while_true_
Joined 6 years ago
Karma
338
Submissions
87
Member since
May 12
Recent submissions
Comment · 14 days ago
Who needs people to fight wars when you've got robots? "China’s armed forces are testing humanoid robots against combat requirements and studying how the machines might fight alongside soldiers." -- MSN
Comment · 21 days ago
I'd like to know if there was an oil industry financed or sponsored astroturf campaign to turn the American public against electric vehicles.
Comment · 1 month ago
Makes perfect sense to me. When starting the shortest path for a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo, you don't point the plane toward Japan, you point it towards Alaska.
Comment · 1 month ago
The Earth's upper atmosphere is delicate. It's already being disturbed with rocket fuel residue and particulate space junk. Vacuuming up air and ionizing it risks putting the upper atmosphere even more out of balance.
Comment · 2 months ago
El Niño events are more than 36% stronger today than they were 40 years ago due to climate change.[1]
[1]J. E. Cole et al., Recent strengthening of eastern Pacific ENSO in the last millennium paleorecord. Science DOI:10.1126/science.ady2660
Comment · 2 months ago
They had 59 votes from Democrats for the public option, not single payer. Public option is to let people choose either a non-profit government insurance plan or private insurers. They needed 60 votes to break a Republican filibuster. Joe Lieberman (Ind-CT) said he would filibuster the public option but would vote for the ACA without it.
Comment · 2 months ago
Interesting this earthquake struck shortly after a solar eclipse, implying significant spring tide forces were present. The earthquake occurred near dawn, when the sun/moon pair, Indonesia, and the Earth's core formed a right angle to each other, creating tidal tension forces on the crust.
Tidal forces have been linked to the Dec. 26, 2004 Sumatra earthquake. This paper claims there's a significant link between tidal forces and earthquakes in the region (https://doi.org/10.1029/2006GL027074). The authors conclude "The observed relationships suggest that the cyclical crustal flexing, which will be at a maximum at full or new moons, might provide sufficient extra force to a plate-boundary region already on the point of rupture to trigger an earthquake that was ‘waiting to happen’."
Comment · 2 months ago
California has huge amounts of excess renewable generation nearly every day, especially in spring and fall. Last April the grid operator curtailed 1.47 million MW/hrs of renewables, or about 2 GW per day. That's excess power the grid did not accept due to no demand. (source: https://www.caiso.com/documents/key-statistics-jul-2026.pdf)
In my mind the ideal solution is in addition to daily BESS time-shifting is seasonal time-shifting: long term storage of April excess for use in July.
Comment · 3 months ago
AI, when used in an organized and structured way, is excellent for learning a language. For example:
1. Ask AI for the 10 most commonly used verbs in ordinary daily speech in language X.
2. Prompt AI: generate 4 short sentences for each of the 10 verbs at the A1 (beginner) level. Provide the sentences in .csv format compatible with the Anki flash card program.
3. Import .csv into Anki. Study your 40 cards.
As you advance you can do much more like having conversations with AI avatars, transcribing videos, translating text, generating audio clips, and so on.
Dr Taylor Jones, a PhD linguist, goes into greater detail here: https://youtu.be/xQXiSGDXknA?
Comment · 3 months ago
Many elderly die primarily from sedentary disease, not from aging itself.
Comment · 3 months ago
Yes, but the bars shown don't match the NOAA data source I found. Also, if the chart goes to 2025 then why was the 1961 to 2020 period chosen for the average? Doesn't make sense.
Comment · 3 months ago
Why was the period 1961-2020 chosen? Why omit the years 2021 to 2025? The X user appears to be a climate denier and is cherry-picking data to support their agenda.
In 2020 the average US temperature was 55.7 F. In 2025 it was 57.8 F, an increase of 2.1 F in only five years. The cherry-picking conveniently excludes 2022 when the US set an all-time record of 34 days where the max temp exceeded 100 F.
Comment · 3 months ago
Too late. My household's desktops and laptop are all on Debian/KDE Plasma linux. Glad I switched, I think Plasma is a better more customizable "windows" than Windows is.
Comment · 4 months ago
Too late. In my household there are 4 desktops and one laptop. Wiped Windows and installed Debian with KDE Plasma. For our use it's a better "windows" than Windows. Not going back.
Comment · 4 months ago
The rapid addition of 16 GW worth of batteries play a significant role in reducing demand for natural gas, especially in summer. On a hot day with high A/C demand batteries can meet the demand around sunset, reducing the need to dispatch gas peaker plants.