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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Also the definition of ‘gay’ and ‘gayest’ is poorly defined. This assumes that gay is some sort of scalar, where in reality it’s a projection from a multidimensional ‘queerspace’ that can change the appearance of the spectrum wildly depending on the methodology the one projecting uses.



  • Except that’s not even how most bus systems work because most of them are majority funded by taxes with fares originally meant to serve as a stopgap but then slowly converted into a profit engine (usually after privitization). Fares are a way to gatekeep a service which your taxes already pay for, which I would argue, is by itself a form of theft.

    As an example check out the latest MTA report only 26% of funding comes from fares, and that ones a bit in the higher end from what I’ve seen (NYC public transit, picked as the example a it’s recently been in the news for issues with fare evasion)

    All that aside, it’s also worth noting that fare increases are extremely unpopular and it’s not that easy to increase them without potential serious backlash (ie the mass protests in Chile a few years back that were in part set off by the fare hikes.)


  • More abstractly what you’re doing with the resistor is creating a very crude linear regulator, which is fine for most applications and if you’re careful about keeping your source voltage close-ish to the forward voltage of the LED this method can be fairly efficient.

    Using an active constant current supply (as an example or many dedicated LED driver ICs do something very similar) can be marginally better as it allows you to reduce the waste from the linear regulator.

    However, if efficiency is what you really care about you’ll need to go with a switching regulator. Here’s an app note going over the basics of that approach. and again you can usually find dedicated ICs for that approach.

    Overall I’d recommend doing a detailed power budget and really seeing whether it’s worth the cost/trouble of implementing that because while you are correct it is usually more energy efficient it can be significantly less labor/material/maintenance/longevity efficient (hence the prevalence of the humble resistor…)


  • The numbers presented are funny.

    Global carbon dioxide emissions hit an all-time high of 36 billion metric tons last year.

    Discussing Occidental’s plants:

    Powered by solar energy, and have the potential to capture and sequester 500,000 metric tons (0.0000005 billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide per year.

    Which then they say they plan on building more of said plants:

    Occidental said it planned to build 100 facilities, each capable of capturing 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year

    The annual amount captured magically doubles bringing it up to 0.000001 billion metric tons per plant and 0.0001 billion metric tons total annually.

    It really seems like we should listen to the Vicki Hollub, Occidental’s chief executive, when they state the real purpose of direct air capture which could:

    “preserve our industry. This gives our industry a license to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years that I think it’s going to be very much needed.”

    This is ignoring their main usage of that 0.0001 billion metric tons is for oil extraction thus increasing the 36 billion metric tons.

    In other words shame on the NYT for burying the lead and being deceptive with their numbers.

    (@facedeer, I’d be curious to get your take on this article)


  • Right and I linked that article because it’s functions as a media literacy litnus test. It takes the viewpoint of the CEO and the scientists as equally valid, and you did get the main points, but you missed the lead that was buried:

    A paper he coauthored last year in Nature Communications, using the massive sargassum seaweed bloom in the Atlantic in recent years as a model, concluded that seaweed farming in the ocean could even become a source of increased carbon dioxide. That’s because the seaweed competes for nutrients with other carbon-sucking species like phytoplankton, among other complex biogeochemical feedback effects.

    Which if you actually look at the paper from the scientist (and ignore the bullshit from the CEO):

    Ocean afforestation at the scale of Sargassum growth in the GASB during 2018 could contribute −0.0001–0.0029 Gt CO2 of CO2 removal, if all of the seawater CO2 consumed through biomass formation is balanced by permanent influx of atmospheric CO2.

    In other words, carbon source to negligible because it kills the photoplakton was already doing that, and doing it more efficiently (albeit at a lower biomass). The paper also, briefly, touches on other concerns (where we get a nice crossover with solar radiation modification) which it unfortunately doesn’t delve much further into:

    Furthermore, we estimate that increased ocean albedo, due to floating Sargassum, could influence climate radiative forcing more than Sargassum-CDR.

    It makes climate change worse because it acts as a potential net CO2 source, requires maintenance and human intervention to maintain, destroys the local ecosystem which was doing carbon sequestration in the first place, and lowers the ocean albedo thus increasing radiative warming.

    If you want to talk SRM instead the oft cited paper is this one However the final line is the important one:

    The sobering reality is that unanswered questions such as these will remind the research and policy communities that relating climate response to anthropogenic perturbations is still a long way from being an exercise in engineering design.

    As it was published in 1992 a lot of the questions it left at the end have answers now, and there have been attempts at some engineering design. Why don’t you try to find one you think is a good potential and we can drill into its possible pros/cons (warning that meteorological stuff gets real math heavy, real quick).



