tomatotomato37

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vor 6 Monatendiscuss

I'm curious what the thermal management system on this looks like. On one hand, vacuum being in essence a perfect insulator works in favor of keeping the silicon hot for the very long time it takes to pull a boule while requiring very little energy. On the other hand, you have to make sure the control electronics don't also heat up to 1000C. I'm also curious how you keep the molten silion separate from the crystal without gravity keeping it in the crucible. I bet a lot of interesting engineering going on here.

vor 7 Monatendiscuss

Those upsides could have also been accomplished by pointing the CIA at Venezuela to do the same thing they've been doing across South America for the past fifty years.

vor 8 Monatendiscuss

The only vaguely valid dual use technology I can see coming out of this is improving space-rated processing enough that deep space probes sent out to Uranus or whatever can run with more processing power than a Ti-82 and thus can actually do some data processing rather than clogging up the deep space network for three weeks on an uplink with less power than a lightbulb

vor 8 Monatendiscuss

Nah, they are pretty similar in difficulty for interception - the first US ASAT program used essentially the same Nike Zeus missiles used for ABM duty during the late 50s

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

Worst part about it was all the people fretting on about ridiculous threats like the chatbot turning into skynet sucked the oxygen out of the room for the more realistic corporate threats

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

Most ICE vehicles with automatic transmissions (aka 90% of them) either explicitly open the clutch or do torque converter things when off throttle, the result being that the vehicle starts freewheeling. Air resistance and friction and what not means the vehicle will eventually stop, but in a modern car at highway speeds that stopping distance can still be multiple miles; and that's before you bring hills into the equation.

My point being for most people expected behavior is for a car to only slow down during active braking and maintain momentum otherwise, and trying to change that otherwise would bring more danger than it's worth.

letztes Jahrdiscuss

I use "Third Wave Water" but there are other brands out there

letztes Jahrdiscuss

Yes, water quality matters a lot in coffee enthusiast land. They actually make little mineral packets that you add to a gallon of distilled water to get a "perfect" brewing water - I know since I actually use them for my espresso machine to fight scale buildup from my +10 grain tap water.

Note this excessiveness is really needed for espresso though; a regular Brita jug handles more tolerant methods of brewing perfectly well (and to be honest most people murder coffee enough that the water is the least of their concerns)

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

The big desirable thing about the EU is it's strong social net and relatively modern urban infrastructure. If you like the city or don't have a safety net from some other auxiliary source such as family or church it's superior. Otherwise the US wins out in factors such as an overall more vibrant economy, more personal freedoms, not having a major landwar on its borders, etc.

Also all this just applies to the actual good parts of each region. There's no point in comparing rural Alabama to Serbia cause we already know they're both shitholes.

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

There was a lot of discussion discrediting art gallerys for banning AI content; seems a bit disingenuous to do it when it starts affecting our own content.

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

The law also says they need to file taxes on that purchase, but what is required and what people actually do often differs

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

That's how criminals get guns they actually intend to use. You're forgetting though that guns, like espresso machines and other machinery involving high pressures and tight tolerances, tend to be quite expensive, and their handheld nature makes them an extremely lucrative items to fence.

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

I've always been a fan of state over federal, but I don't think a lot of our states are "rich" enough to balance out the others. I'd imagine an optimal balance would be several of the lower population states be merged together based on culture until we have ~10 states with the wealth of Germany or some such, but then dumping a lot of the federal powers to before Wickard v. Filburn. The thing is that the impotence seems to kick in on the "super-large" continent sized countries, but that doesn't mean there isn't a minimum size too, of which a Vermont or Kentucky doesn't really meet compared to a Texas or California.

It should also be noted these changes would only practically be achieved with a time machine, because the social/economic/military cost of changing anything involving the foundation of the US nowadays would be apocalyptic

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

That supports my argument though. A highly populated country is much more likely to have citizens with clashing philosophies or cultures. Subdividing it to smaller states results in a state having less citizen "worth" but more efficient application of that worth overall.

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

Yeah it's interesting considering he cited individuals like Xi and Putin who essentially are the government of their respective countries getting horrible value for their wealth. And it's not just limited to dictatorships; the US didn't get shit for the $2 trillion it spent on the Afghan wars, and still lingers behind some smaller countries in QoL. While it's nice to extoll of efficiencies of scale, it's hard to say they work in practice. Maybe it would be a better idea to say any entity shouldn't have control over X amount of assets, whether individual, corporation, or government.

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

Let's start with cutting off their cloud/remote services before doing something with very large friendly fire potential. I think Ukrainians with devices sourced through Russia would prefer they stay working

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

Most of that subculture divide is on type of car rather than rather they work on it in the first place. Trust me, there are plenty of car clubs consisting 90% of white boomers showing off their pristine garage queen 1960s muscle cars who would also be inconvenienced by that law.

vor 6 Jahrendiscuss

Except it doesn't. Labor rights does not have an appreciable affect on racial discrimination, environmental concerns, infrastructure, immigration concerns, defense against the passive/active actions against other hostile nation-states, or a lot of other things.

And no, leveraging a union to force your company to drop a controversial customer has absolutely nothing to do with labor rights, that's just taking advantage of a organization your tribe happens to control

vor 6 Jahrendiscuss

I think the risk of bathroom transmission would actually be less than you think, mostly because there's already a lot of design and practices built around the fact they are unsanitary to begin with.

vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

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