Paul

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• Commented on Make Up a Guy
  Heteromeles @ 647: Turns out that the 95% error bar on Dunbar's is from 4-520 I'm pretty certain that something like Dunbar's Number exists, although I'd put it rather differently. Most people seem to have a reasonable knowledge of somewhere...
• Commented on Make Up a Guy
  Why not go the whole hog and have the ships powered by antimatter? After all, when it all goes sproing and the energy gets loose, it doesn't matter how it was stored....
• Commented on Make Up a Guy
  amalgamy @ 316: My personal pipe dream would be circular flows of supertankers moving rechargeable flow battery energy between areas with high sun / wind energy sources and locations with low / intermittent renewable energy sources. Its a nice idea,...
• Commented on Make Up a Guy
  On quasi-abandoned ships, see one extreme example here: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.6002269/after-nearly-4-years-stranded-on-cargo-ship-in-egypt-a-syrian-crew-member-finally-goes-home-1.6002473 The ships cook was the last man aboard, and so was legally prevented from leaving. For 2 years. As he said, in addition to the psychological pressure of isolation he might...
• Commented on Make Up a Guy
  Charlie @ 99: Eh, no -- that's a terrible example. The 737MAX was not designed to crash, nor did it crash (much) I think you're agreeing with me. Yes it is indeed a terrible example, but it still qualifies under...
• Commented on Make Up a Guy
  From the OP: These are never mistakes. The stakes are too high for that good faith first assumption of innocent error to hold up. The purpose of a system is what it does. As a system engineer I have a...
• Commented on Make Up a Guy
  whitroth @ 46: And, of course, you want to edit this wonderful forklift operation, so it doesn't waste time thinking [about human stuff] So, it's only a fancy expert system. Yes. And more generally, I think that a lot of...
• Commented on Make Up a Guy
  ... graphical representations of sex and violence against women, for which GPT is an almost perfect production tool. Rule 34 had Anwar whiling away his time by wearing AR goggles which superimposed a procedurally generated gay orgy on his mundane...
• Commented on New guest blogger: qntm
  The other thing about the Lena image is that she was of course white. This continued the long tradition of optimising photographic stuff for white skin. No doubt the white men who selected the image didn't even think about that...
• Commented on WTF
  JReynolds @ 1929: [On winning the lottery] Depending on the quality of your friends and relations, you might have to [drop] a lot of them, because all-too-many of them will perpetually have their hands out. A recent article in The...
• Commented on WTF
  Whitroth @ 1689: This is where I have real issues with economists, and the denial of Marx's theory of value. See 1532... go ahead, tell me that labor does not create value. Bit of a straw man there, I think....
• Commented on WTF
  iyla187 @ 1603: No Golden Age SF writer predicted Information Age accurately, but some were better than others, and Heinlein was among the worst in that regard. He did pretty well in Friday, published in 1982. That featured ubiquitous pocket-sized...
• Commented on WTF
  EC @ 1549: Except for the impossibility of FTL communication, which isn't even predicted by GR. This article in Ars Technica says the following: This is the point where physicists get antsy. General relativity is telling us exactly where time...
• Commented on WTF
  gasdive @ 1473: Religion is an accidental misuse of the human instincts to look after each other. I'd say that's one part of it, although the human instinct to divide the world into Us and Them, and then only feel...
• Commented on WTF
  By the same argument I am not the same person I was 5 seconds ago. Every instant I die am reborn....
• Commented on WTF
  Charlie @ 1394: Secondly, people with assets tend to defend them -- which is why Thatcher's privatization of social housing drove the British working/lower-middle class (those who benefited, as opposed to those whose careers and communities she trashed) towards supporting...
• Commented on WTF
  Kardashev @ 1373: [Quoting me] "Well I've watched Connections, so it would be 1 How to make movable type, 2 Double entry bookkeeping, 3 How to drain mines, 4 The recipe for gunpowder and 5 How to make a telescope."...
• Commented on WTF
  If you were in a position to send a message into the distant past, what would you say and why? Make it the size of a book (50,000 words). Well I've watched Connections, so it would be 1 How to...
• Commented on WTF
  On producing float glass: I recall part of the media debates around high energy prices here. Pilkington were saying that if they turned off one of their gas-fired furnaces and let it cool down they would have to scrap the...
• Commented on WTF
  I grew up in Guernsey, which was occupied by Germany in WW2. My secondary school had a mirror from a German searchlight. I remember we took it outside one sunny day and propped it up, and our teacher used it...
• Commented on WTF
  JohhnS @ 1063: But if you really needed greenhouses, you could build them using the same techniques used for stained glass windows (400+ year old tech in 1632), you just don't have to stain the glass. Glass in pre-industrial times...
• Commented on WTF
  Hmm. I wonder if this was the same house...
• Commented on WTF
  SFReader @ 1014: Folks here can probably add to the list. Asbestos everywhere, including homes. Mercury as a component of domestic central heating systems....
• Commented on WTF
  Heteromeles @ 974: Unfortunately, the organized crime rings spawned by industrial alcohol going underground during Prohibition turned to more profitable addictions: gambling, opiates, marijuana, cocaine, and now things like fentanyl and methamphetamine. Don't forget the other side of the drug...
• Commented on WTF
  Troutwaxer @ 960: Nixon also liked the idea that a "war on drugs" was also a "war on Blacks and hippies" (and probably Jews as well, given his well-known prejudices. Evidence? As far as I know the only "evidence" for...
• Commented on WTF
  On the origins of the War on Drugs, this article has the details. Its worth looking through the full transcripts it links to, although the quotes are enough to give the general idea. Basically, Nixon was convinced that drugs, homosexuality...
• Commented on WTF
  How about this story on Motherboard? The Morningside Cannibals have nothing on these two....
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  EC @ 1356: A mere fascist would be tough on Russians, but not necessarily an international problem; a rabid revanchist would be. Well, revanchism generally goes along with fascism. Its a core tenet of fascism that The People are special...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  ilya187 @ 1353: I am pretty sure Putin is not that stupid Umm. A year ago everyone was saying "Surely he wouldn't be stupid enough to invade Ukraine". The betting then was that he could take Kiev, kill Zelensky and...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  Greg @ 805: NOT EVEN WRONG - [Ambulances] are an essential part of our Public Health organisation & set-up. From Wikipedia: Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts...