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D_Alex

1,790 karma · joined August 18, 2010

Oil and gas industry, Perth, Western Australia. Contactable via milanoman@yahoo.com (note I only check this e-mail once a week).
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D_Alex··on The GDR and Vietnam: From Fake Coffee to Coffee Empire
I was just in Hanoi! A thing I learned is that Vietnam is today the second largest producer and exporter of coffee, behind Brazil of course. And per capita, Vietnam produces and exports more than Brazil.

And as for taste - I love the rough and tough flavours of Vietnamese Robusta coffees! The Australian roasted Arabicas are mild and gentle, almost to the point of blandness in comparison.

D_Alex··on The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]
>They already very agressively hide car lithium fires

But you found out... how?

D_Alex··on Oceans hit highest temperature on record
Hmm… so are we agreeing that Russia turned off the gas because the EU stopped paying?
D_Alex··on Oceans hit highest temperature on record
But it doesn’t support your claim.

In summary, Russia, after having their dollar and euro bank accounts frozen, demanded payment in roubles. It stopped supplying the gas to the customers who weren’t paying. After that, the EU announced it will stop buying Russian gas completely, and replaced it with LNG.

Thus increasing the greenhouse gas emissions attributed to its gas use by about 60%. :(

D_Alex··on Oceans hit highest temperature on record
Really? Do you have a credible source for this?
D_Alex··on Oceans hit highest temperature on record
The EU has made a difficult problem even worse by switching from pipeline gas to LNG.

LNG has anywhere from 10% to 100% more greenhouse gas emissions, depending on who you believe about how much methane leaks during LNG production and transport operations. Most credible estimate IMO is +60%.

D_Alex··on Count Binface
>Policies include building one affordable house.

Mine too.

D_Alex··on The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
>Poland and the Baltics know they're next on Putin's list.

"Putin's list" is a dishonest meme, just like the "rules-based international order" that the Western nations supposedly embrace.

There is no such list, and there are no such rules. There is only deceitful propaganda used to justify geopolitical ambitions. Don't spread it.

D_Alex··on Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again
It means have fun, be adventurous, bend the rules a little bit.
D_Alex··on China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes
Did you feel safe, growing up?
D_Alex··on Michigan spent $1.8B and only created 602 jobs
And what lesson should be drawn from that?
D_Alex··on AI is slowing down
>They'd need to sell a sub to everyone in Europe and North America.

Yep. Every man, woman and child, and even then provided we include Russia, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti etc, and, out of desperation to get to 1.5 billion, Turkey, which is in Europe a little.

D_Alex··on AI is slowing down
That's all true... however the point that Google will get just $1 billion per year from Apple for the AI service is still insightful.

If AI use via Apple represents 10% of the total that vaguely implies that the total AI market is worth around $10 billion per year (which admittedly seems a bit low), and if it is just 1% (which also seems low) then we get $100 billion per year upper-end estimate.

Which just is not enough to justify the current valuations of AI companies.

D_Alex··on Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
>Seems like the simplest test would be to see if an AI can refuse a command, of its own free will

Certainly not the simplest test, since settling the concept of "free will" is really very difficult.

D_Alex··on Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
>I also think different ideas get conflated.

Yep. For example, your post conflates the idea of having a brain with the idea of having consciousness.

D_Alex··on Miscellanea: The War in Iran
>I think you either added an extra zero or were looking at the hyped prototypes

I thought I was clear where I was looking - here, you may check for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136.

D_Alex··on Miscellanea: The War in Iran
>Iran would have to respond and thus would have to try to find a way to inflict ‘pain’ on the United States to force the United States to back off. But whereas Israel is in reach of some Iranian weapons, the United States is not.

This is too complacent for my liking. Every rusty trawler is a viable launch platform for Shahed type drones (operational range ~2500 km per Wikipedia). Nearly every US oil refinery and LNG terminal are on the coast. And then there are floating oil platforms (e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdido_(oil_platform))

The article then says:

>One can never know how well prepared an enemy is for something.

