SirEDCaLot

@SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today

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SirEDCaLot,

This right here is the answer. The fact that you have an outlet means you also have a neutral. That guarantees that you can use literally any Smart Switch you want.

Just replace the outlet with a decora style outlet, install two Smart switches, and put a three gang decora wall plate on. And you’re done.

SirEDCaLot,

Can we please fucking not? Unless everyone in charge of discovery gets fired… That might be a good thing. Not holding my breath for that though. Hopefully some regulators can stop this

SirEDCaLot,

Hopefully this judge doesn’t come down with a case of severe depression that causes him to shoot himself twice in the back of the head and then drive his car off a cliff, as usually seems to happen to those who threaten a certain political family…

SirEDCaLot,

I think it should become customary that if a politician advocates for a certain punishment for a crime, and then commits that particular crime, that they receive the punishment they advocated for (within the bounds of current law of course). He wants a 10-year prison sentence for destroying a statue, he should get a 10-year prison sentence for destroying the statue.

SirEDCaLot,

Hillary '28: It’s supposed to be my turn now…

SirEDCaLot,

Keep in mind the platform. This isn’t an attack helicopter, it’s a little drone. The more weight it carries, the less range it has, and it doesn’t have much capacity to begin with. At most a pound or so. As a result, these little bombs are small fragmentation grenades. The explosion itself doesn’t do much damage, in this case it blew the soldiers hand off because it was a direct hit, but that’s pretty unusual. Most of the damage comes from shrapnel, the explosive is wrapped with metal and bits of that metal will go off at high speed in every direction like little bullets. The shrapnel doesn’t produce much obvious damage when seen from the air, not compared to a normal bomb that sends stuff flying in every direction. But it is quite lethal.

Train manufacturer intentionally bricks trains serviced by independent service providers (zaufanatrzeciastrona.pl)

Polish train manufacturer that lost servicing tender programmed train controller to brick itself after train stays for some time in 6 ISP facilities or in 1 their faculity(for testing?) until undocumented button combination is pressed. Some controller versions brick itself after train is idle for 10 days. After news about this...

Thomas 🔭✨ (@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io) 23andMe just sent out an email trying to trick customers into accepting a TOS change that will prevent you from suing them after they literally lost your genome (hachyderm.io)

23andMe just sent out an email trying to trick customers into accepting a TOS change that will prevent you from suing them after they literally lost your genome ro thieves....

We encourage you to read the new terms in
full. Please notify us within 30 days of
receiving this email if you do not agree to the
terms, in which case you will remain subject to
the current Terms of Service. If you do not
notify us within 30 days, you will be deemed
to have agreed to the new terms.
SirEDCaLot,

Technically a contract can have anything in it that both parties agree to, unless some are all of those provisions are actively illegal. I would agree that assumed agreement should be illegal. You could probably fight this in court, make the argument that this is a material change to the contract what you did not agree to and would not have agreed to had you been aware of it. But that costs money and lawyers and time.

SirEDCaLot,

You’re right on unsprung weight, this is going to add quite a bit, especially if you fill the thing with oil.

Not sure how you still need a CV though, as this performs that function. Watch the video, there’s a good animation. Basically this is a reduction gear and CV joint in one unit.

SirEDCaLot,

Ah Good point, I had not considered camber. As it stands this looks like it would probably not be compatible with much camber flex if any.

SirEDCaLot,

I think the hardest part of turning your life around, no matter what your age is, is habit. Breaking habits is really really hard. And habits can be mental as well as physical, how you think about things, how you approach things, how you feel about things, a lot of that is habit too. It’s hard to think about and even harder to put in the effort to change. But unless you’re one of those magic people that just always had good habits, it’s worth it.

SirEDCaLot,

The explanation I’ve always had- I think this was from some official source but I could have just made it up.

Starfleet ships use EPS (Electro-Plasma System) to route power around the ship in the form of electro-plasma (a highly energized form of plasma). The warp core generates a lot of this plasma, which is piped through conduits to various devices around the ship. The EPS system and its related systems generate a lot of treknobabble about ‘scrubbing plasma conduits’ (apparently done from the outside using a field generator tool, but still boring), ‘replacing plasma relays’ (the valves that route plasma around, apparently they go bad frequently); problems like ruptured plasma conduits are dangerous and require immediate repair, etc.

