TranquilTurbulence
@TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip
- Comment on Why are ghosts never racist? 1 week ago:
Maybe the ghost eventually turns into a faceless violent poltergeist that just wants to injure and murder everyone. Watching 200 years of history wreck your dreams can be hard to deal with.
- Comment on Are foldable phones as good/bad as they say? 2 weeks ago:
Many years ago, I used to have huge phablet that I could only carry in the largest pockets of my jacket. It was also ridiculously thin, and made of glass, which made it very fragile. As s result, I was so worried about bending it or breaking it, that those ideas started to sneak into my dreams! Getting rid of it was a relief.
- Comment on What would happen if the Earth was sucked into a black hole? 2 weeks ago:
E=mc^2 should cover it, proper physicists can give you a better answer. Either way, it’s a big boom. Wolfram says, it’s about 90 PJ, which is firmly in the nuclear weapons territory.
- Comment on What would happen if the Earth was sucked into a black hole? 2 weeks ago:
If you press the universal terminal button, type in the command for spawning a black hole, set the mass to 1 kg, you get something very spicy. It’s so small, that it evaporates pretty much instantly, which means that all of that energy gets released as hawking radiation and the end result resembles an explosion.
- Comment on Are most people who avoid turn signals do it to feel more normal? (Imitating their parents, avoiding perceived stupidity of using turn signals when it seems useless, etc) 2 weeks ago:
Why would anyone use them when you can keep your opponents on their toes? Driving is essentially a full-contact sport, and you don’t win by playing it safe with turn signals. It’s all about the element of surprise!
- Comment on If we replace most plastic with a non plastic alternative and would that really be better? 3 weeks ago:
There’s plenty of variety within that term. Also, recycling some of them requires very precise conditions.
- Comment on If we replace most plastic with a non plastic alternative and would that really be better? 3 weeks ago:
In the beginning, things would suck, because low prices come from economies of scale, and the petrochemical industry certainly has scale. Once you’ve ramped up glass, paper and metal packaging factories, it should be tolerable.
There are also new materials such as biodegradable plastic and even mycelia. That would be useful.
If we also ramp up various carbon capture technologies, you could technically turn that carbon into plastics, so you won’t need any more oil. Obviously, that wouldn’t solve the climate crisis. You need CCS for that. Probably not going to happen within the next century, but it’s technically possible.
- Comment on Are some people too stupid to feel depressed? 3 weeks ago:
I’m going to ignore clinical depression for now, and focus more on milder symptoms like doomscrolling induced sadness, hopelessness and mild anxiety. Some people are resistant to these effects because they practice some form of optimism or stoicism. Other people just close their eyes and ignore the horrors around them. Either way, neither of these approaches tells you anything about intelligence.
- Comment on Would AI replacing humans in every workplace eventually make it easier for an advanced civilization from outer space to colonize us? 3 weeks ago:
I’ve thought about the way an excavator moves huge rocks and ant hills like they’re nothing. The driver doesn’t care about the ants, because he is focused on the construction site and staying on schedule. Maybe humans on Earth will one day be nothing more than an ant hill in the bucket of an excavator.
If super advanced aliens can carry out galaxy wide construction projects, one planet won’t matter at all.
- Comment on what's the word for a leg elbow? 4 weeks ago:
To which the answer is: “As high as a kite… No, wait. Higher. A GPS satellite? No. Even higher. Voyager 1 should be about right.”
- Comment on what's the word for a leg elbow? 4 weeks ago:
Those orange and brown stripes remind me this Minecraft cat. Such a beautiful color.
- Comment on What are the ethics behind purchasing a book from an author you don't agree with? 4 weeks ago:
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
Kelvin Farad, a unit for measuring something exotic related to capacitance and absolute temperature…. Sounds like something you could use to measure the performance of a hyper-space jump gate in a sci-fi story.
Either that, or simply potassium fluoride. Seriously toxic stuff BTW.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
Millionaires own land, commercial buildings, palaces, stocks, bonds, Lamborghinis and yachts that can pledged as collateral. Banks love to mitigate risks with assets that are easy to liquidate.
- Comment on Would racism in the USA still exist if humans had automated robots in the 1800s? 5 weeks ago:
See what’s going on in European countries that haven’t used significant numbers of African slaves. You know, it’s possible to enslave your own population too. Anyway, there’s definitely racism in Europe, even though the history with regard to using African slaves is completely different. Nowadays, racists hate all foreigners regardless of skin color.
Actually, people seem to gravitate towards this weird sort of tribalism when the in-group and out-group are pretty arbitrary concepts. It doesn’t even have to be based on skin color, language or religion. People just hate other people because they were born in the wrong town.
If America never used any African slaves at all, normal human tribalism would still be there to mess things up. There would be groups based on arbitrary things that slang, facial features, dietary preferences, fashion choices etc. Racism wouldn’t disappear. It would just be aimed at some other group.
