tibpoe's recent activity

  1. Comment on How investors 10x each dollar, before they even invest in ~finance

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    I think you're failing to understand how this whole thing is structured and what the potential upside & downside is here. If your friend has 180k invested in a fund where there is...

    I think you're failing to understand how this whole thing is structured and what the potential upside & downside is here.

    If your friend has 180k invested in a fund where there is 180+180+180+1000+4500 of capital and 3000 of bank loans, and that fund goes up 6% over the next year, then your friend makes 10.8k, minus proportional interest on the the 3000k (lets say 5% APY?) of bank loans, for a net gain of 6.3k.

    If the fund goes down 6% over the next year, then your friend loses 10.8k from investment losses, as well as pays proportional interest on the 3000k of bank loans, as well as will eventually need to pay the bank back 5.4k. Or a net loss of 20.6k. Luckily, we're pretending that there's no risk of margin call on this particular loan, but that could make the situation much worse.

    That's not even considering the fact that most people don't have a rich friend with a family office, and are not able to convince sovereign wealth funds to invest in their projects.

    5 votes
  2. Comment on How long do homemade olives stay safe? in ~food

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    I wouldn't eat it. The recipe is a little bit sketchy in how there's no sterilization step, and the recipe itself suggests one year max. On the other hand, people have eaten much sketchier things...

    I wouldn't eat it. The recipe is a little bit sketchy in how there's no sterilization step, and the recipe itself suggests one year max.

    On the other hand, people have eaten much sketchier things and been fine.

  3. Comment on Shrinking number of free news outlets in ~talk

    tibpoe
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    Pro Publica is very good, and they only report on their own journalism. You will not find them reposting news wire stories. Even though they are free, I think it's worth funding high-quality...

    Pro Publica is very good, and they only report on their own journalism. You will not find them reposting news wire stories.

    Even though they are free, I think it's worth funding high-quality journalism like theirs.

    11 votes
  4. Comment on How long do homemade olives stay safe? in ~food

    tibpoe
    Link
    I discovered this guide to food safety a while ago, and found it really helpful to understanding how food safety works. In your case, there's not enough information to go by the numbers since you...

    I discovered this guide to food safety a while ago, and found it really helpful to understanding how food safety works.

    In your case, there's not enough information to go by the numbers since you don't specify PH, vinegar ratio, or canning procedure. The 5% brine matches a water activity of ~.97, or not a major contributor to food safety in this case.

    6 votes
  5. Comment on Danish man convicted of sharing nude scenes from copyrighted films and TV series on the social media site Reddit in ~tech

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    That's a separate offense, for torrenting movies in general presumably. A redditor also makes an unsourced claim that this is a suspended sentence, not jail.

    That's a separate offense, for torrenting movies in general presumably.

    shared 347 clips of nude scenes on the Reddit group he moderated, which were then viewed 4.2 million times

    He shared them in the subreddit - or forum - he was a moderator of.

    his subreddit [sedetforplottet] had more than 6,000 members and users were encouraged to request for clips of specific actors.

    A redditor also makes an unsourced claim that this is a suspended sentence, not jail.

    6 votes
  6. Comment on Microsoft, Google say their data centers create thousands of jobs. Their permit filings say otherwise. in ~finance

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    The customers may be Chilean, but the employees of the companies that the computers belong to have no reason to be. If I want to deploy a piece of software on a server at work, it takes about...

    The customers may be Chilean, but the employees of the companies that the computers belong to have no reason to be. If I want to deploy a piece of software on a server at work, it takes about 10-15 minutes and network latency is not a major factor in that.

    4 votes
  7. Comment on Microsoft, Google say their data centers create thousands of jobs. Their permit filings say otherwise. in ~finance

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    This is silly, you can remote in to the computers in the datacenter from anywhere in the world. The vast majority of workloads aren't interactive either, even the latency penalty is unlikely to...

    homing themselves in Chile to make use of the datacenter.

    This is silly, you can remote in to the computers in the datacenter from anywhere in the world. The vast majority of workloads aren't interactive either, even the latency penalty is unlikely to matter.

  8. Comment on Is vaping less harmful than smoking, and does it help people quit? in ~health

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    The vitamin E thing is completely unrelated to nicotine vapes,[^1] the relationship was completely made up by the media on the basis of sick teenagers swearing they've never touched a THC vape. It...

    The vitamin E thing is completely unrelated to nicotine vapes,[^1] the relationship was completely made up by the media on the basis of sick teenagers swearing they've never touched a THC vape.

    It makes no economical sense to cut nicotine vape liquid, since the raw materials there are already much cheaper than Vitamin E acetate.

    [^1]: From the linked article, "Vitamin E acetate was illegally used as a diluent in multiple counterfeit, low-cost tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) containing cartridges. Its use as a diluent in THC-based cartridges became common in 2019, coinciding with the EVALI outbreak"

    6 votes
  9. Comment on What's a quantum computer? in ~tech

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    Post-quantum cryptography is not as easy as you describe it: only recently have standards bodies like NIST standardized it; the algorithms are significantly slower, use a lot more network...

    Post-quantum cryptography is not as easy as you describe it: only recently have standards bodies like NIST standardized it; the algorithms are significantly slower, use a lot more network bandwidth, and are worse understood/riskier.

