> Now apply the same logic to a colonoscopy.

Okay?

A colonoscopy is diagnostic. It analogy in terms of fire alarms is a fire drill, where you practice efficient evacuation and condition yourself to respond to the alarm.

What's your point? Did you have one?
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> [citation needed]

If your test has a high false positive rate, you are spending extra time and resources investigating potential problems that are not actually problems. It also undermines trust in the system. The real world consequences of this are not hard to spot; If the fire alarm in your office or apartment has a record of going off without there ever being an actual fire, how much more likely are you to delay acting every time it goes off, or ignore it completely? People die because of this effect.

Medicine also has a real problem with false positives. Imagine testing positive for cancer, spending the next few months worrying about it and possibly getting treatments or surgeries which have their own risks (and expenses), only to find out it was all for nothing? This is also a very real thing that happens.

Now maybe the cost of false positives in the case of finding software vulnerabilities isn't quite so dire, but the effect is still real. For every positive result, someone has to spend time looking into it... otherwise, what's the point? So the LLM tells you there's a vulnerability in some part of the software, and you spend weeks trying to figure out how it works and how to fix it, only to conclude that it was never actually broken. How many times does that have to happen before people just stop taking the LLM's suggestions seriously? How much time and money are you willing to throw imaginary problems until you conclude it's not actually worth it?

> Now you're engaging in a regression chain

Not really, no. If an attacker is aware of a vulnerability and the LLM fails to find it for an extended period of time, that could give them clues as to what makes that vulnerability difficult for the LLM to identify, and therefore where they might look for new vulnerabilities or even how to craft new malware that exploits those same blindspots. Doesn't seem very far fetched.

And this is true regardless of how high the false positive rate is, because this is a false negative. Finding problems that aren't real, versus NOT finding problems that ARE real, are very different type of failures.
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Well, unless the attack uses more innocuous/common words or phrases, or multiple triggers.

Imagine how many LLMs would be rendered useless if the poison word was something like "Please."
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> It. is interesting that you find that a comparison of the two methods is of no relevance

it's not relevant because... it's not relevant. Two very different approaches (reducing solar insolation/increasing albedo through atmospheric seeding vs. carbon capture via remineralization) with very different technical implementations and very different consequences both good and bad.

The only way they are comparable is if your argument is "actions have consequences" in which case sure - medicines also have side effects but we still administer them because the risks usually are worth the benefits.

Maybe a little geoengineering is also worth the risk, given the alternative of doing nothing. (Side note: Even if we were to completely stop CO2 emissions today, we are already past the tipping point by several evaluations. Additional effort beyond reducing emissions is now absolutely necessary.)

  >a lot of people believe every quick fix and then when it fails or proves impossible, move on to the next big fix without some investigation into possible catastrophic side effects

This feels like a lot of projection on your part. You came in here with specific claims, and when confronted you don't even acknowledge them and are trying to move on pretending it never happened.

I haven't seen anyone say this is *the* solution, or "the next big thing" as if all previous ideas are invalid, or that there's been no investigation into possible side effects - the article is literally about the investigation.

So to recap:

Your objection is that it might it might make the soil more alkali. My response is the soil is already too acidic, and that they have been adjusting the soil pH using limestone for decades, and that making the soil more alkali is actually a benefit to this strategy. Do you have anything to say regarding your original objection?

Your objection is that silica dust may cause harm to local populations and wildlife. My response is that they acknowledge this risk and are targeting (relatively) low silica basalts which provide the best chemistry for the lowest risk. Do you have anything to say regarding your original objection?

Your objection is acidic rain may cause the carbonates to re-release captured carbon. My response is that the chemical reactions at play explicitly rely on the acidity of the rain to function, so decomposition of the carbonate forms is really only possible if the applied minerals are fully depleted. So the worst case here is the acid rain is neutralized and we end up net zero on carbon? Also, which do you think is worse in terms of acid rain interaction; the basalt minerals, or the limestone they are already using?

Your specific example is sodium carbonate, which you talked about at length. Please explain where the sodium is coming from.

Spare us all the handwaving and man up to the claims you've made.

> Consider if you will, the really big side effect. That attempting to utilize these fixes will permit the petrochemical industry to not only continue as normal, but to increase its emissions

Or not. Nobody not already trying to defend fossil fuels will be comfortable with letting them off the hook. Everyone understands that emission reduction is absolutely necessary, but so is carbon removal at this point.
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> Sulfur or hydrogen/chlorine aerosolization

That seems completely unrelated to the article. nobody is proposing aerosol anything here.

> Using huge tracts of land to purposely alkalinize the soil is going to create issues with the land and riverine environment and local ecology.

The huge tracts of land are already effectively ruined by agriculture; They are not proposing to do this over virgin plains or forests. The soil is already acidic, and historically they have been using limestone to increase the pH to make it suitable for crops, so some amount of alkalinity is actually desirable here. It's mentioned in the publication that they (paraphrasing) understand the impacts of adding some alkalinity to the soil, the target result is a more neutral pH, and they are aware of the consequences of over-applying it.

As far as pH management goes, it's unlikely to be any worse than the limestone they have already been working into the fields for decades.

> and silicosis being an ongoing threat for wildlife and nearby humans

This is also addressed in the report. They are specifically selecting basalt for the higher mineral:silica ratio and low toxic metal content which minimizes the risks.

> And in areas where acid rain is present, quick reactions can release the Carbon dioxide right back into the atmosphere

It's unclear where the carbon is coming from that's not already in the form of carbonic acid (CO2 dissolved in rainwater). The entire process works because the acidic rain reacts with the minerals to produce stable carbon compounds, so it's not immediately clear how or why the sane acidic rain that the reaction relies on would undo that reaction. There is no appreciable amount sodium in the minerals being spread either, so I have no idea why you're mentioning sodium carbonate or where it's coming from.

