ccooffee

Agreed. The gist seems...rambling and unfocused. Other than "collapse" being very zeitgeist-y, I'm not sure what people are finding in this gist.

Can't watch the video right now, but the slides (available at [0]) list these four "forgotten ideas":

1. Linda Tuple Spaces [1]

2. Flow based programming [2]

3. Xanadu [3]

4. Unix pipes [4]

[0] https://codesync.global/uploads/media/default/0001/01/de7dfa...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuple_space

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow-based_programming

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipeline_(Unix)

An old college friend went to work for CSX (I think), and we caught up after he'd worked there for a few years. He said that most of his job consisted of digging into old COBOL code to explain why a train was routed a certain way (e.g. Reno -> Phoenix -> LA -> SF instead of Reno -> SF), and that he rarely ever changed the code. They just made summary documents saying "there was rail congestion on the normal route".

I've always hoped that he was just yanking my chain and that they did...well, anything really.

Many years ago, a user filed a bug report that the timezone information we used for historical places in Indiana was incorrect. I don't remember exactly what the user was doing, but I think it had something to do with train schedules or something.

I did not fix that bug. (But I did learn that the 'TZ' database has this information, though I think 'America/Indiana/*' had been pruned out of the copy our JVM was using.)

Eh, it feels like they're merely trying to undercut Tesla's Lease offers. Sure, call it a subscription, and talk about low time commitments (3 months vs 36 through Tesla), but it is the same idea.

Like leasing, this comes with the downsides of car ownership (maintenance, fuel, parking) without the upside of "equity". Based on the submission title, I was expecting something more akin to ZipCar (but only electric vehicles).

> If we only have so much agency to make a difference in the world, how much should we beat ourselves up over the inability to change it?

Definitely something to consider. For a long time, I justified my actions with a combination of "well, I'm doing good with the money", "if I didn't do this, someone else would so quitting doesn't accomplish anything", and "unlike a narrative protagonist, I don't have the capability to change the world".

Worked for a large silicon valley company in the military-industrial space.

I've done this for over a decade, and "Effective Altruism" does NOT prevent midlife crises. There's more nuance to it. (In my case, my day job that paid VERY well involved things that are very much against my ethics. Even giving away 20% of the money to good causes didn't stop the guilt. So now I'm "retired" but mostly just wallowing in guilt of enabling horrific things while lying to myself about "making the world better" on the fringes.)

Your source looks at 2020 emissions, which is TRUE, but 2020 was covid shutdowns. I've seen somewhat-reliable estimates of 2-7% reduction in CO2-equivalent emissions. (If you look at 2019, it was remarkably about equal to 2018 after many years of increase.)

But 2021 was the biggest (full year) of emissions ever, more than covering the 2020 decrease. I don't know of any resources that track quarterly emissions, so I don't know if we can see whether 2022 is on-pace for another record year. Perhaps the price of oil reduced usage enough to reduce emissions this year compared to last, but I won't hold my breath.

> If global warming reaches around 3°C toward the century’s end, Deloitte’s analysis indicates that economic damages would grow and compound, affecting every industry and region in the country.

I'm betting we overshoot +3c by a fair bit. Given how little progress has been made (emissions are still _accelerating_), I'm at least pleased to see some resource that doesn't merely talk about +1.5c. We've passed that point already. The IPCC's 6th report estimates that if we merely burn the GHGs that are easily accessible via our existing mines, oil rigs, etc, we're headed to +2.5c.

I really hope that Deloitte's report here does some good by giving financial numbers to people who only care about the numbers. (But I doubt it. Very few people with ANY decision-making power will be alive in 2100. "Why worry? I'll be dead.")

"Appease the moneyed classes or starve" doesn't seem like a very just way to run the world. Granted, the IMF isn't the arbiter of justice, but punishing the PEOPLE of El Salvador for the actions of the local ruling classes is just cruel. Even if the "financial trouble" could lead to "regime change", we're obscuring the horrors for the citizenry behind some smarmy journalism words.

Oof! It is irrigated agriculture. :(

Thanks for the link, didn't think of that.

Per the USGS gauge[1], the current flows are 21.3 cubic feet per second. The historical low for July 22 is from 1980 when it was 60.0. The flows of the Rio Grande through Albuquerque is controlled by the Cochiti Dam, about 50 miles upriver. The dam is currently at 42 feet full[2], and is currently discharging about 300 cubic feet per second[3] (and appears to run continuously). So in the 50 miles between Cochiti Dam and Alb, about 280 cfs are being lost.

Maybe this is intentional diversion. But for what? I can only conceive of irrigation being the answer (but please call out other reasons). If it is just irrigation "intentionally" causing the river to run dry, that seems....really bad.

Given Cochiti Lake's low level, it won't be long before you can't irrigate those crops, so even the "use" of the water will be wasted. (Perhaps the worst outcome would be to intentionally divert the water to grow crops, but to run out of water before the crops grow fully. Then you've wasted the water and gotten nothing for it.)

