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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: November 22nd, 2023

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  • Even before renewables/green energy, we’ve had problems with surplus power in the grid. It’s actually one of the biggest issues for infrastructure to solve in moving away from fossil fuels. We simply don’t have the storage capacity, and nobody has any real plan or path toward a solution as of yet, as far as I know.

    For probably a century or so now, power companies have been paying manufacturing industries to run their heaviest equipment with nothing in them just to bleed extra power out of the grids during lows in demand because power stations can’t change their outputs fast enough, especially things like nuclear energy. Even stuff like coal or natural gas plants have a spool up or down time that can’t keep pace with the changes in demand.


  • Yes, that is not what the word “originally” meant, yes it is partially completely the result of right wing propaganda, yes “political correctness” and “sjw” have similar issues

    Fixed it for you.

    It is a common conservative tactic, taking the language of something meant to improve the lives of minorities in some way and turning it into a negative thing. As you said, they did it with “politically correct” in the 90s, “social justice warrior” in the late 2000s, “woke” in the 2010s, and are currently working on “DEI.” It’s how they control the narrative and normalize their hatred. And it’s why Tim Walz calling them “weird” was so effective and why they got so upset by it - and why I’ll never forgive the Democrats for muzzling him when we finally had a weapon to fight back against this insidious colonialism of language.

    The fact that you believe that there’s a middle ground where the definition isn’t an attack on minorities means that they’ve succeeded in shifting the Overton Window and you’ve become used to the hatred yourself. Every single one of those terms that you mentioned was redefined for the sole purpose of being used to attack anybody who dared to openly talk about being a minority or exist as a minority.

    The “woke” are as real as the “blue haired girls with pronouns SJW getting off the ‘Down With CIS’ bus and assaulting people” of 15 years ago, and the token representation that you’re talking about is what’s known as “rainbow capitalism,” not “woke.”

    “Self-righteous, superficial, performative, and preachy” are the exact words used to describe a gay man daring to exist in public or talk about being gay in any way and not hide away like Section 28 and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell are still in effect. That’s what “woke” means when used under the new definition: a minority dared to openly behave like a minority in public and not be ashamed of it.





  • I think there’s a cliff between affordability/knowledge and payload capacity that has kept this from being practical. Then there’s the traceability aspect. Where and how you buy it, how it’s controlled, etc. A drone controlled by a smart phone can be traced back to that phone, for example.

    A drone is far cheaper than a missile, but the military can drop thousands on a drone and not blink an eye. That’s not something that’s practical for the average person, and the skills required to build one are also at the higher end of hobbyist level skills. It’s similar to 3d printed equipment. 3d printed guns are a thing, but it’s generally easier to go buy some PVC pipe for a barrel and a nail for a firing pin. Or just buy a gun, they’re about the price of RAM nowadays. People have even printed RPGs and man portable anti-air/anti-armor missile launchers, but it’s not something even your average skilled hobbyist can do.

    The day somebody makes a flying pressure cooker out of an R/C car, though, all bets are off.




  • I remember watching a video from a physicist who failed her pilot’s license exam because she explained that and the modern theories of how airplane flight works instead of the old wingspan, weight, speed, and air density over the wings model.

    Needless to say, she took the test again, gave the answer they wanted, and the video was about her building a plane out of wood about a month after she finished the launch of her Mach 2.1 capable model rocket.





  • Yeah, consoles are normally (except when an idiot is in charge at Microslop) what they call a “loss leader” - an item that you sell at a loss because you’ll make up for it in other purchases now that the customer is in the store.

    With a console, the idea up until recently had always been that you lose money on the console but make up for it several times over with game sales, generally making it more affordable than a PC of similar specs.

    There was a period of time where you could build a PC with better specs for the same price as a console, but hardware prices going up in the past 10-15 years meant that that really hasn’t been the case for a while.


  • I think a lot of the conversation around exclusives comes from the standpoint of what keeps a console player from switching from one console to another (whether that’s a PC, a PS5, an Xbox, etc.), so PC exclusives don’t really factor into it because PC players are almost always a PC gamer plus a console player rather than somebody who is switching from a PC to a console.

    That said, I think a lot of people in the industry (and console gamers) really underestimate the vastness of PC exclusives that exist thanks to the indie scene. Most people will think of PC exclusive genres like RTS games, but few people think of Bloodborne Nightmare Kart or all the tiny indie RPG/horror/etc. projects that come out all the time as a reason to switch from a console.




  • You did say that it wasn’t useless if you and your kid both use the same system, so my first thought for how it could be useful in any capacity outside of adhering to a law, which in the US at least (I’m not as well versed in the Brazilian, UK, or other variations) has in some versions very explicitly stated that the intent is for the OS to provide said age information to any app that requests it, was for group permissions on the different accounts on your system, which can just as easily be set up using other settings already available to you. I would consider that “protecting kids.” If you meant that it was useful in some other way where you and your kid are using the same system, by all means, tell me.

    As I said, I brought up the rest because that is the explicitly stated or easily inferred (in the case of increased fingerprinting of users for increased revenue) intent of the US versions of the law and “protect the children” is the tired old excuse being used by Facebook and the politicians in their employ.

    Obviously, the data field equivalent of clicking the “I am 18 years or older” button is as non-invasive as you can really get, but it’s blatantly obvious that this is merely the first step in what the corporations and governments actually want out of this, and adhering to it before the laws are even out merely sets the stage for them to refine their language and push further. Something this easy could be rolled out at any time. There’s no need to comply before they have a leg to stand on. They won’t be satisfied by this, and they certainly won’t stop here.



  • And how is it useful then? Parental controls have existed for decades and you never had to give your age to Facebook, who is the main proponent of these laws in the US and has poured millions of dollars into their creation.

    This isn’t about protecting kids. It’s about adding an additional fingerprint companies and governments can use to track and identify you and what you do with your system.