Because this all works in a grid system, whenever the ship takes damage (especially energetic damage like weapons fire) the EPS conduits can carry energy spikes all over the ship. That’s why as the ship takes damage you see random small explosions and sparks all over the place- something hits or spikes the EPS grid and the shockwave ends up, well, wherever in the grid it ends up.

Of course many EPS conduits go to bridge terminals, especially as those terminals may have direct connections to the ship systems in question.


Of course in reality this would be seen as a horrible safety risk, and a bridge terminal that could probably run on a car battery shouldn’t have explosive plasma running through it especially when it can explode and harm the operator. In fact one could argue a safe starship should keep all EPS stuff as far away from any essential human-inhabited areas of the ship as possible (especially the bridge).

One counter to that might be that perhaps the consoles actually play some role in EPS switching, but that seems a bad tradeoff to me.

SirEDCaLot,

Easy. Electroplasma is very hot and very energetic. When it ruptures out of the conduit, The hot energetic plasma not only mechanically fractures the materials around it, but the plasma itself is a form of matter that will, when it’s energy is released and it cools, return to whatever state it would normally be at room temperature.

Surface ships use deuterium and anti-deuterium as fuel, deuterium is liquid at room temperature. Assuming the combined plasma is also deuterium, that would mean it is eventually condensing to liquid. So I imagine the interaction between the plasma and some other material would turn the other material into a sort of spongy texture, which is probably dark due to being scorched. Thus, I don’t think that’s rock at all. It is scorched material from around the plasma conduit, that has been melted and integrated with the plasma which then returned to a lower energy state, namely deuterium steam or liquid.

SirEDCaLot,

You’re absolutely right. But that actually makes even more sense. Squirt superheated plasma into a solid mass, it basically all melts together into a slurry, then the deuterium cools into gas and is released, the resulting material which is solid at room temperature ends up looking like scorched foam

SirEDCaLot,

This is a nightmare.
The problem isn’t the antitank mines, which obviously aren’t even buried. The problem is whether antipersonnel mines are buried around them.

If concussion can set these off, maybe they can be remote detonated by a sniper firing at them? That would in theory get rid of all the AT mines so you could send in a demining vehicle to remove the AP mines.

But that’s a slow and expensive process. This looks like a legacy of war Ukraine is going to be dealing with for decades.

SirEDCaLot,

Real bonehead move on behalf of the OpenAI board. The guy is emergency fired in what is basically a shock to everybody including him, then the company panics and realizes they just lost their star racehorse and starts talking about getting him back. It’s fucking brain dead. When they fired him, he probably had a hundred job offers before he even made it down to the lobby. Even if whatever he did is truly awful, any company with AI ambitions would kill to have him on their payroll.

MS did well executing quickly here. They took a perfect opportunity to onboard an experienced AI team for pennies vs. what buying the rest of OpenAI would cost. And whatever Sam and his team build next is going to be 100% theirs. Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an open job offer for OpenAI employees looking to follow Altman, with the promise of essentially unlimited resources to develop whatever and respect from management. For a talented AI researcher that’s a tempting offer.

SirEDCaLot,

Good points all around. There was a headline a day or two ago suggesting Microsoft is ready to put $50 billion into AI. If they are truly as all-in on AI as Meta is/was with VR, then something like this would make sense. OpenAI is of course at the front of things, but Microsoft still owns less than half and still has to answer to other investors.

But while OpenAI has valuable tech, the real value is the researchers who are building the next golden goose. Microsoft seems to understand that.

Look at that open letter. 500 out of 700 employees signed it and are threatening to leave. I think the key there is their equity compensation- many if not most of those 500 people were getting equity, and if OpenAI loses its place at the front of the pack that equity loses a lot of value. And the board just essentially killed their golden goose. So those 500 people are worried about the future of their stock. If it looks like the company is going down, the rats will dessert the sinking ship faster than you can snap your fingers as there will be no shortage of very lucrative offers.

I bet Microsoft is offering a very attractive life preserver for those who jump ship. Wouldn’t be surprised if, if a bunch of those people defect, the AI division get some sort of quasi autonomous status or perhaps even its own corporate entity for those employees to own stock in.

Point being- there’s a very good chance Microsoft will essentially buy OpenAI for mere pennies by simply hiring the majority of their employees.

