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Comment Re:Macroeconomics 101 (Score 1) 28

Be careful there. Lots of AI is being put to silly, useless, or unreasonable uses. OTOH, lots of it is being put to extremely productive uses. (OK, 20% improvement in output, but also an increase in expenses.)

ISTM, that PART of the AI hoopla is a bubble. Possibly much more than half. But the other half is not a bubble, and is growing rapidly. What the collapse will look like depends in part on how much the productive segment grows relative to the other part before it happens.

Comment Re:And this helps how? (Score 1) 141

It wasn't from "a random influencer". It was in a popular science publication, and I believe they were quoting (or perhaps paraphrasing) the person who invented the term.

Does it have a "legal definition"? I doubt it. So for regulations I think it means whatever the person enforcing the regulations wants it to mean.

Comment Re:He's a cosmonaut, not an astronaut, dude. (Score 1) 46

Russia doesn't have the ability for manned spaceflight. ergo they don't have cosmonauts any more.

Tell that to the folks on ISS who ride back and forth on Soyuz all the time. A couple of people went up to ISS from Russia just one week ago.

To be fair, at the moment, future ISS launches from Russia won't be possible because of some launch pad damage incurred by a recent launch, but Russia still has the capability of launching crewed rockets into space from other pads. They just can't send any to ISS right now because its orbital inclination is incompatible with the locations of those other pads while staying within the fuel capacity limits of their rockets.

Comment Re:The old auto makers are fucked. (Score 1) 225

Cars have been getting shittier for decades now. You never noticed because American marketing convinced Americans that 100K miles on any car engine is dangerously out of fashion.

What are you talking about? On average, engines last 150k to 200k miles in the U.S., complete with CAFE standards.

And the main goal of the current CAFE standards was to push hybrids and electric vehicles. Manufacturers rigging the game by trying to make pure ICE cars with ridiculous mileage is an unanticipated negative side effect, mostly because the folks coming up with the rules did not expect automakers to be so stupid that they would do something like that.

Comment Re:The old auto makers are fucked. (Score 1) 225

When I purchased my latest car, which has this crazy 1 year 10K recommended oil change interval (OCI) while using 0w20 oil, I searched and found online manuals from various other countries. In countries where OCI/emissions are not regulated (various former Soviet republics), the car manual states to use 10w30 oil and 5K OCI recommended for the same car.

For the most part, oil change schedules are set so that car dealers can make money off of mandatory service so that you keep your warranty. In reality, if you periodically change your filter, use a filter with a smaller pore size, and use synthetic oil, there's at least potentially no need to change the oil at all, at least within the typical lifetime of a passenger car.

Semi goes 1 million miles without an oil change.

Comment Re:The old auto makers are fucked. (Score 1) 225

0W-20 runs in the American motor in order to barely eek out another 1MPG to barely meet the CAFE standards necessary to ship product. 5W-30 runs in the EU motor because it’s the best viscosity for the damn engine. Which they determined long ago with engineering and testing, both in lab and real world results.

Now pull those engines apart after 100K miles and see why we need to get rid of CAFE bullshit. The American environment isn’t being “saved” by forcing Americans to replace their disposable cars before the fucking loan is even fully paid.

The problem is not the CAFE standards per se. The problem is that they are trying to meet them by playing tricks instead of with actual design changes. And even though they come with thinner engine oil, 90% of people will put standard oil into the cars at the first change. So they get higher MPG for the first 5,000 miles, and then the same as they did before the CAFE standards.

I suppose that in theory, you could argue that the standards are flawed for not requiring normal oil weights during testing, but that's about it.

The correct way to hit the MPG targets is to use more electric drive trains. If you make your cars hybrids, you can improve the efficiency of the electric drive train and find ways to engineer the vehicles to weigh less by using more modern materials, and you won't have to work too hard to hit the standards.

Better yet, push actual EVs, which typically have an eMPG of 100+. If just one-third of your vehicles get 130 eMPG and the rest get 30 MPG, you're averaging about 53 MPG already.

Comment Re: a much needed move? (Score 1) 225

What you said was dumb because what we need is to reduce emissions further than our weak targets. Also automakers do NOT have any trouble meeting the targets. They could have met those targets years ago, but they would have had to make less exciting vehicles. You're putting your excitement over sustainability. This explains why you support a child molester's tampering with the future.

Comment Re:Has Climate Doom Modeling Turned Into Clickbait (Score 3, Insightful) 75

The idea that humans in 2100 will politely sit on their hands while the planet burns is genuinely adorable.

It's happening now. There are serious effects now. And there is mostly a lot of thumb-sitting going on.

Humans invent things.

Yes, for profit.

AI is already chewing through research faster than half the committees publishing these forecasts.

AI is chewing through NATURAL RESOURCES faster.

Pretending society wonâ(TM)t respond, wonâ(TM)t adapt and wonâ(TM)t innovate is probably the most unrealistic assumption in the whole exercise.

We don't have to pretend, we can see it happening right now. Or rather, not happening.

Comment Re:some problems (Score 1) 19

For example if you need to get call records months after the fact, with prepaid, tough shit, they don't have them at all.

Nonsense.

Want HD calling? Prepaid got it years after postpaid.

Why would I care? I don't speak a language for which call quality matters.

Paying three times as much or more for someone else to keep records for you is dumb. My phone keeps records for me.

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