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Comment Over 200 Jobless Economist...The Horror. (Score 1, Flamebait) 153

For two centuries, ever since Malthus opined that the Universe has limits, Economist have dictated and constrained natural growth. Frequently, these growths have been used to 'control' society and has harmed billions of individuals. I will not delve deeply into the theories here but suffice it to say that Economists and their beliefs have more to do with religion and politics and less to do with math.

The mathematics of this Solar System's and even this Planet's resources are overlooked in favor of pure power plays by elites of society. This stratification is now threatened by an intelligence that is smarter than all of them combined and they are now...scared? I suppose that they should be, because the powers of their religion falls flat in the face of true reality.

As we enter an era of unlimited prosperity, I can only offer them the scant hope that their history will not be written too unfavorably.

Comment Thinking (Score 1) 19

Although LLM's have been trained on the best thing that we could find - Humans - oddly, LLM's don't think in the same ways that we do.

An odd byproduct of stuffing the entirety of the human way of thinking into the LLM's is the LLM's ability to think in unusual ways. Because it is inherently logical, it combines some human rationality and finds both the good and the bad in a codebase. It also hallucinates just as much as humans do.

Hallucination by an AI is called lying by Humans. And Humans have lied quite a bit. Training out the lies is perhaps one of the hardest things to do as an AI researcher. The question becomes what is truth? I suspect that the majority of 'drift' relates to this 'fake it until you make it' kind of a concept.

Therefore, Linus faces more of the same by seemingly helpful humans. AI has multiplied the ability to find new and unusual defects (15 years unnoticed in one case!) and new and unusual lies.

Comment Re:Why not closed-loop water cooling? (Score 1) 44

Lawn grass and other urban landscape irrigation in Texas use approximately 1.9 million to 4 million acre-feet of water per year, which is between 619 billion and 1.3 trillion gallons annually. The total water used for all irrigation in Texas, which includes agriculture, is about 7.6 million acre-feet per year (over 2.4 trillion gallons).

The exact total for 2024 is not available, but estimates project that Texas data centers will use nearly 50 billion gallons of water this year

10% of lawn usage not even counting all the rest of water usage. And we do a shit job of recycling water too in this state.

Power - for each new data center going up they are putting in green sources of energy. And newer chips are requiring less power and cooling overall. But that aside, home and commercial power uses more than data center power - by a lot.

While a definitive statewide total for 2024 home power consumption isn't available, Texas is the leading electricity-consuming state in the U.S., and its residential sector accounts for a significant portion of total energy use. In 2023, Texas consumed 492.8 terawatt-hours of electricity overall, with 2024 estimates showing slightly higher monthly demand in the summer months, for example, over 46.4 million megawatt-hours in June.

The total data center power consumption in Texas for 2024 was an estimated nearly 22 million MWh per year, or approximately 4.5% of the state's total electricity consumption for that year. ERCOT's 2024 forecast projected a total demand of 29,614 MW from data centers, crypto mining, and other large loads.

400,000 mw for homes 000,030 mw for data centers crypto and others

Comment Re:Vought's in the cabinet for one reason (Score 2) 284

Prior to the November 2024 Elections I:

* Emailed at least 1,000 people
* Called 100 people
* Texted 100 people
* Knocked on 25 doors

I legit begged people in my community to vote and to vote blue. For early election and on election day, very few people showed up. The apathy is real. Now, as we watch the prices soar higher than a SpaceX rocket, the Epstein Files Release demolishing toner cartridges and our Health Care system is about to be dead and buried... Suddenly, "The People Remain Concerned"?

But what does "news" want you to think?

* Rising Prices are a Good Thing(tm) https://thehill.com/homenews/h...
* Everyone Knew Epstein, No Big Deal https://www.sbs.com.au/news/ar...
* Health Care Subsidies are Bad https://www.cato.org/blog/six-...

I seem to recall Carter tossed over prices, Hillary tossed over Bill's Cucumber in the Closet with an Intern and Kerry mauled over health care.

The doublespeak, double standard is very real. And despite what some may think, there are many that have opposed these issues. But Trump did hack an election and perhaps prior elections were hacked as well. Who can say? The institution has been corrupted by money and power at least 100 years, if not more.

For the highest office in the land, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Submission + - Another large Black hole in "our" Galaxy (arxiv.org)

RockDoctor writes: A recent paper on ArXiv reports a novel idea about the central regions of "our" galaxy.

