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Comment How many jobs were lost? (Score 4, Insightful) 73

Aside from the bullshit "security" issue, how many jobs are now gone because of this? I thought this regime was all about creating jobs and "making American great again".

If you're killing jobs left and right, that doesn't sound like making anything great other than unemployment.

Comment Re: Finally.... Stop the 24fps nonsense. (Score 1) 48

I'm not buying that. I guess higher FPS were a problem when every frame had to be reviewed and retouched on an actual celluloid film. But that hasn't been the case since the early 2000-s. We also have a bunch of movies shot at higher FPS and later downscaled for the theatrical release. They look just fine at higher FPS.

It really was all down to "soap operas are uncool".

Comment Finally.... Stop the 24fps nonsense. (Score 2) 48

I never understood why people were against higher FPS. They look objectively better! The real world is more than that, after all. And the argument against is apparently just "because soap operas were filmed at higher FPS, and soap operas are uncool".

Like, really? You're expecting younger audiences to care about soap operas from 80-s?

Comment Re:Extreamists? (Score 2, Insightful) 57

Of course they're extremists. They don't believe anyone who produces anything should have the right to their own property. That people should produce music, software, and movies without getting any compensation.

Once again, if that is their belieft then they can go produce software, music, or movies and give it all away. Let's see how long they last doing that.

Stealing people's works does not help their cause.

Comment "Why should we ever let them do this?" (Score 1) 50

It's their job! Their job is to prevent monopolies (in fairness, they haven't been doing too good a job of late in that department) so the consumer (i.e. you and me) don't pay exorbitant prices for products and services because there are only one or two providers.

What he wanted was for the government to roll over and let things go through since clearly the company was not able to compete in the free market. He wanted someone who could manipulate people's purchases by not showing competing products to take over the failing iRobot and get a stranglehold on the market.

Comment Re:Here's What Happens To Me (Score 1) 127

Yeah, one of the things I like about Claude (and Gemini 3 as opposed to 2.5) is that they really clamped down on the use of "Oh, now I've got it! This is absolutely the FINAL fix to the problem, we've totally solved it now! Here, let me write out FIX_FINAL_SOLVED.md" with some half-arse solution. And yep, the answer to going in circles is usually either "nuke the chat" or "switch models".

Comment Re:Ohhhhh! (Score 1) 103

Yeah, when thinking of the typical air fryer market, think "working mom with kids who wants to serve something nicer than a microwave dinner, but doesn't have the time for much prep or waiting". You can get those mailard reactions that microwaving doesn't really get you, nice crisping and browning of the surface that you normally get from an oven, without having to wait for an oven to preheat. I don't think anyone disputes that an oven will do a better job, but the air fryer does a better job than a microwave, which is what it's really competing against. They're also marketed as easy-clean, which again is a nod to their target audience.

Comment Re:Good (Score 1) 83

How costs build up is really staggering. I'm getting into the business of importing 3d filament. In Iceland, it currently sells for like $35/kg minimum. The actual value of the plastic is like $1. The factory's total cost, all costs included, is like $1,50. If it's not name brand, e.g. they're not dumping money on marketing, they sell it for $3 for the cheapest stuff. Sea freight adds another dollar or two. Taxes here add 24%. But you're still at like $5/kg. The rest is all middlemen, warehousing, air freight for secondary legs from intermediary hubs, and all the markup and taxes on those things.

With me importing direct from the factory, sea freight only, I can get rid of most of those costs. Warehousing is the biggest unavoidable cost. If I want to maintain an average inventory of like 700kg, it adds something like $5/kg to the cost. Scanning in goods and dispatching user orders (not counting shipping) together adds like $2,50. And then add 24% tax (minus the taxes on the imported goods). There's still good margin, but it's amazing how quickly costs inflate.

Comment Re:And? (Score 1) 56

What do you want? "Punch the bully in the teeth" means what exactly? All out war? Would this really be good for people in the EU? For Denmark?

