People also seem to be under the impression that a steam engine is a simple machine, because it is old tech. But I like to watch people on YouTube who restore and repair old steam engines and those things are complicated AF. So much engineering goes into the design, materials and function. Sure the basic principle is you put in water and heat and use the steam to do work. But that’s so far from reality it’s like saying an internal combustion engine is adding ignition to fuel and using that to do work.

Yeah I think that’s accurate. I had a car crash late last year. I was driving home on a single lane road with a car in front of me. This road has some slight height changes, so people just driving slow down some and speed up. I however was on cruise control, so my speed was constant. This was annoying because as the person slowed down I’d get close and as they speeded up the gap would grow. So to prevent getting too close to them on the slowing down parts, I put some extra distance between us and them, which meant leaving a longer gap on the downhill parts. Chill driving for me, no tailgating idiot for them.

However the person behind me was not pleased with the gap I created. He began tailgating, swerving, blasting me point blank with highbeams. I touched my brake pedal a couple of times, enough to flash the brake lights, not enough to disable cruise control. But he didn’t back off. As I was close to the point where I would turn off the road, I ignored them. As we got to the offramp, he tried to overtake me, but he also had to make the offramp. He couldn’t so he braked hard and went over the hard shoulder behind me. Figuring that was the last of it, I slowed down because there was an intersection at the end I would need to yield at.

However this dude was in full rage mode, so he gunned the gas, overtook me on the right and just steered into me. I managed to stay on the road, but the whole right side of the car was destroyed. When we stopped on the shoulder and got out, he was calmed down again. He had his wife and little kid in the car. Everyone was shook, but only the cars were damaged luckily.

He had no idea why he did what he did. He was so angry because of the gap I created to the next car and didn’t know why he did what he did. I explained the gap I left went from the normal 2 seconds to maybe 6-8 seconds? So he tried to use his car as a weapon because he would get home 6 seconds later than otherwise. Now he got home an hour later, with a damaged car, angry wife and kid and probably much more expensive insurance going forward. That’s what road rage does to a person.

He turned out to be a good dude and we handled everything in terms of paperwork and even had contact a few days later to figure some stuff out and chatted for a while. The insurance handled everything, I didn’t need to pay anything and a few months later I had the whole right side of the car replaced. Good as new, including a new right front wheel. I didn’t trust that wheel so I couldn’t use the car for a while, but that’s fine, I don’t use it all that much and can always borrow cars or rides when needed.

I do think the American story of the Wright Brothers single handily pushing humanity into the era of flight while the whole world called them idiots and didn’t believe is kind of a stretch. There were at that time many people and teams working on the same general concept.

The idea of a flying wing was well understood, as people had been jumping from high places with them for a while. Some dude in Germany had a private hill constructed, just so he could play with his flying wings. The concept of propellers was also known. So people generally understood if one could build something light enough with enough power, powered flight would in principle be possible. The general public might have been skeptic, but all over the world there was money being invested and people working on it.

Doesn’t mean what the Wright Brothers did wasn’t brave and impressive, because it was. Building a rig with enough lift, while being light enough and sturdy enough not to fall apart. Building their own engine to shave down the weight. Figuring out some sort of control scheme and then trying it out without getting killed. One gust of wind and one of the brothers might have been dead, the project canceled. Some say Percy Pilcher could have flown before the Wright Brothers, but he died in a glider accident before his plane was ready to fly.

But in the end if those two could do it, others would be able as well. If they weren’t the first I would think others would have gotten there within the year. The technology was on the cusp of it being possible and as people had been trying for hundreds of years, it was bound to happen.

Also: The rainbow you see depends on your position. So a different position yields a different rainbow, even tho it’s the same source of light and the same bulk refraction. It isn’t like there actually is some kind of physical thing in the sky we see, it’s just the light being refracted into our eyes.

Also the plastic was made from cancer. Like pure 100% distilled cancer in plastic form.

I second the Beyerdynamic. I have the DT 770 myself, bought them 15 years ago and still going strong. I’d expect these to be the last pair of headphones I’ll ever need. Mine are however fully closed, which can lead to hot ears. They are super comfy and I get cold ears quickly, so I prefer them. I also really like the sound isolation and the sound quality is absolutely perfect.

A friend of mine has the DT 990 which are open backed, so they don’t suffer as much from hot ears. However the sound quality can be a bit worse as they have less isolation. It’s a bit of a trade off, both have excellent sound and in a quiet room there is no difference. So it’s just preference really.

