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Comment Sick Transhumanists (Score 1) 23

Some of these people just want to replace Humans in every way possible, no matter the reliability of the systems.

Wimbledon is not necessary. We don't need tennis tournaments to survive. People enjoy them and being a part of them gives some people meaning in life.

The people who want to take that all away can screw off. Today the line judges, tomorrow the players - and the day after the War Machine.

Comment Re:Time to resurrect the old meme... (Score 1) 244

Sorry, but no.

I mean, on the one hand, sure, eventually _something_ else will displace the US dollar as the world's leading reserve currency, because that's how history works: nothing stays in a dominant position forever.

But the statement you added "yet" to was much more specific. And no, Communist China's ridiculous "dedollarization" propaganda campaign is not going to have any measurable impact on the dollar's dominance, any time soon. Among other things, the RMB has never been anywhere near stable enough to make it into the top five currencies, and as things stand now, it looks to only be getting worse. It's relatively heavily traded, but it's not stable, at all. (Contrast with, say, the Canadian dollar, which is stable enough but nowhere near heavily-traded enough.)

The further into the future you try to look, the more difficult it is to see clearly, but if I had to predict based on what we know now, I'd say the currently-existing currency that is most likely to eventually unseat the US dollar would probably end up being the Euro; the Pound Sterling and the Japanese Yen are potentially also in the running. History is seldom predictable, and it'll probably end up being something we cannot forsee right now; but even something like the Brazilian Real, has a much better shot than the RMB, which will never be stable with the CCP in power, and probably cannot survive the CCP's collapse.

As for gold, that's not new, at all; we know what its role is, and that isn't changing. People have always turned to precious metals as a reliable store of value whenever financial times are tough. And that generally works except when new technology messes things up (e.g., what happened to the price of aluminum when people figured out how to do high-temperature electrolysis). For gold, the most likely new technology to mess it up would be if somebody managed to devise an energy-efficient way to extract the dissolved gold from sea water; but even then, gold would still be a precious metal, just not quite *as* precious as it is now. (The total amount of gold in the oceans, is only a few times the quantity of gold in circulation, and less than the amount of silver in circulation.) Short of affordable transmutation (which would be *much* more disruptive than just lowering the price of gold), I can't think of any other way to turn gold into a base metal like aluminum.

Comment Re:Windows 11 Bluetooth is Still Trash (Score 1) 49

Honestly, I can't think of a single use case for bluetooth on a desktop computer, that isn't better served by some other set of physical-layer and data-link-layer standards.

For a cellphone, yes, it makes sense to have e.g. a bluetooth headset.

On a desktop computer? Are you kidding? I don't even. *Maybe* on a laptop, but even that is a bit of a reach.

With that said, Windows 11 is undeniably a terrible OS option for a desktop or laptop, either one. Its main use is to make a modern multicore 64-bit system with gigabytes of RAM, perform like a Pentium-era single-core system with RAM measured in megabytes, spending most of its time ignoring user input while it swaps memory pages in and out. In case that is an era of history that you wanted to revisit, for some reason. Nostalgia for the Good Old Days, perhaps. Enjoy.

I'll be over here using a system with a virtual memory subsystem that actually works, and an update subsystem that doesn't try to store half the internet in virtual memory every time there's an update. Because I like being able to actually *use* my computer. Call me crazy.

Comment Re:Fuel or electrical? (Score 1) 103

I am pretty sure that 25 litres of Avgas would go un-noticed, but 250 litres would probably cause the results we saw.

I don't think anyone is suggesting it was 100% Avgas. Just that a fuelling tanker had been accidentally part loaded with the wrong stuff, and no one admitted the error.

There are numerous other substances that might have contaminated they fuel and restricted flow - possibly metal objects where they shouldn't have been, oily rags, etc.

I think it will turn out to be fuel related in some way, and the contamination was shifted by roll-out - so likely denser than JetA and not dissolved, which Avgas would be.

We need to hear what the investigation finds. and not rely on speculation by passers-by.

Comment Independence Day (Score 2) 109

Americans: Fireworks are illegal? Fuckoff, I'm lighting them in the street then.

Worse: some dumbass caused a fire near LA by buying professional show grade fireworks without knowing how to use them.

If he had access to a fireworks store (like I shop at in New Hampshire) he probably would have just bought those.

I buy consumer mortars and those are *plenty* big for home use.

Much kudos to the Chinese who make very reliable pyrotechnics at quite a fair price. I only spent $160 this year despite the tariffs.

Comment Fuel or electrical? (Score 2) 103

Two theories that seem reasonable from what I've been hearing:

1. Contaminated fuel combined with high temps causing the fuel to become gaseous before getting to the engine.

2. Apparently a solar storm hit exactly at the time of the crash, raising questions about induced currents causing an electrical failure.

The emergency turbine shouldn't have deployed if it were bad gas, so that leads to the sudden electrical failure causing the crash.

That turbine works fine at altitude but not at take-off because at least you can glide to a landing if you have electrical/hydraulic power.

Comment The invention of the automatic transmission ... (Score 1) 175

... did not make thermodynamics redundant.

Some people need to know how to get from basic physics to AI - and that is what Universities are there for.

Others need to know to explain what they want - whether to AI or to their mates. That is what friends and families are for. Or, failing that Schools, and failing that, Google. (Arrgh).

Comment Re:sudo-rs (Score 1) 20

The systemd version takes a similar approach - only handling the 99.9% use case of running a local command as a different user based on some basic rules and only really providing a userspace implementation without suid.

IIRC that use case is about 15% of OG sudo's code but most distros carry around all the features. I dunno, maybe it can be compiled without those but I don't see that in distros I've used.

Comment Re:What the fuck?! (Score 1) 29

Corporatism is a distinct concept from Capitalism. That's the one you're describing. There's been a psyop by Socialists to describe corporatism as capitalism so they get more of a merger of business and State (fascism).

Corporations are creations of a government in which governments get a cut and politicians get bribes in exchange for protection from justice for the corporate actors' crimes.

If you read Adam Smith he described this as Mercantilism in his time and recommended free market capitalism as its antidote with an emphasis on the accumulation of capital and investment into more competitive production.

Von Mises fleshed this out more a couple centuries later (followed by Hayek and Rothbard). The definitive work is /Man, Economy, and State/ which breaks it all down in tremendous detail.

Notably corporations in the early USA were limited to public works projects and had time-limited grants (e.g. for building a bridge or later the railroads).

JD Rockefeller bribed Congress during Reconstruction to make corporations permanent, so he wouldn't lose his charter for Standard Oil. He later wrote the Sherman Anti-trust Act to hurt his competition.

Today we have immortal psychopathic corporations with a legal mandate to be depraved and with legal personhood. The Dulles brothers created the CIA to fight wars and conduct assassinations on behalf of the corporations. cf. United Fruit or the Pepsi War.

After the Revolution remember to forbid corporations. The Gini Coefficient is too damn high.

Comment Re:Windows 11 Bluetooth is Still Trash (Score 1) 49

Unfortunately, Samsung have decided that only developers can transfer files to/from their phone over USB! There are reasons why people prefer Huawei - and usability is one!

The persistent redesigning the UI just when you have finally figures out where the last change put the things you need daily is another.

If Google designed cars the brake pedal would go somewhere else every three months!

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