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dbasedweebon On the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant 10,000 Year Marker System

https://urbigenous.net/library/WIPP/

This place is not a place of honor.

No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.

Nothing valued is here.

This place is a message and part of a system of messages.

Pay attention to it!

Sending this message was important to us.

We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

dbasedweebon Ask HN: Which hardware careers can be high-paying?

What did you think the ‘N’ in FAANG was exactly?

dbasedweebon Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Prepare for an I.P.O. Wave

Has Uber stopped operating at a massive loss, subsidizing every ride with VC cash? Fares are already artificially and unsustainably depressed, and without Lvl 5 automation (clearly not incoming soon) the fares eventually have to rise. Those fares will rise even more as driver backlash against how little they’re paid increases with time.

dbasedweebon Proposal to restore a destroyed Ethereum contract

It’s an expensive, yet ultimately entertaining lesson in why regulations and institutions exist. I suspect that most people knew this was silly going in, but saw there was money to be made. A smaller subset were sufficiently idealistic/ignorant, but quickly learned the lesson. The fun is in the remainder who aren’t just trying to pump money out of rocks, but still really believe in it, the real cryptolibertsrians! It’ll be years before they get over their dreams and crash down to reality, if they ever do.

dbasedweebon Yeast Probably Originated in China

“Saccharomyces cerevisiae originated in China circa 12,000BCE”

dbasedweebon Founder who lived with bipolar for years started a company to tackle the stigma

BPD is a really specific personality disorder with fairly clear characteristics. While personality orders in general are somewhat controversial, and notoriously difficult to treat, I’d be interested in seeing evidence of overdiagnosis.

Depression on its own can be crippling and lethal, so complicating it with an addictive, potentially reckless or even psychotic second state is a nightmare. Mania is often misunderstood as just elevated mood and high energy, but the reality is more often of the “running up crushing debt, promiscuous and dangerous sexual activity” flavor than “spent all week coding a masterpiece.”

In extremes mania leads to a psychotic break to the point of being difficult to distinguish (even in a clinical setting) from schizophrenia. I knew a lovely guy who worked on motorcycles for Harley, and he was always troubled, classically bipolar, but refused to get help because he loved the highs. Then one day I got a call from his wife that he had spent three days “talking to Jesus and the devil” and pleading the case for his soul. He had to be committed for observation, which turned into weeks and then months of inpatient care. Bipolar disorder really is no joke, and the tendency for people with the disorder to struggle with substance abuse doesn’t help. “Dual diagnosis” is a phrase that portends a world of trouble, especially if you’re not wealthy enough to avoid various aspects of the system.

The last point is that BPD typically improves with age, while bipolar disorder typically becomes worse.

dbasedweebon Ask HN: What is existential crisis and how do you know if you are having one?

I remember when I was young, it suddenly really hit me: I’m going to die. That means that for an eternity I’ll not exist in the same way I didn’t exist before I was born. How could that be?! I was terrified of non-existence, of the sheer length and breadth of it, and what it really meant. I can’t say that I’ve ever really gotten over it, but I live with it. At the time I could hardly sleep, I became anxious and depressed.

To me, that’s the ultimate face of an existential crisis; confronting the reality of what our existence is. We’re almost unbelievably brief sparks in an endless darkness that didn’t notice our arrival and won’t notice our departure. What does it mean? Nothing really.

For some I guess the solution is believing that they’ll live forever in one way or another. For me it meant not thinking about a grim reality that saps joy from life, and just focusing on the people I love, the time we have together. It might not be ideal, but it’s what we have. What is an existential crisis? IMO it’s what hits when you when reality starts to seep into you in some small way. Maybe it’s mortality, or the absurdity and arbitrary nature of human endeavors, or something else.

dbasedweebon Australian coal power plant is being reopened for blockchain mining

My kneejerk reaction is fury, but actually reading the article suggests another reaction should dominate, namely disinterest.

According to a spokesperson from Hunter Energy, it expects roughly 5% of the energy from the power plant will be used for blockchain related processes.

Ironically, it’s just a coal plant reopening with a touch of Blockchain hype, but really has almost nothing to do With Blockchain tech. At this point I wouldn’t be shocked to find “Blockchain enabled!” on peanut butter.

dbasedweebon Yeast Probably Originated in China

Except the title is absurd, because “all yeast” predates any conceivable ability to trace its precise origin, and has existed at least as long ago as a time when Asia the continent didn’t exist, but was part of Pangaea. Either it’s talking about Saccharomyces cerevisiae or it’s a joke.

dbasedweebon Yeast Probably Originated in China

...in the area we now call China...

Which was part of the supercontinent Pangea only 250mya, and yeast is probably nearly a billion years old. We’re not even talking about the same crustal surfaces. Given how yeast spreads, what’s the theory for how it was constrained to one small part of a supercontinent?

The article is just awful, and title aside is clearly talking about Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or is just full of shit. The claims of the article make perfect sense for Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which could plausibly have been traced through genetic studies to China. All yeast though? How do you get genetic info from a good sample size over hundreds of millions of years?!

dbasedweebon European Copyright Law Could Soon Get Worse

That doesn’t sound even remotely correct given the nature of the “offense” in this case, for which the remedy is a fine. Can you cite this “jail the moment you step into its territory” thing?

dbasedweebon European Copyright Law Could Soon Get Worse

We’re not talking about a company, we’re talking about a fetish forum without a scrap of money changing hands. Who is enforcing GDPR there exactly? EU paratroopers? Not to mention that most people don’t live in the EU or America, so again, who’s enforcing this on our hypothetical non-business?

