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papertokyo

124 karma · joined May 15, 2015

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papertokyo··on Radio Garden
This sounds like a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.
papertokyo··on Radio Garden
This is genius. I've enjoyed Radio Garden on occasion for the musical novelty but never thought about putting a random station in Latin America on to practice listening to different Spanish accents.
papertokyo··on America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1
It "was known" in the 60s that Japanese electronics and cars were inferior in design and quality. Chinese products are going through the same trajectory.
papertokyo··on 3dfx: So powerful, it's kind of ridiculous (2023)
The first PC I built myself had an Athlon XP Barton 2500+ and 2x 256mb sticks of DDR2-400. It wasn't top of the line by any means but great bang-for-buck in 2003.
papertokyo··on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope faces potential 20% budget cut
> The Mars talk is just a recruitment tactic to pull in young idealistic engineers and get them to work long hours for cheap

His move away from the previously-stated mission for Tesla to decarbonize the world's energy systems makes a lot more sense now

papertokyo··on Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
I absolutely love this characterization of modern discourse.
papertokyo··on OpenEuroLLM
Because it's a bureaucratic union of 27 countries with goals other than making obscene profits, side-effects be damned?
papertokyo··on OpenEuroLLM
Then you should also question what flavor of censorship and bias US-made LLMs have.

Also, if someone says something that could threaten my safety (either directly or through inciting others) I would very much like them to get a visit from the police. This situation is so easily avoided by not being a dick to people.

papertokyo··on I tasted Honda’s spicy rodent-repelling tape and I will do it again (2021)
But would you have thought to research how a specific car manufacturer's spicy anti-rodent tape tasted in the first place?

There's an element of discovery in this article, as well as being entertaining and informative. Her writing is—subjectively and objectively—uncommonly good.

papertokyo··on Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]
Why is that? (These are my favourite planes to fly on, curious how the A350 is derivative given the apparent difference in packaging.)
papertokyo··on Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]
Until they make it at least three times bigger, yes.
papertokyo··on We built the city of Colombo in Cities:Skylines
Really. Especially taken with the "toy" statement that follows, this reads to me like "this isn't perfect but we had a good crack at it and are happy with how good it came out for our purposes".
papertokyo··on OSRD: Open-Source Railway Designer
The gameplay is focused on logistics, so those aspects have a lot more control. I particularly enjoy that in conjunction with the model railway aesthetics.

- You build roads and railways, and stations for passengers and cargo (road/rail/air/sea) - You set up 'lines' to connect various stations, and you can specify what and how much gets loaded/unloaded at every station (or whether vehicles on that line stop there at all), and how long vehicles should wait for their cargo - You buy each vehicle and assign it to a line, and in the case of trains you also buy each component e.g. locomotives, passenger cars, stake cars, hoppers depending on what your line needs to transport

The cities grow by themselves based on the passenger transport links with other cities and the level of goods supply. There's no zoning, building water pipes, schools, or anything like that. Just the minutiae of getting things from A to B via C to pick up some more things destined for Y and Z.

papertokyo··on AI in education may require us to return to 15th-century pedagogy
> billionaires telling us that we'll eat bugs and be happy owning nothing

Who are we talking about here?

papertokyo··on AI in education may require us to return to 15th-century pedagogy
I think questioning the money is just as important. There is so much conflicted money pushing the "climate change isn't real" narrative that it should raise more suspicion in skeptics.
papertokyo··on Fentanyl is fueling a record number of youth drug deaths
Also a super relevant issue: the major Mexican cartels are being armed with guns made and sold in the US in order to provide this supply.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/05/2...

papertokyo··on Cold brew coffee in 3 minutes using acoustic cavitation
I'll have two frack whites to go thanks.
papertokyo··on Cold brew coffee in 3 minutes using acoustic cavitation
No. These machines sound like robot hornets operating dental drills.
papertokyo··on Cold brew coffee in 3 minutes using acoustic cavitation
The innovation here is integrating the tech into a home espresso machine package. I do wonder if the sound is any less awful though.

Does the ultrasonic tub enable better extraction at lower proof or are you using it purely to speed up the maceration process?

papertokyo··on Cold brew coffee in 3 minutes using acoustic cavitation
Although you are entirely correct in a technical sense, and it's common to serve hot brewed coffee cold, the opposite is so rarely desired that it will be considered 'weird' (in the sense of 'unusual') 9 out of 10 times.

Every extra process involved in making a coffee is going to add complexity and time to the workflow, which many cafes will elect to charge extra for.

There is some consternation in Australia about paying more for iced coffees compared to hot ones too:

https://www.broadsheet.com.au/national/food-and-drink/articl...

papertokyo··on Asian American women are getting lung cancer despite never smoking
This is indeed surprising. What's the source?
papertokyo··on The many flavors of edible ants
I almost want to leave peoples' minds closed about this kind of thing to avoid an increase in demand. I don't want my Sal de Gusano doubling in price either.
papertokyo··on The many flavors of edible ants
They are researching the use of certain ants as flavor enhancers. Mexicans know a thing or two about making food delicious, and Chicatana ants are used in Oaxacan cuisine to add complexity to sauces. Rest assured, this is entirely based on merit of the price-to-flavor ratio and not a conspiracy to replace your steak.
papertokyo··on Singapore Airlines Concorde
Another factor besides comfort is that they can extend the flight time 1-2 hours by having fewer passengers and bags onboard, which of course means premium seats like SQ23/24.

Qantas is planning to launch 18–21 hour routes in 2026 with economy class, using modified A350-1000 with an extra fuel tank in the hold.

papertokyo··on Starbucks $10 pork-flavored coffee
Australian coffee snob here. I can confirm the emphasis of the specialty coffee industry (which I think you can conflate with 'hipster' coffee) is entirely on sourcing and roasting high-quality beans that have enjoyable and nuanced flavours on their own.

The innovation in the last 15 years is largely around roasting and grinding technology (consistency, control over flavour extraction) as well as inventing cool brewing apparatus for every taste and aesthetic preference.

papertokyo··on Starbucks $10 pork-flavored coffee
Like the Canadian government has a maple syrup reserve.
papertokyo··on Thanksgiving 2023 security incident
I assume the break is to have less chance of their activities be discovered and/or connected.
papertokyo··on My toddler still loves planes, so I upgraded her radar
As an adult who often wonders this, RadarBox's AR mode (available on the iPhone app) is perfect. You just point it in the general direction of the plane, tap on the flight number, and it will show you all the details.

Alternatively you can just look at the web version and guess which one you're seeing. https://www.radarbox.com/

papertokyo··on Harnessing heat from wastewater
I live in a building connected to the False Creek system. Some details that may be interesting:

- Most of the apartment blocks currently served are located in a former industrial area that was redeveloped for the 2010 Winter Olympics and gradually built up since then.

- All new buildings in the utility's service area are required to be connected to the system for space heating and domestic hot water. The city charges a connection fee and the building must be designed with the requisite plumbing to integrate with the system, but some space is saved by not needing a large central heating plant.

- The metering and billing is done with https://www.wysemeter.com/ (at least in my building).

- The hot water is indeed very hot, and reliably so. I wouldn't be able to tell the heat source is sewage if the owner didn't mention it.

- In Winter, it's easy to identify which buildings which are connected to the utility, since they don't have have large steam clouds coming out the top.

City council info page: https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/southeast-fal...

papertokyo··on The hovercraft's time might have arrived
Mexico City has 2 (soon to be 3) Cablebús gondola lines that integrate with other public transport types, all using a single smartcard for payment.
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