OneEyedRobot

>Everything but housing and education you mean.

Do you think it's due to changes in technology? political beliefs? or overpopulation?

>Things are better now than 40 years ago and yet are worse than 7 years ago.

Cars are safer and last longer (and cost 2x as much). Some forms of medical care are better (surgery). TVs have more resolution and increasing sources of media leads to more mouth agape consumption at home.

Other than that, I can't see any advantage to now over then.

>There's no reason something can't be more lethal and more virulent.

Smallpox.

>What about viruses that are designed rather than evolved?

Biopreparat(tm) Smallpox.

Living in one of the highest danger California zones, currently not on fire, it's remarkable how little is ever done.

There's plenty of nodding heads discussing how the indigenous people were such excellent stewards of the land, ecological non-profits with nice offices, committees and committees and committees, grant money that is magically awarded, local public safety people congratulating each other on excellent inter-agency cooperation, the (very) occasional green waste day, and essentially no fire mitigation of any sort.

There's no movement until lightning or a homeless 'warming' fire (locally that's the typical cause) or an arsonist or a power line sparks a flame and then the ant nest of tankers and fire crews breaks out.

All fire means to me at this point is the perfect example of organizational gridlock.

You know, I haven't even really noticed a ramp down in freedom due to any kind of government action in the last few years.

Now, if you compare modern times to the freedom we enjoyed 50 years ago, the difference is absolutely phenomenal. Absolutely no comparison. I mean it's crazy.

>Some people want to dig deep and understand how the system works

I'd say that's definitely the case but also a problem.

Sophisticated users mixed with people who just want to do a few simple things is a bad combination. I seem to remember that ClearCase had the same issues.

>The direct to consumer model already exists.

Which doesn't imply that more aren't needed or possible.

Why couldn't overdrive simply cut a deal where a group of people (a school, a county, a company with benefits) is allowed to 'check out' a copy. Archive.org has that sort of concept for individuals of course (for free). I don't see any value added by getting the library involved (which are mostly just free internet, warming/cooling centers and bathrooms for the homeless, a source of self-help books and romance novels for a tiny section of an ageing population).

To be fair, the feature creep in public libraries is important to keep the iron rice bowl full. It would be more honest to put together a local 'activity center' that happens to have a few books.

..or quit importing so many people.

I admit that radiology sounds like a tractable problem for machine learning, they'll probably get better.

It strikes me, without any real knowledge but this is the internet, that it just goes down the typical rabbit hole of human specialization. Make the data portable, move the data handling overseas, add computer optimization over time. You do have to wonder if radiologists (any here?) really need general medical knowledge or if high specialized training with pictures would be enough.

What exactly is the point of a library in this case? Why doesn't this Overdrive company simply have a direct-to-consumer site with some kind of payment scheme?

One thing that's going to have to change is the cost of ebooks. Amazon pricing is insane and I can't say that artificially scarce check-outs is a more logical solution.

My main bet is that the IP enforcement apparatus gets stronger and stronger. Now is the time to grab everything you can from whatever source. youtube-dl, libgen, sci-hub, the-eye, even the currently legal things like gutenberg and archive.org...I'm working to go essentially offline on media sources.

I can't guess why Bezos does what he does but have to give him credit for not going the Soros route...WP aside of course.

If I were him, I'd avoid anything Musk (who sucks all the air out of the room) is involved in. Build the worlds biggest telescope, work on advanced propulsion technology for launch or interplanetary spacecraft, there's a lot of cool things out there. I doubt that the first investor in anything really cutting edge is going to make a profit, so look for the wow factor.

“Learn the changes, then forget them.” -Charles Parker Jr.

Thanks for the Gervais article. Good one.

I wonder what happens when the 'clueless' layer is replaced by a clueless machine intelligence. I like the idea of the work-at-home folks talking to a sort of cartoon head on a screen about their bug list or how much time they spend on Facebook.

Also not the OP.

I've got a Mac Mini (2014?) that I bought for a Mac/Windows contract. Contract is long over so I wiped Windows and now dual-boot MacOS and Pop!_OS (a terrible name). Works fine. The machine is tolerably fast/quiet.

