime statistics, and review recent cases and abuse complaints by pulling public records requests? There are people that do that too.
Same for healthcare, or fire rescue, or water supplies, or... I don't know, elevator safety. There are literally hundreds of thousands of little aspects of modern life that a handful of people care extremely deeply about and spend a lot of time being concerned with. Some of them are inheritely dangerous and kill people regularly if they're not being taken care of adequately.
I personally don't do any of this, because while i recognize they're important, I don't have the time, energy, expertise, or interest to devote the significant amount of my life it would take to be overly concerned with even one of them.
No one has the time, energy, or interest to focus on all of them, so the idea that everyone should focus on software configurability is absolutely arbitrary. There are thousands of things that you, in theory, should focus on deeply, but the standard of living we currently enjoy would be impossible if we were all generalists.
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Comment on Nation's largest urban battery is being built in Daly City, California in ~enviro
papasquat Link ParentPumped hydroelectric needs a very specific terrain layout to work. There are very, very few places where its viable. There are entire regions of the country where it's not feasible because of a...Pumped hydroelectric needs a very specific terrain layout to work. There are very, very few places where its viable. There are entire regions of the country where it's not feasible because of a lack of elevation or development patterns or geology.
In contrast, you can put battery storage literally anywhere you have space. You can also continually scale its energy and power capacity over time as demand grows by just adding more units.
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Comment on Used electric vehicles are a bargain right now in ~transport
papasquat Link ParentWell, their power trains don't. They still have regular car stuff, like brakes, suspension, steering, electrical systems and so on.Well, their power trains don't. They still have regular car stuff, like brakes, suspension, steering, electrical systems and so on.
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Comment on Boomer hate in ~society
papasquat Link Parent"Home Ownership" as the path to financial independence is a relatively new concept, and a very minor blip, localized almost entirely within the US, and for a very brief period of 40 years or so...."Home Ownership" as the path to financial independence is a relatively new concept, and a very minor blip, localized almost entirely within the US, and for a very brief period of 40 years or so.
Post WW2 economic dominance is an aberration that's tainted a lot of people's view of what normal is, and how the entire rest of the world lives.
For the vast majority of places on earth, for the vast majority of human history, the idea that it's a norm that people own 1600 sq ft+ homes is absolutely insane. That became the norm in the US for a while because we had more purchasing power than any modern country on earth ever. We maintained that dominance via globalization for the next half century. We're starting to see other places catch up, and that massive head start no longer be so relevant.
I think the next 50 years will require a dramatic reshaping of what the American Dream looks like for most people.
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Comment on Here’s what the world had to say about the AI economy in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentWell, let's break down the list, because it doesn't actually seem that foolish after really thinking about it. Heavily dependant on the social media of course, but in general, I think I probably...Well, let's break down the list, because it doesn't actually seem that foolish after really thinking about it.
social media
Heavily dependant on the social media of course, but in general, I think I probably trust things I read less on social media than just random chance. It's virtually all ragebait and nonsense, so this one makes sense to me.
elected officials
In the US, on a federal level, I think most of us can agree that most elected officials are literally professional con men at this moment in time. I tend to automatically assume whatever a federal official says is the exact opposite of the truth at this point and I'm usually proven correct. State and local vary by municipality, but in my case, it's mostly true for them as well.
community leaders, faith leaders
This one is honestly surprising to me. I'm not religious or involved with community groups, but why would you be involved in those organizations if you didn't trust their leaders? They're voluntary for the most part
and civil servants
Highly dependent on most civil servants. For the most part, they're informed and professional, but I have had experiences where it was clear that they just wanted me to go away, and they were intentionally misleading me to get me lost in the gigantic cogs of bureaucracy. It doesn't happen to me often, because I'm basically what society assumes is a "default human being", a middle aged married straight cis white male with a steady job, no major health issues, and no criminal record. The further you deviate from that "default", the more problems I'd expect you'd have with civil servants.
Even though LLMs are going to hallucinate and affirm your stupid ideas, depending on circumstances, I'd trust its answer more than a lot of the people listed above. Doesn't seem that foolish to me overall.
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Comment on Here’s what the world had to say about the AI economy in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentI wonder what people are thinking of when they say AI. I think I'd agree with the statement that AI made daily life better, but I'd be talking about the ML algorithms that make modern search...I wonder what people are thinking of when they say AI. I think I'd agree with the statement that AI made daily life better, but I'd be talking about the ML algorithms that make modern search engines work well, the ability for my smart cameras to detect people instead of random shadows, my car's lane keeping assist functionality, a lot of the ML functions software I use at work uses to detect anomolies and so forth.
LLMs are largely negative, although I do find them useful sometimes. That doesn't really outweigh their content polluting search results though. They still have a pretty minor impact on my life other than supply chain shortages though.
If I take the sum of "AI" as a whole though, yeah, mostly positive.
I think one of the negatives of the term AI has always been its fuzzy definition which constantly changes in colloquial usage. I strongly suspect that people are only thinking about LLMs and diffusion based image generation models when they hear AI.
