ArbitraryValue

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 hour ago

The oldest person on record died at 122, and there's reason to think that there was fraud involved and she wasn't actually that old. By the time you were in your hundred-and-teens, you would have attention from scientists even if you looked your age. They wouldn't be forcing you to undergo medical testing if you didn't want to, but I think they would resort to force sometime in your hundred-and-twenties. If you didn't look your age, you'd have attention much sooner than that but people would think you stole someone's identity (that's what they think the 122-year-old person might have done) and not that you were immortal.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 hour ago

I'm not into chicks who are not into tentacles.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

They had a right to be there since she invited them in, and then they no longer had a right to be there after she told them to leave so they did. The events in the video could well be an attempt to illegally intimidate a person for expressing political views, but they could also be an attempt to resolve a case of harassment without having to involve the courts, in which case the fact that they left doesn't necessarily mean that she won't get a summons later.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

fixing up cracks in their homes

They used to although they generally used animal dung.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

the police would have stated that is what they were there for

She didn't exactly give them a chance to talk.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (3 children)

Here are the actual poll results which the article helpfully does not link to.

Napolitan News surveys ask an initial question to determine the voter preference for each candidate. Then, a follow-up question is asked of uncommitted voters to see which candidate they are leaning towards. The results are then reported “with leaners.”

On the initial ask– the number without leaners– it was Trump 50%, Harris 47%.

This Napolitan News Service survey of 774 Likely Voters was conducted online by Scott Rasmussen on September 25-27, 2024. Field work for the survey was conducted by RMG Research, Inc. and has a margin of error of +/- 3.5.

I think articles like this based on a single poll which appears to be an outlier are uninformative, but I guess they get clicks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (5 children)

According to the video, she tells the officers that she can guess who must have filed the complaint, and that "No one has said 'Stop messaging me.'" The police respond that they're there to tell her to stop messaging these people, but she says that if people don't want to hear her, they should tell her themselves or they should block her.

Frankly she sounds a bit unhinged and I would have to see the content of her messages before I could judge whether or not the visit from the police was appropriate. Is she just posting controversial things on her own page (in which case the police shouldn't be there) or is she repeatedly sending other people messages that they can reasonably perceive as harassment?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

"I think that today, the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza," Macron told broadcaster France Inter. "France is not delivering any," he added during the interview recorded early this week.

Who is "we" here, if France is already not delivering weapons?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Israel had time to get its jets into the air so I wouldn't be too surprised if evacuated hangars were not a high priority for the missile defense system.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I disagree with you, because a modern human could offer the people of the distant past (with their far less advanced technology) solutions to their problems which would seem miraculous to them. Things that they thought were impossible would be easy for the modern human. The computer may do the same for us, with a solution to climate change that would be, as you put it, magically ecological.

With that said, the computer wouldn't be giving humans suggestions. It would be the one in charge. Imagine a group of chimpanzees that somehow create a modern human. (Not a naked guy with nothing, but rather someone with all the knowledge we have now.) That human isn't going to limit himself to answering questions for very long. This isn't a perfect analogy because chimpanzees don't comprehend language, but if a human with a brain just 3.5 times the size of a chimpanzee's can do so much more than a chimpanzee, a computer with calculational capability orders of magnitude greater than a human's could be a god compared to us. (The critical thing is to make it a loving god; humans haven't been good to chimpanzees.)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

I don't think you're imagining the same thing they are when you hear the word "AI". They're not imagining a computer that prints out a new idea that is about as good as the ideas that humans have come up with. Even that would be amazing (it would mean that a computer could do science and engineering about as well as a human) but they're imagining a computer that's better than any human. Better at everything. It would be the end of the world as we know it, and perhaps the start of something much better. In any case, climate change wouldn't be our problem anymore.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

The article compares coal and natural gas based on thermal energy and does not take into account the greater efficiency of natural-gas power plants. According to Yale the efficiency of a coal power plant is 32% and that of a natural gas power plant is 44%. This means that to generate the same amount of electricity, you need 38% more thermal energy from coal than you would from natural gas. I'm surprised that the author neglects this given his focus on performing a full lifecycle assessment.

Natural gas becomes approximately equal to coal after efficiency is corrected for, using the author's GWP20 approach. GWP20 means that the effect of global warming is calculated for a 20 year timescale. The author argues that this is the appropriate timescale to use, but he also presents data for the more conventional GWP100 approach, and when this data is adjusted for efficiency, coal is about 25% worse than natural gas.