SirEDCaLot,

Altman may not be an AI engineer. But he does appear to be an effective leader of an AI team, and he obviously has the loyalty of an awful lot of his employees. That could be because they are personally loyal to him, or because of their own self-interest with equity, but the situation remains. He put together a solid team once, he can probably do it again. But he also may not have to.

If Microsoft can vacuum up a majority of those 500 employees, if those people join Microsoft because they want to keep working for Altman, then whatever they are paying him is money well spent. And while Altman may not know the nitty gritty, those people do. Collectively they are probably worth more than he is.

Either way, Microsoft has successfully bet on both sides of the coin. Whether they build their own successful AI department, or whether OpenAI continues to succeed, or both, they’re going to come out on top.

The big question mark to me though why exactly the board chose to fire him in the first place. It’s been a good few days, and so far there’s not even a hint. That is strange to me. If whatever he did is awful, the board would want to justify itself. If whatever he did is benign, he would want to redeem his own image. The fact that there’s not even a leak is odd.

SirEDCaLot,

The issue is who they have value to. Investors? Companies? Cities? Society as a whole?

The fact is that the absurd real estate prices in big cities really serve nobody except developers and landlords and real estate investors. For everyone else, they’re just a useless tax- the people can’t afford the quality of life their salary should command, companies pay through the roof for office space they don’t need, support business (IE starbucks) pay through the roof for their own locations, etc.

The fact is real estate as a whole is LONG overdue for a SERIOUS correction. Actually it should have years ago, but a lot of people were hoping/pushing for pandemic to be a temporary blip. So you have empty buildings with sky-high rents because the landlord doesn’t want to sign a 20yr lease at anything below top dollar, makes more sense to wait for the blip to end than accept a lower rate for 20 years.

But sooner or later those landlords are gonna have to accept the new reality. And so will developers and investors.

SirEDCaLot,

I’d argue the amount of work and connections necessary to run a campaign is because of political parties. You need a media machine because the other guys will have one.

I would love a situation where the media machine is more or less prohibited- where events like debates are what affects peoples minds, not slick 30 second ads that do a shitty job explaining anything so they just throw mud.

I think what you say is probably accurate- but I’d add the libertarian party (the organization) has the exact same problem the DNC / GOP have (national group focusing on own interest or special interest, losing touch with their base).

I heard a good joke a few weeks ago-- Libertarians are like house cats- fiercely independent, yet totally dependent on a system they have no understanding of. I think that especially applies to a lot of the national Libertarian platform- they expect that dismantling the EPA and Dept of Education is going to have some kind of positive effect on quality of life.

They’d do much better if they stay away from conservative/wingnut talking points and focus on personal liberties, a subject most Americans can get behind…

SirEDCaLot,

I suspect we’d agree a lot more than we’d disagree :)

FWIW I think most libertarian talking points are crap (especially lately).
I think the whole ‘take some piece of something and blame it for whatever’s wrong’ attitude is sophomoric to the point of being childishly immature. Libertarians do a lot of that publicly, and it’s stupid and narrow-minded. Thus, housecats.

I’d summarize my political position as ‘I think the married gay couple should be able to defend themselves, their marijuana farm, and their adopted children with AR-15 rifles, knowing that if they get hurt and have to go to the hospital, single payer health care will mean they don’t go bankrupt’. I take my positions on their merits, not out of revenge against some apparent problem caused by some group.

I oppose political parties for the same reason George Washington warned us about them in his farewell speech- that they encourage voting based on party loyalty rather than the common good. And that’s in addition to the complaints about the two-party system I’ve already laid out.

I think if we eliminated primaries and let anyone with signatures get on the ballot, that by itself would sufficiently reduce the influence of parties. They could stop being kingmakers and start being more of a broader support structure for ideologically similar (not identical) candidates.
We definitely need more functional parties though. We need minimum of 2, probably better with 4 or 5, and right now between GOP and DNC together we have about 0.8 of one. :(

SirEDCaLot,

Because you also lack social services to move people out of poverty, you lack decent education, you lack food security. If you can’t see how these might increase one’s feeling of helplessness or danger of being attacked by those without, then you’re the one only ever looking at one part of the problem. … Fix your social welfare systems, fix your education systems, fix your gerrymandered bullshit electoral system…

And if you read my replies in this thread, you’d recognize that I agree 100% with this. Many Americans do.