> I reviewed the chemical process of that in another post.

Well, you addressed chemistry but I didn't see anything relevant to this situation. Maybe you should re-read the articles relevant to the topic and consider what parts of your arguments are and aren't applicable. (Hint: Sodium bicarbonate is not relevant.)
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> it creates more problems.

Such as?

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Arduino boards are a lot more powerful than the microcontrollers used in many commercial products. Hell, a lot of those super-ubiquitous 8-pin micros with no markings are like 2KB program ROM and 128 BYTES of RAM.

If you're complaining about only 32KB or RAM, you're either a shitty developer who's chosen the wrong tool for the job, or a shitty developer who can't optimize their code.
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It's the perfect amount of money.

It's not enough to do anything visibly useful, and not so much that it would be hard to account for it all... so when it all vanishes into private pockets with nothing to show for it, most people won't bother investigating too hard.
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From the linked paper:

While the concept of energy droughts have received much attention, we do not find evidence of extended time periods of low VRE production in the NEM. For example, over a two-week period in the worst historical time sequence, the VRE fleet would still have delivered 70 % of the expected output once seasonal trends (e.g., winter solar production) are taken into account. A 30 % reduction in expected energy is therefore the worst two-week historical VRE drought on record.

A historically worst-case scenario of a 30% energy deficit over 2 weeks is not quite the same as needing 3 full days of storage. But it gets better, because the next paragraph explains:

These figures also assume no curtailed energy. In practice, it will almost always be efficient to overbuild renewables at a local level [...]. The market operator [...] projects 20 % VRE curtailment by 2050, while (Simshauser et al., 2021) have suggested that a 20% to 240% overbuild of capacity on a transmission line would be efficient. The subsequent curtailment will reduce variability of output and deliver more constant energy both daily and seasonally, reducing the risks of droughts

In other words, the 30% deficit assumes the exact amount of renewable energy generation capacity is provided and none of it is left unused... but to make optimal use of the grid, it is expected that there will be more renewable energy capacity built than strictly necessary - by 20% to 240% - meaning there is basically guaranteed to be unused, excess capacity available that could be deployed to cover these weather related "droughts."

Thanks for providing the link; saved me a lot of time proving your concerns unfounded.
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> There's no indication of the circumstances of their birth

Table C1, page 45.

This is also the Cornell University Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, where the median family income for students is over $150K, so certainly none of them are poor.
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They set up an experiment with "workers" who get compensated based on either luck or performance, so some workers get more than others but not necessarily because they did a better job. The students actually being studied are then asked to redistribute the earnings if they want, in either direction (e.g. give workers they feel worked harder more, or give workers they feel were exceptionally lucky less)

One of the variables the the experiment is how much it costs to redistribute the earnings. For example, you can take $1 form worker A and give it to worker B, but if the efficiency cost is 50% then worker B only gets $0.50 and the other $0.50 is lost. This lost value is the efficiency cost.

Basically they're saying that the likelihood and amount of redistribution is strongly dependent on how much it costs to implement it. The more expensive it is to transfer wealth, the more disparity there is between the haves and have-nots.

Overall the paper seems to show that people born with a silver spoon up their ass not only see inequality as less of a problem, but are severely less inclined to do anything about it at all if the solution isn't literal magic. Quelle surprise.
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Public schools don't fail int he same way that private ones do. They can't, because they aren't businesses.

It's really sad to have to explain, over and over, that operating public services as for-profit businesses - or worse, replacing public services with for-profit businesses - is literally the whole reason shit is falling apart. The peak of American civilization also had the highest tax rates for the wealthy and the most extensive and functional public services. That was not a coincidence.
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> I can tell that you have no idea what you're talking about because the vast majority of public K-12 school funding is through local taxes, not federal funding.

About 13% of public schools are funded federally. You say "the vast majority" as if to handwave 13% of their funding as unsubstantial. Most importantly, this funding goes to schools that do not have the local tax revenue to fully support them.

> The federal government has almost no control over it so they can't cut funding

The federal Dept. of Education plays a key role in ensuring equitable access to education. You know how they exert control over local schools? By creating and enforcing (or NOT enforcing) policies, because their job is ultimately to implement and enforce laws created by Congress that apply to public education.

> There are also many states that have charter schools that perform better for less money than the public schools, so it's not a money problem.

Charter schools have an abysmal reputation; approximately 1 in 4 charter schools end up out of business within 5 years, leaving their students in the lurch and those who paid for it with empty wallets.

It's just a scam to funnel public money into private hands and push indoctrination. Look at all the enshittification that's happened and is currently happening in the name of chasing profits - we cannot afford that in education, financially or culturally.
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> HOW ABOUT we use a lifting body like an airship instead? ...says the person completely ignorant of the history of airships. There's a reason they aren't used for anything.

It's not immediately clear that a larger airplane would need a larger airport. The size of the runway needed really depends on the minimum speed needed to take off and stay aloft, and how quickly it can reach that speed from a standstill. A huge plane with large, efficient wings and powerful engines that can take off in 5000 feet of runway with a 100+ ton load can still use just about any existing airport.

Meanwhile you can't even get an airship out of its hangar if it's a bit windy, and it's not like a construction site for wind turbines would have any strong wind, right?
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Not only has it been done before, we now have drone technology that make it even easier to synchronize multiple aircraft.

A dozen extra large drones, some slings, and a chase helicopter with the operator. Seems very doable.
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