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Comment Re: I'm so glad the government makes me safe. (Score 4, Insightful) 105

There's been ticket scalping since the days when I was a kid...

It was always, back then....illegal to scalp tickets, but they would do things like sell a Bic lighter for $200 and throw in a ticket free with it.

I imagine they'll do something similar to get around this law over there in EU.

Comment Re:Oh, Such Greatness (Score 1, Interesting) 227

Lincoln was a Free Soiler. He may have had a moral aversion to slavery, but it was secondary to his economic concerns. He believed that slavery could continue in the South but should not be extended into the western territories, primarily because it limited economic opportunities for white laborers, who would otherwise have to compete with enslaved workers.

From an economic perspective, he was right. The Southern slave system enriched a small aristocratic elite—roughly 5% of whites—while offering poor whites very limited upward mobility.

The politics of the era were far more complicated than the simplified narrative of a uniformly radical abolitionist North confronting a uniformly pro-secession South. This oversimplification is largely an artifact of neo-Confederate historical revisionism. In reality, the North was deeply racist by modern standards, support for Southern secession was far from universal, and many secession conventions were marked by severe democratic irregularities, including voter intimidation.

The current coalescence of anti-science attitudes and neo-Confederate interpretations of the Civil War is not accidental. Both reflect a willingness to supplant scholarship with narratives that are more “correct” ideologically. This tendency is universal—everyone does it to some degree—but in these cases, it is profoundly anti-intellectual: inconvenient evidence is simply ignored or dismissed. As in the antebellum South, this lack of critical thought is being exploited to entrench an economic elite. It keeps people focused on fears over vaccinations or immigrant labor while policies serving elite interests are quietly enacted.

Comment Re:Your tax dollars hard at work (Score 1) 71

That's still fixable. Just like how most computers are air cooled and not water cooled. They could build a very large air cooling tower and not need water at all.

Cooling from cheap to expensive:
1. Take in water, return water some amount hotter. Requires the most water to limit temperature rise.
2. Take in water, evaporate some of the water in a cooling tower. Results in less water, but also takes less water and controls temperature rise better
3. Dry cooling.

Most systems are actually something of a hybrid of the three.

Comment Re:Computers don't "feel" anything (Score 1) 53

It's different from humans in that human opinions, expertise and intelligence are rooted in their experience. Good or bad, and inconsistent as it is, it is far, far more stable than AI. If you've ever tried to work at a long running task with generative AI, the crash in performance as the context rots is very, very noticeable, and it's intrinsic to the technology. Work with a human long enough, and you will see the faults in his reasoning, sure, but it's just as good or bad as it was at the beginning.

Comment Re:Computers don't "feel" anything (Score 3, Informative) 53

Correct. This is why I don't like the term "hallucinate". AIs don't experience hallucinations, because they don't experience anything. The problem they have would more correctly be called, in psychology terms "confabulation" -- they patch up holes in their knowledge by making up plausible sounding facts.

I have experimented with AI assistance for certain tasks, and find that generative AI absolutely passes the Turing test for short sessions -- if anything it's too good; too fast; too well-informed. But the longer the session goes, the more the illusion of intelligence evaporates.

This is because under the hood, what AI is doing is a bunch of linear algebra. The "model" is a set of matrices, and the "context" is a set of vectors representing your session up to the current point, augmented during each prompt response by results from Internet searches. The problem is, the "context" takes up lots of expensive high performance video RAM, and every user only gets so much of that. When you run out of space for your context, the older stuff drops out of the context. This is why credibility drops the longer a session runs. You start with a nice empty context, and you bring in some internet search results and run them through the model and it all makes sense. When you start throwing out parts of the context, the context turns into inconsistent mush.

Comment Re:Separate grid, please. (Score 2) 71

It probably makes more sense given their scale for them to have their own power generation -- solar, wind, and battery storage, maybe gas turbines for extended periods of low renewable availability.

In fact, you could take it further. You could designate town-sized areas for multiple companies' data centers, served by an electricity source (possibly nuclear) and water reclamation and recycling centers providing zero carbon emissions and minimal environmental impact. It would be served by a compact, robust, and completely sepate electrical grid of its own, reducing costs for the data centers and isolating residential customers from the impact of their elecrical use. It would also economically concentrate data centers for businesses providing services they need,reducing costs and increasing profits all around.

Comment Re:Planned economies (Score 1) 154

The rush is that burning it is buggering up the planet. If the US refuses, it becomes a security issue and we be dealt with appropriately.

Chicken little has been shouting this for waaaay too long....driving our ICE vehicles will not cause the planet wide DOOM scenario....certainly not in any lifetime soon.

We have plenty of time to come up with new and better vehicle power schemes.....

Comment Re:Planned economies (Score 1) 154

"making production decisions" is carrying a lot of water, business decisions are not made in a vacuum, they respond to incentives both from consumers, their competition and the state apparatus. Automakers didn't just decide to add 3-point-seat belt's or emissions controls into vehichles because of their own accord, they were either forced or incentivized to.

Actually the ultimate decision maker here...is the consumer at at least in the US, there just is NOT the market for EVs. The people that want them largely have them.

The general populace is NOT clamoring in mass to have EVs.

There are a number of reasons many involving lack of full infrastructure across the whole of the US....but whatever it is, the demand is not there in the US and well....a company is fucking stupid to build what the public is not demanding.....

Comment Re:Planned economies (Score 2) 154

The US, however, has PLENTY of oil...so, there's no rush for us to get off it.....and go full blown EV.

Besides, since there's not the full needed infrastructure here across the US, no one really wants them yet, at least not in mass.

Comment Re:Yawn (Score 1, Insightful) 154

Central planning is still better than the lack of planning we see in the USA

Well, never fear comrade....we'll soon see the new communist/socials utopia succeed in New York with Mandani!!!

And remember, in NY..if you can make it there, you can make it ANYWHERE, eh?

Comment Re: Make them occasionally? (Score 1) 186

A good point, but thinking on the marginal transactional costs to process a sale of additional items after one, people deliberately buying two items to 'stick it' to the business and get maybe 5 cents off their purchase is actually benefitting the business, and the customer spending more time figuring out the exact cost before checking out than the five cents are worth.
Basically, I figure that the business could outright discount every item after the first by 5 cents, and still profit more per item when people are buying 3-4 items at a time rather than one.

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