I'm not an expert so I can't speak authoritatively about GWP20 vs GWP100 but I suspect GWP100 is more appropriate in this case. Carbon dioxide is a stable gas but methane degrades fairly quickly. Its lifetime in the atmosphere is approximately 10 years. This means that while a molecule of carbon dioxide can keep trapping heat forever, a molecule of methane will trap only a finite amount of heat. This effect is underestimated using GWP20.

Edit: Also the Guardian shouldn't be calling this a "major study". It's one guy doing some fairly basic math and publishing in a journal that isn't particularly prestigious.

 

Archive link.

As recently as February, Mr. Walz said on a podcast that he had been in Hong Kong, then a British colony, “on June 4 when Tiananmen happened,” and decided to cross into mainland China to take up his teaching duties even though many people were urging him not to.

But it was not true. Mr. Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, indeed taught at a high school in China as part of a program sending American teachers abroad, but he did not actually travel to the country until August 1989.

Why bother making something like this up?

 

Pretty much every major shopping website has terrible search functionality.

I usually want something very specific, for example 60w dimmable e12 frosted warm led bulb. I have not found a single shopping website that won't show me results without many of these terms in the description. I don't want to see listings that say 40w and don't say 60w anywhere, and it isn't hard to filter them out!

Are these shopping websites bad on purpose? What's in it for them?

 

Before covid, I would be sick with a cold or flu for a total of about two weeks every year. That means I spent 4% of my time sick; one out of every 25 days. Since covid appeared, I've been wearing an N95 in crowded indoor areas whenever I reasonably can. (Obviously I can't if I'm eating something.) My main goal initially was to protect my elderly relatives, but during the last four years I have not gotten sick even once, except from my elderly relatives who didn't wear masks, got sick, and then infected me when I was caring for them.

Why isn't everyone wearing N95s? Sure, it's uncomfortable, but being sick is much more uncomfortable. And then there's the fact that wearing an N95 protects other people and not just the wearer...

 
 

There appears to be no straightforward way to permanently stop Windows 11 Home from rebooting on its own after installing updates. I looked for workarounds but so far I have only found a script that has to run on a schedule to block the reboot by changing "working hours". (Link.)

Is that really the best that is possible?

 

I live in a 20-story building built in 1929 and I want to do some minor renovations on my apartment. I've worked on a basic modern house made of 2x4s and drywall, but I'm out of my league here. I don't even know how to hang a mirror up on the wall...

If it's made of gypsum brick, can I treat it like masonry? What if it's hollow? Can lathe-and-plaster support any significant weight? Is drilling into the wall going to release some ancient evil they used as a normal construction material back then?

I'd love to find a guide for how to do even the basic things in these buildings. Does anyone have recommendations?

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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/buildapc
 

I have an Intel i7-4770 CPU (from 2013) and I don't think I have ever been CPU-bound so I would rather not spend money on upgrading it. However, I want to upgrade my graphics card to a Radeon RX 7600. My motherboard supports PCIE 3.0 which the RX 7600 is fine with.

Is there anything I should look out for? I'm worried that I'm missing something that will prevent me from running a 2023 video card on hardware ten years older than that.

(In case anyone is curious, my current video card is a GeForce GTX 960. It has been good enough for Diablo 2 Resurrected but I don't think it will be able to handle Baldur's Gate 3.)

 

I bought a new-in-box LG V20 about 18 months ago because I was tired of phones without removable batteries and headphone jacks. However, it gets absolutely terrible reception for some reason (as in, no signal in the middle of Manhattan). Some guy had the same problem and he soldered a big antenna to his phone to fix it. I might try to do that but given how great I am at soldering, there's a good chance I'll break the phone. Should I do it? I don't want to have to buy a modern phone with a built-in battery but I can't just have a phone which doesn't work when I'm away from wi-fi...

 

Driving is the most comfortable, convenient, and fun mode of transportation. Walking and biking can be OK but only for traveling relatively short distances in good weather. Mass transit is inherently unpleasant. No matter how nice you try to make it (and most mass transit systems aren't nice) the fact of the matter is that passengers are still stuck in a crowded box with a bunch of strangers and limited to traveling to the mass transit system's destinations on the mass transit system's schedule. Compare this to getting into your own car and driving wherever you want, whenever you want...

I currently live in a place too crowded for driving to be practical - I get that places like this need mass transit. But needing mass transit sucks!

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