- Comment on Fortnite now lets you chat with Darth Vader using generative AI speech [Eurogamer] 1 month ago:
There could be a game where the lag is expected. Let’s say you’re heading for Mars, but you have to fix your ship, because there was an unexpected asteroid impact. You ask home base for instructions, but you’re already so far away, that the text takes a minute to travel all the way.
- Comment on Why don't these code-writing AIs just output straight up machine code? 1 month ago:
Debugging AI generated code is essential. Never run the code before reading it yourself and making a whole bunch of necessary adjustments and fixes.
If you jump straight to binary, you can’t fix anything. You can just tell the AI it screwed up, roll the dice and hope it figures out what went wrong. Maybe one day you can trust the AI can actually write functional code, but that day isn’t here yet.
Then there’s also security and privacy. What if the AI adds something you didn’t want it to add? How would you know, if it’s all in binary?
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Kids can also be considerate of they care about you. Once they know the rules of the game, they will follow the rules just to make their favorite adult happy.
- Comment on Is it normal for people to ask where you are from online? 1 month ago:
Since the early days of Facebook, most people have been in roughly two camps: those who share just about anything, and those who share barely anything. Ok, there are also privacy minded people who share nothing at all, but that’s a different story.
People in the first category just love to tell you where they live, how many pets they have, send photos of everything etc. You know, social people. They also expect you the be like them, because that’s how tribalism works. It’s the default setting in the human brain, and disabling or even just limiting that urge takes some some skill and effort.
People in the second category share only a few opinions, but never their location or photos. I think most people on Lemmy are like this.
- Comment on Why is coal and fossil fuels still used? 1 month ago:
The cost of the raw material is low enough to make it a viable option for the time being. There are also costs associated with switching to renewable options, which makes the transition slower.
Think of it from the perspective of a coal plant owner. You’ve already spent millions into construction and maintenance, so you really want some return on that investment.
When the plant reaches its end of life, that’s usually the best time to start considering other options. If the running costs rise dramatically or you are required to modernize the plant, that could be another time to take a look at other options.
- Comment on if pure water is not conductive why would condensation be an issue for electronics? 1 month ago:
If you burn hydrogen and oxygen, you’ll get pure water, but you would need to store it immediately after the reaction. If you let the water sit in a bucket, it’s going to absorb all sorts of things from the air around it.
- Comment on I’m very good at math and would like health insurance. What is the easiest option? 1 month ago:
If there are no safety regulations, there can be no safety violations. Everyone wins!
- Comment on I’m very good at math and would like health insurance. What is the easiest option? 1 month ago:
Did you know that the mining industry in DRC is always looking for new employees? Could be a safe job with great benefits?
I’m sure they’ll tell you that there’s literally zero risk of a rock ceiling collapsing on your head. And what about the fumes from that odd colored pond? It’s just hydrogen cyanide. You don’t need to worry about that.
- Comment on If I cut up pictures to arrange things in a way that when traced over create something "new," is that a copyright violation? 1 month ago:
That’s just it. This idea involves dancing very close to the fire, so anything could happen. The result may even depend on the other legal cases available in the area.
- Comment on Has anyone ever clicked on a reference url from OpenAI that didn't 404? 1 month ago:
Yes. Often I find an article that doesn’t answer my question, but it could be close. For example, it could be an article about porcelain manufacturing in the soviet union in general, but won’t answer my specific question about manufacturing porcelain for the electrical grid. That sort of stuff happens all the time, and GPT confidently claims something that isn’t supported by the sources it cites.
Actually, it’s a lot like search results in general. The first 10 results could lead you in the right direction, but won’t have exactly what you’re after.
- Comment on Would you rather have a pet dinosaur or a pet dragon? 1 month ago:
LOL. That way pretty brutal. 🤣
- Comment on Would you rather have a pet dinosaur or a pet dragon? 1 month ago:
Oh ok so, it boils down to fire breathing flying awesome dinosaurs or plain boring dinosaurs.
First one would be way cooler, but a little bit disaster prone. Would still go with that one though. I’ll take the risk figure something out. Should probably get a house built out of stone.
- Comment on Would you rather have a pet dinosaur or a pet dragon? 1 month ago:
Are we talking magic wielding fully sentient dragons (forgotten realms style) or animal like simple dragons? The first type could keep humans as pets.
- Comment on How come id Software / Bethesda have never sued Bungie / Microsoft over the similarity between Doomguy and Master Chief? 1 month ago:
About point 2: I would argue that you could convince any judge that these characters are sufficiently distinct in the legal sense. IRL, people might still confuse them, but that’s not the point here. Just look at some of the competing car designs to get a feel for what is legally distinct enough these days. You can come up with a cartoon character, car or a sci-fi warrior that copies over 90% from something else, and you can still get away with it.
- Comment on Why does it seem like everyone is so good looking and beautiful nowadays? 1 month ago:
There should be a name for this kind of bias. Influencer bias, celebrity bias? Something else?
