solstice

啊呀, it seems I wasn't awake enough yet when posting. Thank you for the correction.

Another example: the Chinese name for SF is Laojinshan (老金山) afaik, which translates to Old Gold Mountain and sounds nothing like Hispanic/English name. I think it dates back to the California gold rush

France also removed most public bins in Paris after bomb attacks in the 90s (I think) but they ended up replacing them with hoops to which transparent plastic bags are attached. I'm not sure on the timeline (ie how long it took them to go from "no bins" to "crappy bins") but this seems like an okay solution. The lack of public bins in Japan is mildly infuriating

Try long-clicking on a link to YouTube. If you have an appropriate app installed (either official YouTube or sth like Newpipe) the last item in the menu popping up should be sth like "open with $APP"

The same is true for some other applications

See also the unfolding Internet of Shit saga. While everybody is afraid of artificial intelligence, I am currently more afraid of Artificial Stupidity...

Also, the word "wreck" seems really inappropriate because of the silent w.

I'd like to encourage people to read this website for news about China and also to listen to the Sinica podcast, which is partly made by the same people (Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn). Supchina also has a newsletter

I've got nothing of substance to comment on the technical aspects of the project but I find it amusing that Germans create a lot of pseudo-English words (Denglisch) such as "beamer" (projector) and "handy" (mobile phone). I wonder how confusing this might be to anglophone people.

Could you elaborate? This would be news to me

Afaik it is now well on its way towards a full-on techno-police state dystopia aimed at the uyghurs (ai, big data, facial recognition, ideological reeducation camps, politically reliable Han Chinese as forced live-ins in uyghur families tempting them to drink alcohol and reporting on them, forced installation of surveillance apps....)

I'm sorry, but that second sentence is just ridiculous. Conflating NK and PRC does no one any good. Sure, the space for civil society has tightened a lot since 2011, you've got the trade war and a ton of other simmering conflicts, but on the whole (with the exception of Xinjiang) it's fine.

It's been replaced by Open Shell which works well: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

I'm picturing extremely slow moving cinematography like in DBZ in the battle against Cell (which was stretched over weeks' worth of episodes)

would it be possible for them to rise above the storm systems and thus avoid them? Or is that where the jet streams are?

I have wondered about a similar thing in the context of solar panels floating on the oceans: if the weather and the waves get too rough, just go drive to -5 meters or so to avoid damage from the waves and surface after the storm is over. But of course, salt water corrosion and growth of marine life on the panels is going to be a big problem with that

Oh wow, of course! I know salicorne from vacations in France. Totally forgot about it.

A small counterpoint to your last point: the youngsters at Fridays for future and the folks of Extinction rebellion

Wow interesting. Are there any edible such plants? Then their salt leaves could be used as natural seasoning

There was a mini "scandal" in Germany not long ago during a meeting between the Australian PM and Angela Merkel, when a handout for Merkel had some info about said PM, including his name. Some German newspapers saw that as an embarrassing slight to the Australians but some Aussies on the net said sth along the lines of "well, I think it's understandable with so much turnover during the past few years..."

Are you a generally nice person? Then be nice and empathetic to your future self.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1105/

I assume that humidity messes with the detection of particle size. I have a LaserEgg particulate matter detector and they use a laser beam to count the particles in the air that flows through the device (via a small aspirating fan). So if particles are more clumped due to higher humidity, then I assume that would give you faulty/misleading readings?

Re: specialization. Most people aren't ambidextrous afaik and will have a hard time retraining to do things with another hand. So I think the metaphor still holds

Signal works in Shanghai, albeit with occasional delays and hickups.

a generous amount of body hair can provide some early-detection capabilities.

Is there anything on top of it? If not, how do you deal with dust coming in from above when the pi isn't used that much (eg during the night) and the airflow lower?

I agree. do we want to teach AIs war? This seems like a decision/trend that humanity might regret profoundly in a century or two...

Sounds like the chaos monkey program Netflix used to test is infrastructure by introducing random amounts of latency, switching off certain parts of the infrastructure etc

Don't kelp forests also play a big role in marine carbon sequestration?

That's true but only half the picture: every time one of these trees dies it is cut down it needs to be buried or otherwise prevented from releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere. The tree you mentioned is described on Wikipedia as follows: "...This tree grows to about 6 m and has pinnate compound leaves and flowers with a boss of prominent reddish-purple stamens. It is not very drought-tolerant and the above-ground parts are short-lived but the roots regularly resprout..." So that's a significant amount of stuff to bury/dispose of. (The project at trees.org seems very interesting regardless, though.)

Or put a heat and radiation resistant usb-drive in a capsule (complete with small parachute) loaded on a sling shot directed at Earth. Would certainly take a long time but would be fun.

Seriously though: what about launching a rocket in the direction of the outer solar system that launches mini relay satellites that act as a mesh network? Put a few bigger ones in the asteroid belt and the rest in various Lagrange points around Mars, Jupiter, Saturn etc.