I think realistically most people that read a lot have moved onto e-books. Just like physical copies of video games or music are dying, so are physical copies of books. Not only is it convenient, but realistically the cost to "publish" an ebook is effectively nothing.
Aside from proximity, Mars is better suited to colonization than the moon.
There's a minor atmosphere that makes traditional flight possible, and evens out the temperature swings a bit.
The day/night cycle is nearly identical to Earth so solar arrays are more practical (compared to lunar days lasting 28 Earth days).
The gravity is higher (38% of Earth's gravity compared to 17%), so muscle atrophy and general disorientation should be less severe compared to the lunar surface. On the other hand this does make it harder to get back off the surface and into orbit again.
While both likely have "enough" water, Mars has more.
The only thing the moon offers that's better is for resupply or emergency scenarios, Earth is just a hop and a skip away.
The tragedy is that nobody actually wants peace enough to make it happen. All it would take is the U.N. declaring all of Israel to be a demilitarized zone, ordering the Israeli government and Hamas to both disarm, shooting anyone who refuses to comply, and then keeping those million or so troops in that region to help rebuild, slowly drawing down the number of troops over... say 200 years, so that by the time they are gone, no one alive still remembers the horrors of this day.
So rather than them hating each other, they'll be united in their hatred for the UN.
Nobody wants anyone coming into their home and telling them what to do. The issue between Israel and Palestine is that both of them consider the land theirs, and and foreign interference that sides with one side will be hated by the other, and any that supports neither side or both sides equally will be hated by both sides.
The reality is that the elites of both sides want to fight . . . but realistically Israel is the side that will come out on top militarily, so the Palestinian leaders have to be willing to come to the table and negotiate. They're not getting one state, and they're not getting any historic territory back - not without land swaps anyways.
Come to the table. Draw up official borders and have nothing to do with each other. Israel doesn't control what goes on in Gaza's borders and they become an independent state (maybe united with the West Bank, maybe West Bank becomes its own separate country - who knows). After that though, any attack from EITHER side against the other is an act of war. There is no more fighting, no more trying to reclaim ancestral lands - you have your territory and you stay there in peace.
I read an interview with one of the main protestors that got fired in the first wave. Their plan is to become a professional protestor. I suspect that pays better than being an average Googler.
This. That would be awesome.
If LLMs are increasing your productivity, you must be among the worst developers on the planet.
lol!
"Keyboards, pssh. Kids today
"EVs wear out tires two to three times faster [thedrive.com] than an ICE vehicle, and those tires cost more."
That is a lie, and that reference is misleading, dishonest and cites only one anecdote.
Level 2 chargers are glorified power cords, they cost nothing to make. Level 2 charging is implemented in the vehicle, not the "charger".
Any time you see the claim that BEVs are not viable because of the cost of (largely level 2) charging infrastructure, you know you are dealing with bad faith argument. The oil companies, and their political cohorts, would have you believe that we cannot afford electric vehicles because of the cost of the power cords to plug them in. It's bullshit, it's also pervasive and effective because people are ignorant. Electrical demand will not skyrocket, level 2 is not expensive. Lifestyles and living arrangements need to adjust. The fact that 40% of the population cannot access L2 at their homes is the bigger problem.
Level 3 is another matter, but that's not even what's discussed here. I'm not sure I'm even a BEV supporter, I think synthetic fuels and hydrogen may be better approaches, but charging infrastructure is just a big lie and $1000 home L2 cables are a cash grab, not even Tesla charges money like that.
It's funny how we can construct buildings wired to the hilt with electrical power and it's perfectly affordable, yet we want to add some of that power to the parking garage and it crashes the economy. Hmmm, wonder who came up with that?
It's funny watching the reactions to things like this. It really reveals the religious nature of it all.
"Say what?? We can't actually mitigate things with technology
It's true. LLMs can't code. All they can produce is text that looks like code, just like any other text the produce. They lack the ability to consider, reason, and analyze. This is an indisputable fact.
Try not to take sensationalist headlines at face value just because they affirm your silly delusions.
My silly delusion that LLMs are a useful tool, that I, a working programmer, actually do use productively? Okay
Noticed that as well, the quality of the output depends on the quality of the input. And you have to know something about the subject the output is about to know whether is good or garbage (or look at it period and not put blind faith in its output). We've seen it with lawyers using it for arguments then not double checking the cases. Sometimes AI just makes up stuff.
Right, it's a tool. In the right hands, it is super useful.
Exactly. I drive a 1996 Honda Civic. If I were to buy a new car, that is the sort of car that I would be interested in. The sort of car that is inexpensive and capable of driving at freeway speeds. If the government would let me buy a Toyota Hilux for $12K I would do that tomorrow. Instead I get enormous pickups and SUVs that get through the loopholes in our current EPA standards and that cost more than my first house.
I just spent a week in Peru where Chinese cars are quite popular, and the taxi drivers that I talked to were pretty happy with theirs. The mentioned, time and again, that, for the price they were great cars. They were definitely popular. I would buy one of those. They tend to have manual transmissions, which I know how to drive, and which I trust not to leave me stranded.
If I could buy an electric vehicle for $10K I would do that. It wouldn't be my only vehicle, but it probably would be my primary vehicle. I love the idea of electric vehicles, but it doesn't make sense to replace my ridiculously inexpensive (paid for and hyper reliable) Civic with an expensive electric vehicle, or my far more useful Honda Odyssey mini-van. It sort of makes sense to replace the Civic with an electric vehicle, however, if the price is right.
Haven't bought a tablet for quite a few years, do they normally use SIM cards now?
(If so, what makes it a tablet vs. a "big phone"?)
I saw that, but no idea what it means.
Looks like there are some docs on this. This one may be relevant.
If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map.