I'd scrub the MacOS entirely as I'm not a huge fan but still like to mess with Rocksmith now and again.

So what happened to the main house? Empty when the shed is in use?

If nothing else it looks like a pretty slick way to avoid all building codes. Just run extension cords everywhere, water through garden hoses, dump the toilet bucket into the garden, no need for fire-rated anything. sweet.

>We know the entry level won't be able to serve as a battery backup

Why is that? A missing feature?

but birds outrank ants.

I also suspect that the change in the precipitation mix from snow to rain served to dry out a lot of these areas.

Huh. That's clever and I've never seen it.

Probably not of much value as roofs are (or can be) relatively fireproof.

The issue is vents, decks, windows to some extent.

While sprinklers are probably impractical as they require large storage or that you (and your neighbors) starve the mains, I'll bet that a person could design a fast-to-deploy thermal blanket system of some sort.

If everyone is producing electricity, who pays the bills?

>The underlying factor is that the Private sphere has been eroded, and there are generations of people who have no concept of it.

Monsters from the Id. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2BYyeS-fIU

That's rather rich coming from a magazine (like all of them really) that has so decidedly chosen a team for the culture wars.

I can't say that it's a matter of 'democracy' but simply human nature on the large scale. Personal and mass behavior (personal in the aggregate I guess) is going to be steered by a combination of top-down force and bottom-up culture. Diversity implies a lack of bottom-up control systems so, if anything, you need less democracy in modern states.

Obviously social media makes it easier to gin up a mob, and there's always been the truth that small yet loud contingents can punch above their weight, but it seems to me that there's nothing really new here. Social media appears to allow impolite behavior at lower cost, but that poor behavior was always built into the individual.

Perhaps what I'd like to hear is some insight from a participant in the Yugoslavia breakup.

It wouldn't surprise me (although I'm not any kind of power engineer) if a world of house-based grid-tied solar wouldn't be a bit of a management nightmare for the power company as opposed to large plants.

I expect we get away with it right now due to rarity.

What required the 400 amp service?

I do like the F150 as a backup power source, but there's probably a catch. I see that a Tesla Powerwall holds 13.5 kWh, and the truck is 115-155 kWh.

Average US house is 30 kWh / day? It sounds doable but not cheap.

The real money ends up being in the power storage. Obviously there's such a thing as 'night' and multiple days without full sun (or snow on your roof depending on the area).

I wonder how many electric F-150s will get sold to people on the basis of using them as a whole-house battery.

I fully agree on your point of the lack of logic to grid-based solar. No doubt large scale facilities can be placed in better areas, be cheaper per watt, have higher uptime, are able to afford the more exotic power storage (dams for one).

Now, if it were me, I'd start with new construction designed around low power usage. LED lighting, efficient computers, chest freezer turned into a refrigerator, no electric heat or dryers or transfer fans for gas heaters. The sticking point would tend to be A/C but I think that can be mitigated via small house size, insulation, and use of efficient split systems. The smaller the electricity use the more tractable the problem.

If there's a large increase in the amount of remote work, I wonder how much software architectures will change in order to accommodate the lessened interaction?

>Not only that, but I predict that humans will stop emitting CO2 in a few decades, in any case.

I expect that per capita greenhouse emissions will go down, they have in the US for quite some time.

Clean sheet mitigation results in a lot of ox goring. You probably need more nuke plants, less (or no) immigration from the third world to the first, replacement of coal with natgas, hammer on the Chinese, encourage birth control.

People are generally hard on the environment and there's too darn many of them. Environmental issues are typically used to achieve political/financial power.

Not a bad tool for getting a bit of a handle on the fires.

caltopo.com

Although I'm not sure what difference it really makes vs. more heavily managing public land but our local planning commission makes it essentially impossible to remove trees.

This is in an extreme fire risk area.

Also, it's quite expense to remove general green waste. High dump fees, long distances to dump, burn piles not allowed, impossible to throw away various types of plants outside house garbage flow.