[1] https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nm/nwis/uv?site_no=08330000 [2] https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nm/nwis/uv/?site_no=08317300&PARA... [3] https://waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/uv?08317400

This mechanism would just get gamified. Some oligarch is gonna claim the property is worth nothing, and use their expensive legal team to prevent any attempts to purchase the property.

It'll also allow the government to bully anyone they want by evicting them, even if the price were fair. Local reporter digs up dirt on city council? Well, the city council just reviewed property tax claims, and decided that the reporter's house is "undervalued".

Interesting. I was unaware of the state of telcos in NZ. I found this wikipedia article to have some additional content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_New_Zeal...

Using only that article as a resource (lazy, sorry), it seems that the telco infrastructure improved because of competition. It doesn't really seem to be a private/public issue, but that multiple companies got into the action.

All of Iceland's infrastructure was sold off in one huge chunk, forming a private monopoly. This may become a decent test case for whether government-operation or private-operation makes a difference. (In contrast to the wiki article, which suggests that competition is the thing that matters.) Like the grandparent comment, I expect very little from the private operation of Iceland's telco infrastructure, but I'd love to be surprised.

What lessons are to be learned by the process of the JWST? I'm amazed that such an ambitious project, which required many advances in the "state of the art" has been successful so far, even with the 12 year delay.

It gives me hope for reversing climate change, though the scale and scope of the projects are absurdly different. 1000 gigatons of CO2 is a lot, but we'll have to start somewhere.

I also do this. But given the context of this post ("AI" models filtering resumes prior to ever getting in front of a human), maybe "decline to answer" comes with a hidden negative score adjustment that can't be (legally) challenged.

I think the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires notification. (i.e. I need to talk to HR/boss/whoever about any limitations and reasonable accommodations.) If I am correct, not-answering the question "Do you require accommodations according to the ADA? []yes []no []prefer not to answer" can legally come with a penalty, and the linked DoJ reasoning wouldn't stop it.

DeleteMe's privacy policy and terms of service (both at https://joindeleteme.com/legal/ ) don't seem very reasonable for a company that claims to be in the service of privacy. The website asks for all sorts of personal information at signup and stores it all for use later, with no real promises that they won't do something malicious. (Although the privacy policy currently says they won't sell your data right back to Google, they also retain the right to change the policy at any time for any reason...)

Yea, this doesn't seem great. In my opinion, one of the biggest failures of the Affordable Care Act was the guarantee of profit for insurance companies.

This bill looks like the same sort of problem. "Insulin capped at $35/month" sounds great, but it buries the point that prices AREN'T actually being fixed. They're just shifting the increased cost from individual patients to the collective (via insurance companies). My insurance costs are going to go up so that pharma corporations can continue to fleece patients, and there's nothing in this bill that would prevent this.

I found the "What is Keyoxide?" page a useful explanation that was missing from the homepage: https://docs.keyoxide.org/getting-started/what-is-keyoxide/

I never found the identity/distributed-account thing on keybase useful, as I explicitly DO NOT want my accounts linked, but if that's your thing, definitely worth checking out.

Woah, this sounds incredibly useful. Are there any blog posts / wiki pages / videos that you used as a reference when doing this? I'm hoping to put a garden in my backyard this month, but I'm not sure about the location.

This website claims to have translated recipes from the Boke of Cokery: http://godecookery.com/goderec/goderec.htm

> Why aren’t we sending an email to every user?

> We evaluated the risk and consulted with our privacy lawyers and legal experts, and took the approach that we thought appropriately mitigated any issues while being open and transparent and did not believe emailing directly was helpful in this case.

Seems like a pretty weak justification. "Our lawyers said we don't have to notify users."

I found an article about Russia's military logistics problems very reassuring. https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-...

The author claims that Russia would be very slow to go beyond the borders of the former USSR because (1) Russia's forces are completely reliant on railroads and (2) the railroads in former-soviet states are a different track width from elsewhere in Europe.

This map appears to be in the Chernobyl region, and shows that some of the sensors have detected spikes in gamma radiation, but not all. The biggest spikes appear to be on sensors near the famed reactor meltdown site, showing increases from 3000 nSv/h to 65500 nSv/h. In one day, you will now collect 65500 * 24 = 157200 nSv (so about 150 micro sieverts). In one year, this would be almost 0.5 full sieverts.

Based on the classic XKCD radiation chart[1], one day of exposure here isn't likely to do much to a person, but over the course of a year it wouldn't be great.

Hopefully these sensors are just misbehaving due to electromagnetic interference, and there's no alpha/beta radiation being emitted. (The linked page doesn't seem to have any non-gamma sensors available.)

[1] https://xkcd.com/radiation/

It feels like all of the captchas/alternatives are suffering the same problem of "computers are just better than people". By 2025, captchas will require in depth knowledge of American culture. I got this image from a time traveler: https://postimg.cc/3WrTbgmF