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thow-58d4e8b

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thow-58d4e8b
·4 года назад·discuss
> insufficient gas buffers during the uptick of the economy after Corona

this is true

> Russia closing part of its huge gas supply to Europe

this isn't, afaik. Russia doesn't sell on spot market, they prefer long term futures contracts, on which they reliably deliver. They delivered on their 2021 commitments a bit earlier, hence they closed off the valves

Basically, the gas supplies were low during summer, but the spot prices were significantly above long term average, so energy companies delayed their purchases, hoping the price will come back down soon. It didn't, reserves dried up, and everybody was forced to buy at the same time
thow-58d4e8b
·4 года назад·discuss
We fire up coal/gas/biomass plants. Nature doesn't care about the ideological purity of the electricity grid - all that matters is total cumulative emissions

People treat this question with religious mindset, as if burning fossil fuels is a sin that must be banished. In reality, there's nothing wrong with powering countries ~80% of the time with renewables + storage, and ~20% of the time with fossils - that's still a decently decarbonized grid
thow-58d4e8b
·4 года назад·discuss
There are also some "physics" reasons for this - the source of electric current in an ICE car is usually a 1kWh lead-acid battery - obviously not always at 100% state of charge. Even if the designers wanted to put an awesome infotainment system into such car, the battery won't be able to power it for long before jeopardizing driving-related critical functionality. As an example - keeping Tesla's sentry mode on (screen on and cameras recording), drains about 250W - enough to completely kill a classic car battery in 4 hours

Electric cars, with their batteries in 30-100 kWh range, lift this constraint - so designers have a field day
thow-58d4e8b
·4 года назад·discuss
It's a manifestation of a much more sinister pattern - prioritizing first impressions over long-term considerations
thow-58d4e8b
·4 года назад·discuss
To add heaps of salt to the injury - automotive functions like seat heaters, defroster, wipers, energy usage, etc. - those cannot be pinned to the quick access bar. Only apps like Spotify, Netflix, browser,...

It's a CAR, ffs! Tesla, please stop acting like it's a cell phone
thow-58d4e8b
·5 лет назад·discuss
It's one thing to read about the click farms, but nothing can prepare one to actually see the videos of them in action - just visceral. It has an eerie Matrix-like feeling to it.

13 sec video of a Chinese click farm (quite loud):

https://twitter.com/mbrennanchina/status/1072114511212109824

10 sec - thousands of phones (not loud):

https://twitter.com/mbrennanchina/status/1148447866366464000
thow-58d4e8b
·5 лет назад·discuss
One aspect that shouldn't be lost - the implicit framing of the platforms being "under attack" by the bots is wrong - the bots are likely a net positive for the platforms - they're very much complicit with the fraud, or at least condone it. They sell views and clicks - if bots create more views and clicks, so be it. It's the advertisers who bear the cost.

Taking Facebook as an example:

Creating an account, linking Oculus Quest to it and leaving the account dormant - accounts locked en masse.

US account that logs in from Indonesian IPs, never posts anything, likes 5000 random things ranging from a shampoo to a cafe in a small Ohio town, to the new shirts of an Albanian soccer club - in Facebook's view that's a perfectly legitimate account.