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Comment on Suggest media in which the antagonist is an idea or an abstract concept rather than a person or intelligent entity in ~talk
papasquat LinkFor All Mankind: An alternate history/sci fi show by Ronald D Moore, famously of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica pedigree. Imagines what happens if the space race of the 1960s never ended, and...For All Mankind: An alternate history/sci fi show by Ronald D Moore, famously of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica pedigree. Imagines what happens if the space race of the 1960s never ended, and all that entails. In this world, the Soviet Union never collapses, different countries tip the balance of global power in interesting ways, and intense global investment in space exploration technology pushes the trajectory of tech in different ways.
There isn't really a clear antagonist at all, but one of the major themes of the show is overcoming bureaucracy, bigotry and human ignorance. Much like Star Trek as well, the show is aspirational at times; the world it takes place in hits a lot of social justice milestones a lot sooner than we did in the real world, and has overcome a lot of issues we still struggle with. It's a great series.
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Comment on Getting permission from your significant other in ~life
papasquat Link ParentYeah, I think saying "gotta check with the boss" pretty clearly leans on gender stereotypes and traditional roles, even though it's pretty innocuous. To illustrate that, I've never heard of a...Yeah, I think saying "gotta check with the boss" pretty clearly leans on gender stereotypes and traditional roles, even though it's pretty innocuous.
To illustrate that, I've never heard of a woman saying that about her husband when her friends ask her to do something.
We live in a world of gender roles and sexism, it's impossible for anyone to not absorb some of that even if you're aware of it and make a conscious effort to avoid it.
I don't think it's a big deal overall, although it would be nice to one day live in a world where people don't make assumptions about your personality or relationship dynamic based on your gender.
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Comment on Getting permission from your significant other in ~life
papasquat LinkI wanted to make another comment because this touches on a pet peeve of mine that I really hate. That's using tired gender stereotypes as a sales tactic. Very often, I'll be in situations where...I wanted to make another comment because this touches on a pet peeve of mine that I really hate.
That's using tired gender stereotypes as a sales tactic. Very often, I'll be in situations where I'm likely to be sold to with my wife. That could be walking around home depot, going to a trade expo, going to a really touristy spot on a vacation, and so on.
My wife and I are very similar in that we're both extremely skeptical of people approaching/cold calling/advertising to us about anything, but especially when they're clearly selling something. Both of us would rather just immediately say no, and if we want the thing that is being sold, we come back later after actually weighing our options and deciding if it's a good deal.
One thing that sales people do, and I'm very sure this is intentionally taught at their stupid training retreats, is to try to use my wife against me. They'll say things like "oh, well I understand, your husband doesn't like to spend money, that's rough", or "you know you're supposed to take care of your lady right? Don't you care about making her happy?". They'll try to sell directly to her and cut me out of the conversation if they don't feel they're getting anywhere with me, or they'll try to form an "alliance" with my wife to get her to help them pitch me.
Thankfully, this basically never works, but the entire idea of it is really disgusting to me, and using it will 100% guarantee that I'll go out of my way to never do business with their company again.
It draws on the same old well of tired stereotypes thats behind "wife=bad" humor, or "happy wife happy life" , "gotta ask the boss" and so on. The idea that women are humorless hags with full control of their husband's life and wallet, and that a husbands role is to desperately perform for their wives for the rest of their life to escape being bitched at and nagged.
It's not the kind of relationship dynamic that anyone I know would ever want to be in, and it annoys me when people not only assume that that's the dynamic of my relationship, but try to use that assumption for personal gain.
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Comment on Enjoying reading in the age of LLMs in ~humanities
papasquat Link ParentIt depends on what type of writing you mean. There are certain types of writing that AI already has largely supplanted. Low level copyrighting is completely done by AI now, and the current models...Personally I don't see AI writing supplanting human writing.
It depends on what type of writing you mean. There are certain types of writing that AI already has largely supplanted. Low level copyrighting is completely done by AI now, and the current models are way more capable than they ever needed to be to create that work.
I imagine a lot of technical writing will also be completely taken over by AI as well.
Most summarization, translation, and report writing are in the process of being taken over by AI as well.
If you're talking about writing that people consume for pleasure or enjoyment though, I think some of that may be taken over, but there will always be a market for human written work. The issue is always going to be actually trusting that it really was human written. There's no way to verify that, nor can there ever be, because of the nature of text.
A key point that a lot of people also miss when talking about nuclear is something the committee highlighted.
It's very hard to find people with experience in nuclear power. It's an extremely specific skillet that isn't used anywhere else. Knowledge of nuclear physics and engineering is pretty much only used in power generation.
People who have that skillset are extremely rare, and you need a lot of them to have a nuclear program.
Countries with nuclear navies have an advantage there because there's a built in training pipeline but everyone else needs to build it from scratch.
For renewables, the story is much different. You just need EEs with basic DC engineering knowledge for solar, and AC for wind. Batteries are very well understood technology used just about everywhere. Every industrialized nation has tons of people that are qualified to build and operate those systems in a way that nuclear can't come close to.
Obviously that can all change, but the other factors mean there's not a really compelling reason for it to.