And:

>And if I can reason this out, Iran – which has been planning for this exact thing for forty years certainly can.

I'll leave it here for y'all to ponder.

D_Alex··on Urea prices
2022 was abnormally high, caused largely by the disruption of gas supplies to Western Europe after sanctions on Russian gas and the destruction of the Nordstream gas pipeline.
D_Alex··on Urea prices
Yes, it is nothing like 2022 yet. But the concerning thing is that this may be just a beginning of a protracted event, plus the world, and especially Western Europe, is less resilient today to the disruptions in gas supply.
D_Alex··on Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
I'm a bit underwhelmed tbh. Here is Anthropic's motto:

"At Anthropic, we build AI to serve humanity’s long-term well-being."

Why does Anthropic even deal with the Department of @#$%ing WAR?

And what does Amodei mean by "defeat" in his first paragraph?

D_Alex··on High-speed train collision in Spain kills at least 39
>It's not as safe as flying

In France and Japan, HSR has had zero fatalities in the entire period of operation.

In China, HSR had AFAIR one fatal crash, with 40 fatalities. Per passenger-mile, Chinese HSR is twice as safe as US air travel.

D_Alex··on Jimmy Lai Is a Martyr for Freedom
Imagine if Jensen Huang started meeting Xi Jinping to seek help for carrying out political change in the US.

What then?

D_Alex··on Jimmy Lai Is a Martyr for Freedom
>This ascribes an agency to capitalism that doesn’t exist.

You may find this marvelous piece enlightening:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

D_Alex··on Young journalists expose Russian-linked vessels off the Dutch and German coast
Ramstein is like 400 km from the sea, Munich is 800 km.

I am puzzled that the alleged ship-launched drone swarms were allegedly able to penetrate this far undetected.

D_Alex··on Young journalists expose Russian-linked vessels off the Dutch and German coast
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-launch-new-phase-v...

How about now?

D_Alex··on Young journalists expose Russian-linked vessels off the Dutch and German coast
Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Türkiye all host U.S. nuclear weapons.

Incidentally, US nukes in Turkey in 1960s was the starting point of the Cuban missile crisis.

https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_arsenals

D_Alex··on Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?
>Prusa generally has better print quality

Only if you compare Prusa printing at 50 mm/s with Bambu at 500 mm/s.

>and better overhang performance

What? No. Proof: https://youtu.be/HcSOz-Lsxgg?feature=shared&t=293

>Prusa drives the slicer development ecosystem (Bambu Studio is a fork)

Prusa slicer is also a fork ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

D_Alex··on On the screen, Libyans learned about everything but themselves (2021)
>If you're an American and don't know what it's like to have your country and culture reduced to about three wildly inaccurate stereotypes...

...you can watch Borat, which is far less about Kazakhstan than it is about the US.

D_Alex··on Kerosene did not save the sperm whale (2024)
Yes it does. Consider too that after kerosene whaling declined while world population, wealth and demand for lighting grew rapidly.

Also, kerosene for lanterns became a thing in 1846, not 1865 as claimed in the article, and by 1856 was already widespread. Wikipedia has this to say about its impact:

As kerosene production increased, whaling declined. The American whaling fleet, which had been steadily growing for 50 years, reached its all-time peak of 199 ships in 1858. By 1860, just two years later, the fleet had dropped to 167 ships. The Civil War cut into American whaling temporarily, but only 105 whaling ships returned to sea in 1866, the first full year of peace, and that number dwindled until only 39 American ships set out to hunt whales in 1876.[36] Kerosene, made first from coal and oil shale, then from petroleum, had largely taken over whaling's lucrative market in lamp oil.

D_Alex··on The slow collapse of critical thinking in OSINT due to AI
The really big problem in open source intelligence has been for some time that data to support just about anything can be found. OSINT investigations start with a premise, look for data that supports the premise and rarely look for data that contradicts it.

Sometimes this is just sloppy methodology. Other times it is intentional.

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