Remember the hoopla a few years ago about radio-astronomical observations producing an "image" of our central black hole — or rather, an image of the accretion disc around the black hole — long designated by astronomers as "Sagittarius A*" (or SGR-A*)? If you remember the image published then, one thing should be striking — it's not very symmetrical. If you think about viewing a spinning object, then you'd expect to see something with a "mirror" symmetry plane where we would see the rotation axis (if someone had marked it). If anything, that published image has three bright spots on a fainter ring. And the spots are not even approximately the same brightness.

This paper suggests that the image we see is the result of the light (radio waves) from SGR-A* being "lensed" by another black hole, near (but not quite on) the line of sight between SGR-A* and us. By various modelling approaches, they then refine this idea to a "best-fit" of a black hole with mass around 1000 times the Sun, orbiting between the distance of the closest-observed star to SGR-A* ("S2" — most imaginative name, ever!), and around 10 times that distance. That's far enough to make a strong interaction with "S2" unlikely within the lifetime of S2 before it's accretion onto SGR-A*.)

The region around SGR-A* is crowded. Within 25 parsecs (~80 light years, the distance to Regulus [in the constellation Leo] or Merak [in the Great Bear]) there is around 4 times more mass in several millions of "normal" stars than in the SGR-A* black hole. Finding a large (not "super massive") black hole in such a concentration of matter shouldn't surprise anyone.

This proposed black hole is larger than anything which has been detected by gravitational waves (yet) ; but not immensely larger — only a factor of 15 or so. (The authors also anticipate the "what about these big black holes spiralling together?" question : quote "and the amplitude of gravitational waves generated by the binary black holes is negligible.")

Being so close to SGR-A*, the proposed black hole is likely to be moving rapidly across our line of sight. At the distance of "S2" it's orbital period would be around 26 years (but the "new" black hole is probably further out than than that). Which might be an explanation for some of the variability and "flickering" reported for SGR-A* ever since it's discovery.

As always, more observations are needed. Which, for SGR-A* are frequently being taken, so improving (or ruling out) this explanation should happen fairly quickly. But it's a very interesting, and fun, idea.

Submission + - Surado, formerly Slashdot Japan, is closing at the end of the month. (srad.jp) 1

AmiMoJo writes: Slashdot Japan was launched on May 28, 2001. On 2025/03/31, it will finally close. Since starting the site separated from the main Slashdot one, and eventually rebranded as "Surado", which was it's Japanese nickname.

Last year the site stopped posting new stories, and was subsequently unable to find a buyer. In a final story announcing the end, many users expressed their sadness and gratitude for all the years of service.

Comment Re:CFAA (Score 1) 56

In fact, Elon Musk broke far more serious laws and is getting away with it. Rules for thee and not for me, much?

All Aaron Schwartz did was download something using campus WiFi and shared it with other like-minded people. And this is against an industry notorious for abusing access and information to scientific researchers. The various claims that Aaron Schwartz was a violent information criminal is a LIE. There are far worse abuses performed DAILY by the billionaires. They’re called Facebook, X and Tik Tok.

Comment Re:Why don't all rich in LA have roof sprinklers? (Score 2) 150

Yeah so...it's a bit more expensive than that. However, I think that you're talking about the people's homes not the city budget. And in this instance, I would suspect that you are partially correct.

These folks are largely the same folks that:

1. Put through Prop 13.
2. Demanded that modern building codes not be applied to them.
3. Demanded low insurance rates or exemptions from insurance

These are the same folks that have now lost everything. I feel for them, I really do...but I cannot pity them. For example, the lady that was screaming at the Governor - she had two homes that she lost. Many of us have already been through losses and got absolutely no help. FEMA will buy you a hotel for a few days and that's it. Then the joke's on you - if your home insurance isn't large enough or if you don't qualify for loans because outside of the rich, who does? And all of this because a few people didn't feel like paying for their portion of city maintenance.

So now many of us are forced to be renters - and that's the pipeline that these multi-million dollar homes have generated. These people leveraged their homes and put many of us into renters situations. And now they're complaining?

Thou dost protest too much

Comment Re:What a tool. (Score 1) 268

Nicolas Cage in Lord of War said it best: There's nothing more expensive for an arms dealer than peace ... There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11? ... You know who's going to inherit the Earth? Arms dealers. Because everyone else is too busy killing each other. That's the secret to survival. Never go to war. Especially with yourself.

Comment Re:Yes (Score 1) 155

You know...this. And also, here's the bit that always gets me.

I get a call from my friend in Portland. He's young (24). His badge wasn't working and no one had the key for the building. They were calling around trying to find someone with the key. I said...Just call a locksmith. It never occurred to him.

So anyway - there are other ways of transacting that doesn't involve your favorite currency.

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