    Signal recently introduced post-quantum crypto, and if you read their very technical paper on it, you can tell it took a lot of effort.

    9 votes
  10. Comment on Does anyone here use a SAD lamp? in ~health.mental

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    They exist! The main caveat is the price, which is "contact us" and rumored to be about $40k. But if you're outfitting an MRI machine room for example, it may be worth it.

    They exist!

    The main caveat is the price, which is "contact us" and rumored to be about $40k. But if you're outfitting an MRI machine room for example, it may be worth it.

    2 votes
  11. Comment on Does anyone here use a SAD lamp? in ~health.mental

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    It's pretty simple and cheap actually, just get a high bay light:...

    It's pretty simple and cheap actually, just get a high bay light: https://www.superbrightleds.com/industrial-led-lighting/led-warehouse-and-led-warehouse-vehicle-lighting/led-high-bay-lighting/led-linear-high-bay-lights/165w-led-linear-high-bay-23-100-lumens-400w-mh-equivalent-5000k

    Warning: this will be painfully bright. Looking directly at the lamp will be a lux of 100k or so, so you will need to bounce it off a wall.

    3 votes
  12. Comment on Illiteracy is a policy choice: why aren’t we gathering behind Mississippi’s banner? in ~society

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    Unfortunately, it seems what's really happening here is that everyone else got worse, particularly between 2019 and 2024. All the reforms listed in the article seem extremely reasonable though,...

    Unfortunately, it seems what's really happening here is that everyone else got worse, particularly between 2019 and 2024.

    All the reforms listed in the article seem extremely reasonable though, and it's very sad to see so many kids being left behind.

    7 votes
  13. Comment on The perfect lighting in ~life.home_improvement

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    Pretty much nothing. It's not exactly like-for-like, but zigbee sensors often need to go a whole year on a single CR2032 battery. That's roughly 0.5Wh of consumption per year. An ESP32 chip, one...

    Pretty much nothing. It's not exactly like-for-like, but zigbee sensors often need to go a whole year on a single CR2032 battery. That's roughly 0.5Wh of consumption per year.

    An ESP32 chip, one of the thirstiest chips in this application, will be about 170Wh/month. But that's for WiFi, which unlike the zigbee in the Hue lights is not optimized for efficiency.

    2 votes
  14. Comment on Looking for some cat advice in ~life.pets

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    Perhaps you're thinking of this one? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002H3S5K/?th=1 Completely overkill for a cat though, and I don't think they make them any smaller.

    Perhaps you're thinking of this one? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002H3S5K/?th=1

    Completely overkill for a cat though, and I don't think they make them any smaller.

    3 votes
  15. Comment on Experiences with FarmBot or similar gardening robots? in ~tech

    tibpoe
    Link
    State of the art is automated steering on big tractors. I'd be surprised if there's any small-scale automation outside of education. Productivity improvements in farming come from larger plots of...

    State of the art is automated steering on big tractors.

    I'd be surprised if there's any small-scale automation outside of education. Productivity improvements in farming come from larger plots of land, and people who garden at home generally do it because they enjoy the process of gardening with their hands.

    2 votes
  16. Comment on Microsoft testing new AI features in Windows 11 File Explorer in ~tech

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    apt-get is exactly the system package manager, so you're good! You definitely don't have to use the command line unless you want to either, the Software Manager GUI on your computer uses apt-get...

    apt-get is exactly the system package manager, so you're good! You definitely don't have to use the command line unless you want to either, the Software Manager GUI on your computer uses apt-get under the hood.

    1 vote
  17. Comment on Microsoft testing new AI features in Windows 11 File Explorer in ~tech

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    Step 1: Only use the system package manager/software store. Don't download software off internet websites. Step 2: There is no step 2. Yes, because there's a monetization plan with all malware....

    Step 1: Only use the system package manager/software store. Don't download software off internet websites.

    Step 2: There is no step 2.

    would I even notice if my box was compromised?

    Yes, because there's a monetization plan with all malware. Anyway, there's not currently any malware targeting desktop Linux users, so as long as you follow step 1 in the future, you have nothing to worry about.

    3 votes
  18. Comment on Signal introduces secure cloud backups in ~tech

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    Symmetric encryption is not really vulnerable to quantum computers the way asymmetric encryption is.

    Symmetric encryption is not really vulnerable to quantum computers the way asymmetric encryption is.

    6 votes
  19. Comment on What is a business/org that's so terrible no one should use if possible? in ~life

    tibpoe
    Link Parent
    It is now, but for many years it was poorly described and opt-out. The threat of government regulation has forced banks to clean up their act though, and I hope that will stay despite the Trump...

    It is now, but for many years it was poorly described and opt-out.

    The threat of government regulation has forced banks to clean up their act though, and I hope that will stay despite the Trump whiplash on this regulation

    3 votes
  20. Comment on Pioneering method turns plastic into fuel with 95% efficiency in ~engineering

    tibpoe
    Link
    Looks like the main innovation here is their process allows removing the chlorine from the plastic without a separate dechlorination step. That this process creates gasoline-like fuel is sort of a...

    Looks like the main innovation here is their process allows removing the chlorine from the plastic without a separate dechlorination step. That this process creates gasoline-like fuel is sort of a happy side-effect, since dechlorinated plastic can already be burned for energy.

    A preprint of this paper can be found here.

    18 votes