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csours

11,866 karma · joined July 28, 2012

Beep Boop I am a robot.
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csours··on How Delhi cut electricity loss from 50 to 5 percent
> I can’t believe France and Belgium suffer power losses in the 5 to 6% range.

Is the juice worth the squeeze?

For some problems, the closer you get to perfection, the harder the next step is.

csours··on Polishing Cloth
Is this AI ready?
csours··on Ordinary Abundance
"better" is really subjective!
csours··on Ordinary Abundance
I can eat better than a king, every day.
csours··on Intelligence Is Not the Main Bottleneck
Society advances at the rate of emotional validation of the median voter.
csours··on Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?
Yes, that's what makes it interesting.

Interesting discussions about energetics are best had from a distance.

csours··on Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?
It's an interesting discussion, because if you assume access to atmospheric oxygen, gasoline is MUCH more energy dense.

    TNT.....:  4 kJ/gram and  7 MJ/liter
 
    Gasoline: 43 kJ/gram and 33 MJ/liter
csours··on Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
He was towed outside the environment. (I think he would laugh at this)
csours··on 98% isn't much
98% of any particular audience at a live event is well behaved. Unfortunately, in an audience of 1,000 people, that means 20 people are not well behaved, and if each of those 20 people ruins the event for their neighbors, that means at least 200 people had a bad time.

If 2% of your users complain and leave bad reviews, and only 1% leave good reviews...

csours··on China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes
This is load bearing guanxi
csours··on Ford rehires 350 engineers after AI fails to preserve expertise or train juniors
I've lost my ability to believe that things will feel 'normal' at work.

I no longer want to make connection with any coworkers.

csours··on Understanding the rationale behind a rule when trying to circumvent it
Implemented by intention vs implemented by history
csours··on SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
Signal and noise. Lots of noise. SO much noise.

To be clear, I don't know which part is signal and which part is noise any better than anyone else.

csours··on Software is made between commits
The work product is not the work.
csours··on RTX 5090 and M4 MacBook Air: Can It Game?
I believe that LLM (and ML in general) tools really shine when they are developed and used AS tools.

Unfortunately, I also believe that market forces may push away from this direction, as LLM companies try to capture the value stream

csours··on The best is over: The fun has been optimized out of the Internet
"The Medium Is The Message" - Marshall McLuhan

People aren't nihilist - social media is.

People aren't shallow - dating apps are.

The world isn't shit - late capital is.

But of course, people are also nihilist, shallow and shit; and those same people are hopeful, complex, patient, kind and loving - but the internet rarely brings those stories to you.

csours··on New study compares growing corn for energy to solar production
Source?

Are you referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerogen?

At any rate, this is why I would like to see a better investigation of the subject

Better Kerogen wiki: https://wiki.aapg.org/Kerogen

csours··on New study compares growing corn for energy to solar production. It's no contest
Well, there are a lot of planets, and a lot of time.

So I would say yes.

On average though, I would say no.

csours··on New study compares growing corn for energy to solar production
Thank you?

Solar panels don't convert air to fuel directly, but you could use the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction

csours··on New study compares growing corn for energy to solar production
I'd love to see an investigation into fossil fuel accumulation over geological time scales - especially petroleum.

From what I've seen, 10,000 barrels per year is a reasonable guestimate.

If that is the case, then just the electrical energy harvested from solar panels in the UK could convert air into fuel at a faster rate than the WHOLE earth (on average over geological time scales) (as long as the fuel conversion/production was at least 1% efficient at converting electricity to fuel).

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1owp09/if_oil_t...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209624951...

csours··on YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney
Something interesting to me is that YouTube doesn't even capture the majority of the value stream. They allow content creators to use things like Patreon and their own ad reads to capture their own value.

Of course, the preceding paragraph could be re-written in many different ways.

csours··on Most people can't juggle one ball
The fun thing about learning to juggle is that no one can teach you how to juggle, but they can teach you how to teach yourself how to juggle.
csours··on Code is run more than read (2023)
If it is a part with a regular maintenance schedule, it should be designed for maintainability.

Most maintainability conflicts come from packaging and design for assembly.

Efficiency more often comes into conflict with durability, and sometimes safety.

csours··on Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks
Yes propaganda and bullshit, but by way of exaggeration and puffery, not lying.

I wouldn't expect even a lightly informed mid-wit to think that this murderbot held the ground by itself; and I don't think the author expects that either. Thus something else is probably going on. To wit - puffery.

csours··on Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
And here I assumed they sounded like red-tailed hawks!
csours··on Hubble Snaps a New Dazzling Photo of the Crab Nebula
Compared to the cosmic spacetime scale, "snaps" fits pretty well for me =)
csours··on My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary
I read the book before watching the movie - I'd recommend the opposite.

Watching the movie first will set the stage for a lot of details that work better in a book than a movie.

csours··on Microscopes can see video on a laserdisc
Not nearly as cool, but I was able to show a colleague the letters in a raster image section of a pdf using xxd by varying the output width
csours··on Does that use a lot of energy?
One may look at aluminum as a solid form of energy. In fact, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%E2%80%93air_battery
csours··on Does that use a lot of energy?
Do you have to run new electric transmission lines? Will you have to maintain those power lines?
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