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Oh, 2022

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Re: Oh, 2022

#531

Post by throwawaylinux »

rcxdude wrote: post #508
throwawaylinux wrote: post #202

> But this is all predictable. (Except for COVID19 which was wide-screen WTFery, like the second world war—September 1st 1939 was not in fact predictable from September 1st 1929, for example: all that was predictable was that another European war would sooner or later see France and Germany at loggerheads.) I can't understand what this is saying. Not sure what 'wide-screen WTFery' is, but lots of people were predicti…

You could predict a pandemic at some point (and given the parameters of a pandemic say it would have to look something very much like COVID), it's very difficult to predict any given pandemic. In the same way that you could predict that there would be another war in europe, and roughly who would be on each side, but not the exact circumstances by which it would break out. And it's usually easy to find someone predict…

> You could predict a pandemic at some point

Okay so the pandemic was predictable and it was predicted. I'm not interested in semantics quibbling if you want to say it wasn't predictable, I'm interested in the contradiction between claims that the pandemic was not predictable and yet other similarly hard to predict things are predictable.

Re: Oh, 2022

#532

Post by hinkley »

CRConrad wrote: post #525
hinkley wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't keep making steel with coal either. It's slowly shifting over to other reduction agents.

Back to charcoal?

There are a few new plants using hydrogen as the reducing agent.

Heating is mostly a solved problem. Coal is just cheap and someone else’s kids pay for the pollution.

Re: Oh, 2022

#533

Post by ridgeguy »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #377
ghaff wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink is incredibly useful for areas that didn't have traditional Internet. It's not perfect but it makes working in rural areas possible where it wasn't before.

It's not even rural. It's less than 3 hours from 3 major cities (and within an hour of a minor one), in a popular weekend vacation spot, and yeah, it's pretty mountainous but it's also got plenty of infrastructure already. It is amazing how our traditional telcos have failed us. Buildout of broadband was fully-funded by the government in the 90s, and it flopped; They took the money and never built anything. These com…

I so agree with you.

Comcast could have built out service in so many of our current residential areas, but chose not to. For no apparent reason but that it cost capex.

There was so much funding to extend internet access to rural areas. None of the major vendors engaged these funds and used them to provide capacity.

If Starlink succeeds, I'll raise a glass to the memory of Comcast and others.

Re: Oh, 2022

#534

Post by rektide »

throwaway2331 wrote: post #501
rektide wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pathetic beyond words that there's no other moderation systems available. To take remorseless, infinite action against someone who may be having a bad day, or who may feel strongly against something: it's a drastic drastic overreaction. But we have literally no choice; on most sites blocking/muting are the only options available to us to de-espouse incoming comments. This is a technical fault, heartlessness is b…

Buddy, you're missing the forest for the trees. This is not technology thoughtlessly trampling over human dignity; this is human nature expressing itself within a certain environment. This is me realizing I cannot suckle off the financial teet of my parents and the state; and I actually must go out, make money, and keep my "work life" balance in-check -- because I'm a bag of meat with a reward-behavior system that ne…

No post body was provided.

Re: Oh, 2022

#535

Post by CRConrad »

makerofthings wrote: post #446
tlb wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the advantages of putting heavy industry on the moon?

I imagine there is no need to worry about pollution, or carbon footprint or any of that. Stick nuclear reactors all over the place, nothing to really worry about if anything goes wrong with them. It’s just a big ball of rock with no atmosphere so it seems like an ideal place to stick all the dirty industry that’s messing the earth up.

If you're going to lift industry out of the Earth's gravity well, what's the use of plonking it down the Moon's? You'll only have to lift the finished product out of it again, in stead of just nudging it to drop from orbit.

Re: Oh, 2022

#536

Post by CRConrad »

josephcsible wrote: post #145
saalweachter wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0.25% of the US has already died of COVID-19. It doesn't matter who said it, how can 0.02% be a reasonable estimate for the IFR of the disease?

This was already explained upthread: "the death count is exaggerated because the criteria for a Covid death is that a person is dead and also tests positive for Covid regardless of how the person really died."

> "the death count is exaggerated

By a factor of ten?!?

Re: Oh, 2022

#537

Post by CRConrad »

supperburg wrote: post #219
CamperBob2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a lie, likely a deliberate one. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-94-percent-covi... You should go back to the person who told you this lie and ask them why they did it. A simple accounting of excess deaths ( https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm ) is all you need to dispel the notion of a 0.02% fatality rate.

Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford University That’s from sep 2020. I think professor Bhattacharya is aware of the numbers.

> I think professor Bhattacharya is aware of the numbers.

Professor Bhattacharya is apparently one of the main instigators of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration .

So I think he is fudging the numbers.

Re: Oh, 2022

#538

Post by InvaderFizz »

baud147258 wrote: post #457
InvaderFizz wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read it in a more realistic fashion, and see the implementations that are happening today, it makes much more sense. Governments are rolling out policies that vehicles manufactured after 2030/2035/2040, etc will not be eligible for vehicle registration. This makes much more sense than banning existing fleets, as the vast majority of any car fleet will be replaced over the period of a decade. (Average US car li…

so you really think that all motor vehicle in Africa will be electric? All in Middle-East, like Afghanistan or Pakistan? I'm not really talking about Western countries, where I can see it happen, but the rest of the world

No, but I also have yet to see their governments making announcements that they will be banning ICE vehicles.

The long tail for ICE vehicles, even in western countries, will be decades after the last new one is sold.

The 1992 Nissan Sentra was still being manufactured and sold in Mexico until 2017 as the Nissan Tsuru. It was finally retired as Mexico has moved upmarket enough on the global scale that the government can do things like ban a $7k car due to safety concerns.

Similarly, I expect ICE vehicles to still dominate until such time as solar becomes so incredibly cheap and electric cars destined for Pakistan can be plugged directly into the PV array.

Re: Oh, 2022

#539

Post by quantified »

h0nd wrote: post #475
gmuslera wrote: post #19

Should be be worried that the author of Accelerando complains about things going too fast? Future is complex, and not only "good" developments happens and start changing everything faster than ever before, bad ones does too. And we aren't rational enough to avoid the bad ones. Anyway, I'm more worried about the consequences of climate change that are not the slow rise of the global sea level than about COVID. That is…

I am definitely not worried about the consequences of climate change. I am ready to deal with it. What I am worried about are politicians forcing us to do things justified by climate change.

What has got you prepared?

Re: Oh, 2022

#540

Post by quantified »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #254
jaybrendansmith wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global Warming is absolutely a slow motion comet strike. We don't believe the science, because we don't WANT to believe it. Those of us that DO believe it feel like robots, speaking to the rest of mankind in ones and zeros. And it's still 10-20 years away, we all think. We will just move north (or south). We will just move inland or uphill. We can science our way out of this shit. Not true. None of that is true. When…

> We can science our way out of this shit. Not true. Why not? We have a lot of promising developments both in cheap energy production and in reducing the cost to vacuumed green house gases out of the atmosphere. I can easily see a world where we change almost nothing about life and still achieve net negative carbon by just ripping it out of the air. Honestly we even have the technology to do it now just limited will…

Which technology for vacuuming the gases out scale up and require small enough inputs to not contribute to the problem?
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