    1. It’s worth pointing out that the IPCC no longer uses the term “geoengineering” or “climate engineering” for the exact reason that we may be talking past each other here. They are problematicly vague and can describe things with very different characteristics. Are you talking about CDR, CCS, CCU, SRM, other vague “offset the impacts of climate change” (IE ocean liming/fertilization, glacier stabilization, etc.), or all of the above?

    Some approaches to geoengineering may have negative side effects, but others don’t appear to.

    Be specific. Which ones?

    1. You have misread my previous comment.

    Climate change would cause famine, ameliorating the effects of climate change would prevent that famine.You have misread

    This statement is correct, but you are bringing it up against the point being made about how taking a “treating the symptoms” of climate change might improve things a bit in the short term, but leads to worse long term outcomes.

    1. Nowhere did I say it’s not worth studying.

    You’ve got some sort of a priori conviction that “no, geoengineering must make the situation worse somehow” and therefore it’s not worth studying. If it’s not studied how can you possibly know?

    I have stated that the current status of said studies do not have sufficient evidence to merit the claims you are making. If you think otherwise please provide some evidence/papers/links etc. otherwise we’re in a Russell’s teapot situation here.

    Unless your definition of “studying” is the argument that because the situation is bad enough it’s worth trying, at scale, whatever approach in the hope it improves things somewhat… Because that’s the argument that many use in order to sell dangerous and unethical grifts which seem promising and ‘harmless’. (I’m linking that article specifically because it’s “neutral journalism” at it’s worst and I’m curious at what you take away from it…)


  • Frankly, this argument always bothered me.

    Because you don’t understand the argument…

    Using your metaphor the thing you’re proposing to “treat the symptoms” has side effects which worsen the disease thus causing more real damage and worsening symptoms.

    The only reason you would willingly pursue that course of treatment is if a treatment for the initial disease was ongoing (in this metaphor it’s not, ghg emissions continue to increase dramatically) or if a patient was on palliative/EoLC.

    You aren’t saving “millions of people from starving to death”, you’re gambling that it will hold a bit longer before tens-hundreds of millions of people starve to death, and the evidence that these “treat the symptoms” is minimal at best thus leading to both outcomes (millions soon, more later).






  • From an article about a recent lawsuit

    The App Store appeared to harvest information about every single thing you did in real time, including what you tapped on, which apps you search for, what ads you saw, and how long you looked at a given app and how you found it. The app sent details about you and your device as well, including ID numbers, what kind of phone you’re using, your screen resolution, your keyboard languages, how you’re connected to the internet—notably, the kind of information commonly used for device fingerprinting.

    Notably, knowing keyboard language and monitoring tap locations allows for reconstruction of text the user types (as detailed in this article

    I do think you are correct that Apple probably isn’t actively keylogging every iOS device (just because there’s easier ways with less legal concerns that ultimately get the same outcomes), but it’s not like there’s “no evidence”.



  • This is a classic case of “tech journalism”… If you follow the sources the source of the data and it’s methodology uses the CBECI which the latest update lists a range of 75-384 TWh. (Note that the “2%” listed in the parent article is the global power consumption of the Bitcoin network compared to the US electrical network, aka a bad faith comparison). It explicitly states:

    The upper-bound estimate corresponds to the absolute maximum power demand of the Bitcoin network. While useful for providing a quantifiable maximum, it is a purely hypothetical value that is non-viable for various reasons…

    Which of course is the estimate that the journalists use for this peice.

    There’s also a bunch of likely issues within the methodology as it’s estimate is largely based on the number of ASICs produced; the assumption that “mining nodes (‘miners’) are rational economic agents that only use profitable hardware.” and that any amount profit is sufficient to keep a mining operation ongoing; and many others. It actually does a pretty good job of disclosing a lot of the methodology flaws within the link above.

    My goal is just to call out bad/lazy journalism and what I assume is oil/gas distractionary tactics. Electricity is ~38% of US energy consumption and even that maximum bound of 2% when comparing it to the global Bitcoin network is practically negligible when contextualized.



  • In NYC the fare is ~$2.90 and the fine if you get caught is $100.00, if you’re using it to get to/from work you can get caught and fined nearly every month and it’ll cost less than paying fare.

    Most people go years without getting caught.

    The calculation is about the same for most major metropolitan areas in the US, and the money usually goes to local government which is a real ‘lesser evil’ situation but…

    Granted it only really works so long as you can pull off the “I’m a middle age, middle class, cis, hetero, white person” routine. Otherwise you risk of being made “an example” which could lead to trespassing charges or getting tazed/shot…