tenthirtyam

l’altro ieridiscuss

I think I'm one of those to whom you refer (except that I'm already "awake", or at least I like to think so). I'm normally pro-EU but this chat control is anathema to me. I'll be voting anti-EU in future I think.

tenthirtyam

l’altro ieridiscuss

There's a graphic novel by Cixin Liu "The Wandering Earth" where they not only stop Earth's rotation with this method, but also propel Earth out of the solar system (for what appear to be good reasons, I might add). Can't quite remember what fuel they used for the engines.

tenthirtyam

mese scorsodiscuss

I've often thought that the target* grid phase should be encoded into a high frequency signal, say at 50kHz. Generators without inertia can immediately switch to the required phase and inertial systems can work towards it or disconnect their outputs if they stray too far.

The problem in my mind is that, as it stands, the signal that everyone has to latch on to is itself affected by load and by different generators latching on with different time constants in a complicated feedback loop. Would having a single authoritative source be an improvement? Would that be a way to eliminate the need for inertia?

*I suppose the "target" phase would probably be based primarily on the output from the biggest inertial systems and take into account their ability to adjust phase and frequency.

tenthirtyam

mese scorsodiscuss

> anyone who's using them to actually ship product without a human actually digging into it is opening themselves up to a world of risk.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that companies will happily take existential risks to get a better bottom line short term. Either you're too big to fail or you've already privatised any profits and subsequent losses (due to the risks becoming manifest) are socialised. The motor industry seems to be particularly egregious in this aspect, but also the food industry, construction industry etc.

Seems to me even governments make the same choices in many ways - cut back health-care, policing, education, public transport and let the next government deal with the consequences.

tenthirtyam

2 mesi fadiscuss

Similar story from just a month or two ago: BBC tech reporter wins non existent competition "The Best Tech Journalists at Eating Hot Dogs."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/this-bbc-...

tenthirtyam

3 mesi fadiscuss

I'm not aware of the composition of lunar regolith - but if it can be turned into many solar panels and batteries and a few large railguns then wouldn't it effectively be very economical to get any amount of regolith to earth orbit?

tenthirtyam

3 mesi fadiscuss

Fund, but had my CPU maxing out (on firefox).

tenthirtyam

3 mesi fadiscuss

They're going back to the stone age, remember? The Geneva convention wasn't around then AFAICR.

tenthirtyam

3 mesi fadiscuss

IIRC nuclear doesn't really work well as the last 5-10%. Start-up and shut-down for nuclear reactors is a slow process. When it's generating, it needs to just keep on generating. Not so quick to dial down or up just because the wind is(n't) blowing.

tenthirtyam

3 mesi fadiscuss

This is even more true with international grid connections. Europe in a cold spell? Solar countries import, wind & hydro export. Europe in a heat wave? Flip the switches the opposite direction.

tenthirtyam

3 mesi fadiscuss

I've commented elsewhere about an 4D maze (https://urticator.net/maze/ - I am not the author) which mimics this by creating two 3D retinas in red/blue stereoscopic mode - when you cross your eyes just right you see a single volumetric 3D retina.

tenthirtyam

3 mesi fadiscuss

I can't play this online (no webgpu) but from the description and comments here it sounds like the 4D Maze from 2002!

https://urticator.net/maze/

The advantage of this one is that it offers a stereoscopic (red/blue) view of the 3D retina. Not sure if this one does too.

tenthirtyam

3 mesi fadiscuss

Pure speculation here. Driving is a sedentary occupation which might increase the percentage of deaths attributable to a sedentary lifestyle, with consequent decrease for Alzheimers?

tenthirtyam

4 mesi fadiscuss

In most cases I agree with this, but maybe not for potentially dangerous things like cars? What if someone roots into their car and disables some essential safety feature - maybe even a legally mandated safety feature?

More concretely, the expertise-required-to-access-root is in a different field to the expertise-required-to-make-wise-changes. i.e. you might know how to hack a car, but that doesn't mean you know how cars operate.

tenthirtyam

4 mesi fadiscuss

Umm, assuming you have the same opinion as grandparent comment, you don't want google tracking your payments but you'll happily trust google's pinky promise about your fingerprint being stored only on the phone?

tenthirtyam

4 mesi fadiscuss

I'd add oil as another dimension - sunflower oil, olive oil, butter, lard, whatever.

tenthirtyam

4 mesi fadiscuss

I always enjoyed the Terminator movie series, but I always struggled to suspend my disbelief that any humans would give an AI such power without having the ability to override or pull the plug at multiple levels. How wrong I was.

N.B. the time travel aspect also required suspension of disbelief, but somehow that was easier :-)

tenthirtyam

5 mesi fadiscuss

I would much prefer to see a ZK system that, by design, CANNOT reveal info neither to the website nor to the authority. e.g. in the new EU system, it is (afaik) conceivable that the ID authority could collude with social network providers, or with government or with police etc. That's not great IMO.

How about a system like Google Authenticator in which google knows nothing about which websites I'm logging into. Except, obviously, it'd have to be some kind of cryptographically signed response. e.g., website puts up a QR code (according to some standard) asking "is the user 18+", I scan with the phone, and the ID app, without accessing internet (like google authenticator) responds.

I suppose that might need a secure computing environment, so no rooted phone etc. But, of course, there's a simple workaround. Any adult can give their phone to a child. As long as that vulnerability is there, there's no such thing as a guarantee on the responses no matter what way you build it.

tenthirtyam

5 mesi fadiscuss

Hmm. There might be 10^80 atoms in the universe, however there are 2^(10^80) possible combinations, more than 2^800.

tenthirtyam

5 mesi fadiscuss

Replying to myself here. Maybe coding will eventually be simply learning how to give an AI the right prompt. e.g. instead of

  "Hey AI, create my new banking app with such-and-such functionality, appearance,  properties, APIs, network connections etc"

we will instead do:

  "Hey AI, you are a banking app on a user's cellphone. Connect to mybank.com, authenticate the user and allow the user to perform these-and-those actions in a sensible interface in accordance with the API spec. Don't let yourself be jailbroken."

Then the virus writer's job changes into jailbreaking the AI. Obviously with an AI's assistance...?

Then it would be logical to have a single AI on the phone managing all the prompts in parallel: e.g. "Hey AI, be android by doing [actions]", "Hey AI, be firefox...", "Hey AI, be snapchat...", "Hey AI, be [insert app name]...".