Assuming Denmark has put sanctions on oil ships, they can seize those ships in the Baltic and North Seas. They can use their own hackers, assuming they have any, and disable Russian systems.

There are multiple ways to fight back without sending in the troops. What's Russia going to do, whine more?

Comment Re:Another love tap on the wrist (Score 2) 5

What I'm waitig for is when a Democratic president is in office and starts making wholesale changes. The howls from Republicans will be glorious. Sending their whines to the Supreme Court will be even funnier because if the Court says the president can't do that after they've let Trump do whatever he wants, they just outed themselves as partisan hacks and can be ignored.

As Jackson remarked, let them try and enforce it.

Comment Re:That's not why (Score 5, Informative) 90

I mean, from a horticultural perspective, there is some potential to gain more of other nutrients, in that if you have more energy, you can develop a larger root system, or generally more effectively, better feed mycorrhizal associations (fungal hyphae are much finer than root hairs, so can get into smaller cracks, and fungi can "acid mine" nutrients out of mineral grains - as an example, here's a microscopic image showing what they did to a garnet)

That said, yeah, in general if you can provide more energy, you expect the storage of "calories" to grow much faster than the acquisition of other minerals. Also, it's important to note that while more CO2 is generally good for most plants, more heat, or greater periods of drought (land dries out faster, monsoon belts spread) and flooding (atmosphere holds more moisture, monsoon belts spread) are not. In regards to heat as well, there's a lot of details. First off, though we commonly don't think about it, heat management in plants is critical. Their proteins are designed for function within an optimal temperature range, and to maintain it, they have to cool themselves down with transpiration, creating more water stress. Also it's worth noting that C3 plants (most plants) fundamentally don't tolerate heat as well as C4 or CAM plants (there's work to engineer C4 into some common agricultural crops... it's frankly amazing to me that they're getting some success, as it's not a trivial change).

BTW, the reason that plants grow better with more CO2 isn't what most people might think. The TL/DR is that the protein that sequesters CO2 so that (using ATP and NADPH from photosynthesis) - RuBisCo (the most abundant protein on Earth, something that has been evolving for billions of years) frankly sucks at its job. Something like 20-25% of the time (at normal CO2 levels), instead of binding with CO2, it binds with O2 instead ("photorespiration"), which means not only does it not sequester a carbon, but the plant has to *give up a carbon* to regenerate the RuBisCo. This is disastrous in terms of energy efficiency. And as a side effect, you also have to keep the stomata open more, which means more water loss. But as you increase the CO2 levels, the ratio between binding CO2 and binding O2 improves, and photorespiration waste drops. C4 plants "fix" this problem by instead of having RuBisCo directly bind CO2, they first bind CO2 into malate (with high selectivity), then the malate transports into bundle sheath cells, the CO2 is re-released, and THEN - in a high-CO2 environment - RuBisCo takes it up. This reduces photorespiration, but also introduces some more wasteful chemical conversions. (CAM plants to even further by storing malate inside vacuules - at the cost of even more energy - so that they can store it up during the night, and then use it during the day, which - although even more wasteful - lets them keep their stomata closed during the day to conserve water)

(BTW, there are some microbes that have developed a more efficient RuBisCo, but it's proving challenging to engineer it into higher plants)

Comment Re:And? (Score 3, Insightful) 56

Denmark would have to do it through NATO.

No they don't. They are free to defend themselves without NATO. Which, like the rest of Europe, won't do.

Not sure where this fear of defending oneself came from, but Europe needs to get its head out of its ass and start taking action. Ukraine's shoulders are getting tired carrying the load for them.

Comment And? (Score 5, Insightful) 56

What will you do about it? Nothing, as usual. You whine and complain Russia is doing this to you, yet you do nothing in return.

Either punch the bully in the teeth with brass knuckles or stop complaining you've been attacked.

As Ukraine has shown, taking the fight to the bully is the only way to get results.

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