Stuff like this seems inevitable to me, but various forms of 3d printing buildings whether out of concrete or other dirt+binder systems have been being experimented with for at least 10 years if not 20. Who knows if they'll ever achieve value parity with standard methods.

Though "standard methods" aren't an entirely static target either. Like i was watching some pumped concrete building of a high-ish rise building in Miami some months back and, while not robotic... it certainly included a lot of labor saving automation.

I mean, it's quick to build and if you use a fastener or adhesive they still stay down even in strong wind.

No, obviously not actual legos, but a similar block type design that interlocks and offers more than just corner and straight pieces. An interlocking window or door frame could just be dropped in during the wall build.

Mostly the fact that they easily leak / crack / crumble. But if you have a robot that can just turn your home back into mud and build it again, then sure. Why not?

Why would I set out to deny something I never mentioned. This is all in your head friend, you need to clean house and join us back in reality.

"If it were that simple to run a grid on 90+% renewable energy then I would expect some nation would have made it work by now. "

Norway, Iceland, Paraguay, Costa Rica, Albania, Ethiopia, and Bhutan all do exactly this, you numpty.

As for the idea that more renewables means more blackouts, I think you'll find that the US suffers a shit ton more blackouts than European countries that have pushed hard on renewables. Here in the UK, I have *never* experienced a blackout or brownout. And UK electricity pricing for consumers is set by gas marginal pricing, and this would have been true whether we had moved to renewables or not, because .... that's the fucking point of how marginal pricing systems work. Whichi s why we're delinking it now. (And anyway, US electricity prices have shot up in the last year, as your failure to invest in your grid is coming to bite you, and this is a story that's nowhere near finished, and is getting oil shock coming on top of it, too, so enjoy it all)

Also: imagine being on a tech site, yet unable to grasp the idea that technology improves over time, despite that exact thing happening extremely rapidly for both solar and wind, as well as BESS. What a numpty.

I bet adobe bricks would be better if the clay/mud was enhanced & fortified with just enough Portland cement to make them resist water so they can handle rainy climates for half a century or longer, besides if the adobe mud/brick walls were covered with something like stucco or shotcrete they would be sealed against the weather

Everyone has been calling for whitelisting terminals for years. Musk only now kicked Russians offline due to the imminent SpaceX IPO.

While Trump and Musk are untrustworthy amoral asshats they are unlikely to act in contravention of self interests. There would be hell to pay especially in future administrations once such a betrayal became known likely in exchange for nothing substantive on the other side of the ledger. It might not even mean all that much in practice due to heavy use of overlays like Conduit in Iran.

I work in Seattle. I can't say I've ever noticed an issue when I've had to use my cell phone's network, but it's not like I do that every day.

However I can say that, in between stations along the train tracks (where the Sounder runs), there are places where there basically isn't any connectivity no matter which network you're on.

This quote seems to imply that this phenomenon is new with AI engineers. Regular software developers are often baffled by what their software does too. And then they study it further, and eventually piece together what went wrong. Or sometimes not.

Why is it so weird that, as often as people refer to unexplained issues as gremlins or goblins, that AI might pick up on this pattern and copy it?

Please don't ask Stephen Fry a question - once he gets going, he never shuts up!

If only you asked Google that question instead of posting it here as a troll. Here's Google's answer:

"Adobe-style homes are not common across America primarily due to high labor costs, lengthy construction times, and vulnerability to moisture, making them practical only in arid climates. Stick-frame construction (2x4s) is favored for its speed, affordability, and adaptability to varied climates."

So, for suitable places, this appears to be an effort to directly solve a problem.

Also, what would an adobe home be "undesirable", other than you're a dumbass?

When Ask Jeeves came out, it was new and revolutionary. But they just sat there, failing to continue the long road of improvements that were inevitably needed.

At the same time, Google beat them at their own game. Google made it possible to search using the very same Q&A syntax that Ask Jeeves pioneered, but Google did it better.

Finally, Ask Jeeves became a junk site, little more than a place for banner ads.

So long AJ, it was nice knowing you.

What? The Internet?

While manually entering them on Youtube is hassle, it comes down to the laziness of the creators.

How does dialup even work when your average webpage has megabytes of scripts?

Yes, the "Damned city folk don't understand" people come out whenever dial-up is mentioned, but here's the problem: DIAL UP IS FUCKING USELESS IN 2026.

Do you SERIOUSLY think you can browse the net at 56kbps? Google's home page currently weighs in at nearly 300Kb. Do you remember what it was to download 300k back in 1995? And Google's home page is one of the few on the net right now that's trying to be "lightweight". How big do you think Amazon's home page is right now?

What websites are still useful in 2026 that can be downloaded using a 56kbps modem?

Why aren't adobe style homes common place in America, or globally, in 2006 or 2036?

That these guys have developed an automated way of making impractical and undesirable homes in 2026 is... yawn.

I actually lost an AI project for that exact reason. The automation wasn't worth the risk and people are cheap.

Still makes it nearly impossible to completely protect the wood structure.

If you make the roof unventilated you could put mineral wool continuous exterior insulation everywhere including across and under the eaves and make it pretty much impossible for fire to get to the inner wood structure even if the gutters are full of burning leaves.

Without him, we all wouldn't have learned about subluxations years ago.:-)

...nobody tells it about Hobgoblins.

Care to explain the recent Starlink whitelisting event that locked most Russian terminals out of the network and arguably resulted in the collapse of a number of their offensive operations while giving Ukraine a large operational advantage?

I just use regular autocomplete to get my winning lottery numbers. I am now a multi millionaire!

it was even still going...

Time to teach it about the Meow game. See Super Troopers.

Huh, I've never even heard of parimutuel betting. I had to read the WIkipedia page on it. In that case, am not sure my suggestion of using the geometric distribution would work.

Also, yes, finding the gradient between the stated odds of a horse winning and the observed odds is a common method (to find irregularities in how odds are calculated). I had a colleague who, like me, has a Phd in math. Unlike me, he is (or was) athletic. He played tennis as often as he could. When sports betting became legalized, he discovered 1) you could bet on every point of a professional tennis match 2) there were many irregularities of how the probabilities were calculated.

The truth is out there. [hums X-files theme]