Elladan

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• Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  Why would anyone punish the hardware? It's just a pile of innocent tech. Richard Morgan already covered this problem in his Takeshi Kovacs books. The solution: take the hardware away from the criminal and give it to someone else. Throw...
• Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  Pigeon: As for the uploaded version, the way their experience runs is they live for a few milliseconds and then die of their process space being swapped out. Then when it gets swapped back in again you have a new...
• Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  AFAIK it really is quite rare I've literally never used one of those automated checkout things and had it not fail. Typical experience: I scan a few items and put them in the bag one by one. The machine randomly...
• Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  Heteromeles: The critical point to me that if you're uploaded, you still die, and stories of reincarnation aside, I know of no evidence that you have a soul that would be dissociated when you die and incarnated in whatever the...
• Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  whitroth @129: Wait - you're telling me with all that computing power, they don't have checkpoints? And if one server crashes, that the master doesn't just send that dataset out to the next available CPU, as they do with clusters...
• Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  Heteromeles @103: In a transhuman upload, you don't die and wake up inside virtual space. You die, and something else in a virtual space gets stuck living with a simulacrum of your memories and personality. Is it ethical to inflict...
• Commented on Public appearances in a time of pandemic
  Greg @ 869: "My lack of being online" - another lie, since this entire blog is on-line. You know, I've seen you mad at She Of Many Names for a long time, and the thing is... you did miss the...
• Commented on Public appearances in a time of pandemic
  Pigeon @ 865: Going by that article, in the US when people buy and sell houses they sell them to the agent and the agent then sells them to someone who wants to buy one. [...] In the UK when...
• Commented on Public appearances in a time of pandemic
  Just want to mention, since it keeps coming up: simple mortality rate is not a good indicator of the danger from this disease. The true mortality rate of COVID-19 does depend on age and comorbidities, but it also critically depends...
• Commented on COVID-19
  It is all about cost. Here in the NC of JBS I think our footings have to be down 18" to prevent heaving. So split levels are easy but a basement requires substantial digging and a tall block/concrete wall. When...
• Commented on COVID-19
  Yeah, the Bloomberg campaign was paying staffers $72k/year starting salary, with a pulse being almost the only qualification. I heard multiple tales of anti-Bloomberg people taking his money and then either doing their job as lazily as possible, or even...
• Commented on COVID-19
  mdive @ 629: It is also in a way creating an artificial distinction - while Sanders doesn't directly accept superPAC funding, there are PACs that are funding ads promoting Sander - they just aren't officially endorsed by Sanders. This bit...
• Commented on COVID-19
  mdive @ 639: As you say, he doesn't appear to have the ground game and that is likely in part because of his superPAC aversion - he simply isn't raising enough independent money to fund the type of organization that...
• Commented on Tentative hypothesis
  Joke response: 1Password [...], Scrivener [...], and Microsoft Word 1Password: C'mon all the techies use Keep-Ass. Scrivener: whistles Hey look! Shiny! Nothing to see here! Microsoft Word: Come on now, Word runs perfectly fine on Linux. Microsoft has, after all,...
• Commented on Ask me anything!
  ... and of course, you only need the Meltdown hack on processors which have the bug. Out of all the Meltdown/Spectre type bugs, it has the most straightforward fix. If you want something fun, take a look at how Linux...
• Commented on Ask me anything!
  [...] all device drivers are being moved to user space. I'm curious how that will go, but I also have to admit I'm not sure any longer what the domain transfer cost (that is, the cost of going between supervisor...
• Commented on Ask me anything!
  [...] the other was the basic flaw of the Xerox PARC model [...] in assuming an available core [...] and lightning fast computation speed. It would be helpful if you were a bit more specific about the problem you're referring...
• Commented on Ask me anything!
  Windows 3.0 (and 3.11 for Workgroups) multitasking was co-operative, so that the programs had to yield explicitly to give time for other programs. [....] I think the earlier Amiga operating systems had the same problem. The early models didn't have...
• Commented on Ask me anything!
  X may be running as root, but it's still running in user space, whereas 'Doze puts the whole kit and caboodle in kernel space - is what I understand whitroth to be complaining about. But this isn't even true. There...
• Commented on Ask me anything!
  X sits on top of the o/s - if the windowing system crashes, you haven't lost everything except what was onscreen. Sadly, that hasn't been true since the '90s, and was barely true, if at all, even then. In addition...
• Commented on Ask me anything!
  Someone check on April Daniels, she's out of the loop and you've no idea at the blowback if we find her hurt or killed. She has a twitter with posts. Whether she is hurt, I cannot say. Given the state...
• Commented on Ask me anything!
  LiIon batteries and hydrogen are both crap for energy storage. Low density, tendency to explode Why does density matter for grid storage? Even for residential, something like a Tesla Powerwall isn't even as big as a small fridge, closer to...
• Commented on CMAP #16: Book Title Blues
  Without the correct drip pan, the elements won't level (not parallel to the stove top). Ever tried to cook an omelet on a sloping heating element? Due to my extensive experience with cheap apartment stove tops, yes. The standard maintenance...
• Commented on Deaths and Deadlines
  I knew I was forgetting one. Another local! Helion Energy: "Magneto-Inertial", US (Washington), Funding: $30M. Apparently they want to make balls of ³He / D plasma and then make them smack into each other using magnets. This in contrast to...
• Commented on Deaths and Deadlines
  The one I followed is known as Focus Fusion. After a small amount of very lazy searching, I dug up the following fusion startups: TAE Technologies: "FRC" magnetic confinement (aneutronic), US (California), Funding: Paul Allen etc., $800M. Commonwealth Fusion Systems:...
• Commented on Deaths and Deadlines
  Paul Allen BUILT one. You missed the part about the skyhook. ;-) The ramjets and carrier planes and such are just window dressing....
• Commented on Deaths and Deadlines
  In landing those lower stages, SpaceX is only doing what the DC-X did in the early 1990's, [...] Focusing on the part about SpaceX landing rockets on their tail is really missing the arguably more notable parts of their program....
• Commented on Deaths and Deadlines
  My read on the LockMart fusion reactor is it's a tax write-down of some kind. [....] But if LockMart were clearly onto something good, I'd expect there to be competitors throwing their hats in the ring by now. Here's a...
• Commented on Deaths and Deadlines
  Best concept I have so far is a big ass hyper-sonic air-craft as a launch platform - Go up high and fast on ram-jets, launch a smaller rocket-plane at altitude and mach-7, then have it be caught by rotating tethers...
• Commented on Deaths and Deadlines
  You'd think that anyone who'd open up a huge container of alien code, even in a sandbox, would deserve what they got. Heck, it might even be Snow Crash. There's apparently a community of rather crazed techies out there with...