The fact that you aren’t as angry at your politicians and representatives as I am at you is proof you don’t even think to care about fixing the problem.

Where did I ever say that I am not? Most people are angry at Congress. We’re just all angry about different things.

Funny how Americans are all “THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” right up until the point where they actually need to think about the children.

I agree strongly with this, although perhaps not in the same way as you. My anger with this is the religious/conservative obsession with preventing abortion, but the same people repeatedly defund programs that would help single and impoverished mothers like nutrition assistance, cheap/free childcare, etc. Same thing with reproductive health care that might stop an unwanted pregnancy before it starts. I’m strongly against such people.
As I see it- even if you ignore the humanitarian side (which we shouldn’t), contraceptives are cheaper than abortion, abortion is cheaper than childcare and education, education is cheaper than police, and police are cheaper than incarcerating a bunch of inner city kids who have no future and no resources so they turn to crime and drugs and gangs.
And on a humanitarian side, we should take care of our own citizens.

There’s not much point in continuing, no number of insults no matter how pointed and accurate are going to get you to shed your wilful ignorance and intentional belligerence or accept any measure of personal responsibility. Lord knows you’re too individual to be responsible.

I would agree we shouldn’t continue, mainly because you seem to not be listening to or addressing anything I actually say. It seems like you have this image of a stereotypical dumb hick American who DGAF about anyone but themself and some psychotic love for weapons, and you’re arguing against that straw man rather than addressing anything I actually say. It appears that your mind is entirely closed, your responses suggest that you acknowledge only two possibilities- that someone is just as anti-gun as you are, or that they are all the negative things I just mentioned.
The sad thing is I think we do or might agree on an awful lot. But it seems like your mind closes to that possibility the second I say I’m pro-gun.

So I wish you all the best. Stay safe.

SirEDCaLot,

“It is not the tool that determines it’s work, it is the mind of the man that holds the tool that does.” --Brannon LaBouef

Like any tool, a gun can be used for good or evil. The vast majority of gun uses in the USA are ‘defensive gun uses’, which are legal gun owners stopping or preventing a crime. There’s minimum 10x more DGUs than firearm homicides, perhaps 100x or even more.

Ending a life shouldn’t be something anybody can do.

But ending a life IS something anybody can do, and you don’t need a gun to do it.

SirEDCaLot,

Keep killing them kids Yosamite Sam.
You can’t provide any significant rebuttal because there is none

If you are 100% sure there is no rebuttal, that means your mind is closed. It means you are 100% sure you have the only correct position (all others are wrong). And against that, you’re right I can’t provide any significant because you refuse to open your mind and consider the potential significance (or lack thereof) of what I say.

But you are not doing that and have not done it this entire conversation. You appear to perceive me as Yosemite Sam, running around and screaming and firing guns into the air. And thus you don’t consider my words, you mock them and ignore them.

It’s not a very mature way to carry on a conversation. So I bid you good day.

SirEDCaLot,

Clever, and not invalid. But it also ignores the point I was making.

I’m NOT trying to minimize the shitty things GOP has done recently. The Karl Rove strategy of pandering to religious social conservatives has caused more pain for this country than can be put into words. Just like McCain legitimizing Sarah Palin (although he redeemed himself with Obamacare), legitimizing the ‘Evangelical’ political position is damn near unforgiveable. And as a single strategy that has done more to tear our country apart than anything DNC’s done. So please don’t think I’m excusing the GOP’s sins.

What I AM saying, is that whatever their sins may be, they don’t always get it wrong all the time. Nobody does. Democrats don’t always get it right all the time. Nobody does.

And thus it’s dangerous for anyone (on either side) to fall into the logical trap of ‘I’m a good person, a smart person, I’ve decided this is right. Therefore, everyone who thinks it’s wrong must be a dumb person or a bad person’.

I believe every American should judge each argument on its own merits, regardless of its source. And if the result is always that blue is right and red is wrong, so be it-- but that should NEVER lead to complacency where blue is always assumed to be right and red is always assumed to be wrong (or vice versa) with analysis or debate deemed unnecessary.

That is a VERY dangerous slippery slope that has, historically, led to some very dark places.

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