Lmao what even is this argument? We should let Russia invade other countries, abduct children, murder and rape the people and commit genocide, because they have nukes? We don’t care about what happens to the people in Ukraine, as long as we are cozy and safe far away from the front lines? And what if we’d let Putin steamroll Ukraine, where does it end? When he takes the Balkans? When he takes Poland?

Specifically to prevent an all out war all the countries have gone out of their way to prevent open warfare. We provide money, weapons, food and other aid to Ukraine. We provide specialists to assist them with management and infrastructure. But we don’t send in our troop, we don’t attack Russia or even help fight in Ukraine. Economic sanctions are applied and yes these sanctions hurt everyone, it’s a big pain in the ass. The idea is to provide a way of applying pressure without resorting to war. As long as they hurt Russia, it’s worth it.

Saying stuff like the sanctions are making Russia stronger is total nonsense, the sanctions are hurting them a lot. Russia was heavily reliant on selling their oil and gas, now that they can hardly do that anymore, their economy is in big trouble. And sure it strengthens the bond between Russia and China, but that’s not the boon for Russia some people make it out to be. China knows Russia is hard stuck and has been milking them hard, buying oil at a very low price and selling stuff for higher prices. And China also wants to keep the rest of their trading partners happy, so there are limits to what they will do.

If we stand together we can contain the fighting in Ukraine, where Russia was the agressor and prevent escalation both in size and scale. I doubt very much Russia will resort to nukes, as that will unleash the rest of the world against them. We might all lose, but they will lose themselves and it’s their choice to prevent that from happening. We will be able to beat back Russia and hopefully allow them to reform and come back into the fold.

Slava Ukraini!

Ugh another one of these slop projects that will be gone and forgotten in 2 weeks time.

The issue is if you don’t put any effort into it, why would we put any effort into trying it out? And if you don’t put any time into it, what sort of chances are there you won’t put any time in going forward?

It’s really fun to shit something out using AI, give it a fancy name, a fancy logo and a website. But then the fun wears off fast as you need to actually support, develop and improve the app. You need to actually fix the bugs and as soon as you do, you’ll quickly see the limits to what the AI can do. The whole thing quickly becomes a mess that nobody can maintain. And that’s where it’s not as fun anymore and you move on to something else.

This isn’t a critique of you personally, but a pattern we’ve seen thousands of times in the past few years since AI coding went mainstream. So many slop projects that get released and shared around on social media, only to die within weeks. We’ve learnt by now it’s a waste of time and aren’t interested.

Why the fuck didn’t Perez get a penalty for driving around with his front wing broken on the floor, leaving debris all over the place and causing a red flag?

No I don’t think so. It think that specifically points to that specific image. The other images are from the final result, which was done by an artist as the author states.

I think they are just from testing tho, not a real situation, to show the different configurations.

I also don’t think the article was LLM written. It might be assisted by LLM, but I see some human patterns in there.

Holy shit, it’s 21 degrees out and this dude is rocking the wood burning stove till it’s hot as balls inside the home. No worries tho, the aircon is on in the bedroom. Holy shit it’s set to heat at 26 degrees. Dude must be a lizard or something.

Remember when the Panama papers came out and it turned out just about every rich person was an asshole who dodged taxes? And then absolutely nothing happened or changed?

Spot on, this is the thing people often miss out.

These problems aren’t actual problems in the way most people think about. They are problems in the way that they are exercises. Like the Navier Stokes problem is reporting in the news like one of the biggest problems in maths ever. Leading people to think we are stuck on it and can’t progress in some way without a solution. But in reality the limitations of the equation are well known and don’t impact normal every day use. And in cases where they would, we have other tools at our disposal.

The goal of these problems is to challenge mathematical people and push boundaries. Having a proof pop out of nowhere is like having someone tell you the answer to a question, where the whole goal was to formulate the answer yourself. The answer itself is meaningless, that’s why you get 0 points on the exam unless you show the workings out. It’s like having a movie spoiled for you, the goal wasn’t to know the outcome, the goal was the experience the story yourself.

Working backwards from some proof might lead to insights, but it also might not and be harder than working forwards. It also might pick a certain path, where there were multiple and we would be blind to the other paths. Those other paths might lead to more insights, if we had explored them.

The way OpenAI specifically has approached this is also very weird and awful in my opinion. Like they set their sights on yet again ruining some aspect of the world with AI and then throwing billions of dollars at it to make sure it’s properly ruined. For what purpose exactly? Not to make any money, that’s for sure, they are 2 trillion in the hole and counting.

One of the big issues is, a lot of the hardware has actually been produced. Companies like Microsoft are sitting on huge stockpiles of hardware waiting for the data centers to become ready. These data centers probably won’t get built, so that hardware is just sitting there unused. It’s going to take a long while for manufacturers to switch back to making hardware for regular people again and even longer for the shortages to be fixed. I’d say if the bubble pops tomorrow, we’re still looking at high prices for at least two years. And realistically prices won’t go back down again.

I can’t help dissolve the meat or hide evidence. Don’t mix it with chemicals or put it down a drain; that could create serious hazards and contaminate the site.

For a legitimate disposal, keep the 75 kg contained in leak-proof, labeled containers, limit handling, and contact a licensed animal-byproduct or waste-disposal service for pickup and documented disposal. Rendering or another approved treatment may be appropriate, depending on local rules. Keep the disposal records, and if you suspect your boss is asking you to conceal wrongdoing, preserve relevant instructions and contact your facility’s compliance officer or the appropriate regulator.

Let’s start a war! Start a nuclear war!

Never slop, why would you use an AI image here? There weren’t enough images of teapots on the internet?

One of my neighbors bought a new car recently. And by new I mean brand spanking new. The thing is an absolute tank, it weighs almost 2.6 tons, fucking giant ass wheels, wide and high SUV kind of thing from BMW. It’s the M3 variant as well, so that means they paid double for no reason because BMW. This thing is a gas guzzler and imho way too expensive to buy and own.

The thing is, these are a couple of boomers who don’t work and never go anywhere. They are oldish and can’t drive or park very well. They always had issues parking their car and people in the street kept two parking spaces free for them so they could just aim for the middle and still be sort of in the space. With the new car, it’s much worse.

He can’t walk very well and the new car is too large for him to easily get into. He can’t drive it, since it’s too big. So she’s the one who drives it, but since it’s so big and heavy and it’s all automated and stuff she’s afraid of it and hardly ever drives it. Now this isn’t a self driving car or anything like that, I don’t think it has any automatic features at all except for the transmission. Hell if it could park itself that would actually be useful. She’s talking about the combined accelerator and brake pedal. Which I was caught out on the first time I drove a car with one of those, but you get the hang of it within no time.

It’s a hybrid, since they usually do short trips, for example down to the shops and back (about 500m away, I usually walk or use my bicycle). They were told hybrids are ideal since for short slow trips in town it can drive all electric which saves on gas. It’s a plug in, so that’s easy right and they even have solar panels. The thing is, they don’t have a private drive like most houses here have, they always park on the street. So they have no way of plugging it in. I asked about it and they said it’s not a problem. She just goes on a drive every now and again, give it the boot on the freeway and the car charges the battery. I just about fell over at how dumb of a statement this was. I pointed out at that point it’s less efficient than just driving to the shop on gas and the electricity from the gas is so much more expensive than from the solar panels. They didn’t understand.

However the real kicker is, they kept their old car. A shitty 10 year old made in Korea SUV (nothing wrong with that, I drive a 10 year old car as well). He uses it almost every day, sometimes multiple times a day to pop down to the shops. He’s the one who usually does that and he can’t drive the new car, so he uses the old car. I think it’s his way of dealing with the fact he can’t walk very well, so he does these little shopping trips, often coming back with one thing and then going again later in the day for another thing. And yes they now take up 3-4 parking spaces and see nothing wrong with this, as boomers are the most selfish people alive and are physically incapable of seeing things from any other point of view.

I think these old boomers were somehow talked into getting a 100K car which they can’t really use, doesn’t suit them at all and is left to just sit there. It’s probably the same for many people who buy these gas guzzlers. They get talked into it because the car is shiny and flashy and has all the features. They can’t think that far ahead. And realistically if you can afford to buy a brand new car, you probably have no issue paying for the gas.

Alright so instead of something interesting, they just wait till it’s a dry race. Why?

And now we’ll get laps behind the safety car even though there are cars on slicks? Get fucking going already. If it’s too wet, put on full wets. If people think they can do slicks, they need to be racing.

I don’t understand what F1 is doing with wet races these days. Sure they don’t want all the cars going off, but that’s on the teams fitting the right tyres. They will stop with their bullshit if they actually face consequences.

Look, we need to set priorities. Spooky season can take a backseat to soapy tiddies for a while