It’s really hardcore levels of bullshit being employed in this thread to make a big scary mountain out of a molehill.

dbasedweebon European Copyright Law Could Soon Get Worse

You’re thinking in terms of one big screen, but by 2030 maybe it’s VR that rules the day? What does 16K per eyeball look like? How about a movie with a dozen perspectives in the file? There are loads of foreseeable ways to blow up file sizes in a dozen years.

dbasedweebon European Copyright Law Could Soon Get Worse

Selective enforcement if you’re in the EU, otherwise who is enforcing it? For the billions of us not in the EU, these arguments are weak as hell.

dbasedweebon European Copyright Law Could Soon Get Worse

This would only matter if you’re profiting from your fetish forum, which seems unlikely. Plus you’d need to have an EU presence, otherwise who cares and who would force you? There’s nothing stopping you from ignoring GDPR in the scenarios you describe. Being a small hobby forum pretty much let’s you pretend GDPR doesn’t exist, while being the likes or FaceBook makes it impossible to ignore.

dbasedweebon European Copyright Law Could Soon Get Worse

Because it’s a huge “if” and assumes that by 2030 the A/V standard won’t grow as well? I hope you’re right, but past performed is not a guarantee of future gains.

dbasedweebon Modeling the Magic Leap One Experience

I took a look at his site, and at first was inclined to agree, but a few things have convinced me that you’re incorrect. First, he’s been on ML’s case a lot lately, but his site goes into a ton of different companies and products. Even more than that, he’s harsh on any marketing bullshit regardless of the source (loved his treatment of wristwatch projectors), so maybe the issue is that ML has an unusually high noise:signal ratio. He seems to pull no punches, but going back years he also seems to really know his stuff, and is proven right, over and over. He’s covered tons of devices and companies too, so there’s nothing singular there.

Given that I’d wonder how much of his site you looked over before you came to your conclusion about a “singular” focus, which is demonstrably untrue. I’d also like to know which ML competitor he supposedly works for, since I couldn’t find a hint of that.

dbasedweebon Why undertakers are worried

There are a few reasons, the most important three are these:

Public health. Corpses are breeding grounds for some very unpleasant pathogens, and you want to protect people from them. People working with the corpses or the machines to process them would be at risk. Back in the days of unregulated burial, it wasn’t uncommon for earthquakes and floods to cause large numbers of shallow burials to erupt. So, public health on a number of levels is a concern.

Emotion. Most people don’t have your attitude towards the deceased, although it’s fair to say that some do. It’s also true that how people think they’ll react may differ from the reality of their reaction when they’re grieving. Most people wouldn’t be comfortable casually disposing of their loved one’s corpses. There are many cultures around death in the world, but few could be thought of as treating the deceased remains casually.

Politics. The first and second reasons combine with cultural and sometimes religious norms and make such a proposal as yours difficult if not impossible politically.

dbasedweebon Why undertakers are worried

Thermite is dangerous, essentially impossible to extinguish until it burns out, and would burn through any realistic oven. It also emits a dangerous amount of UV so you need welding goggles and distance from the burn. If you really wanted to burn a body (illegal in most cases) it’s a matter of good airflow and the right accelerant. And disarticulstion of the limbs and head, which for me at least, would be a difficult thing emotionally. Once you’ve hacked your loved one into roughly even pieces, dig some ditches lined with steel drums, get some charcoal and wood, wrap the pieces of your loved one in natural fibers soaked with jet fuel, and light it up. Make sure that you layer their “chunks” on a scaffold or logs, and try to make sure that there is a clear “intake” and exhaust at opposite ends for airflow. If needed take the remaining remains and subject them to a second pass with jet fuel.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be able to do that to a total stranger, never mind someone I cared about.

dbasedweebon PowerHammer: Exfiltrating Data from Air-Gapped Computers Through Power Lines

TEMPEST shielding ranges from not at all cheap, to breathtakingly expensive, and what you’re describing is just one part of high level shielding. It’s not just the facilities that cost, but the fact that your electricians and janitors need clearance as much as your devs and analysts. Even if data centers wanted to go that route, it would have to pass the costs on to the customer, who would need to be s very particular kind of customer with deep pockets.

dbasedweebon When the business model is the privacy violation

People have shown an impressive ability to figure that kind of advertising out. A lot of native advertising on sites like Reddit is outed almost immediately, and then the discussion turns on the advertiser. We could also add protections as they are in the UK requiring “sponsored content” to display clearly that it’s an advertisement.

In short, there’s nothing inevitable about advertising models as they exist today, and people who try to convince of you that they are inevitable are peobsbly trying to sow apathy.

dbasedweebon Atlantic Ocean's Circulation Is Weakest in 1,600 Years

Find me the casual opportunist in the apocalypse; it would all be starving lions, and a lot of lions. If you want a preview, study famous famines and sieges, like the siege of Stalingrad, and the Holodomor. I’ll say it again, prepping for something other than limited disaster (i.e. a hurricane or earthquake) is only realistically achieved by trying to avert doom, or buy a gun and as many bullets as your family has members.

dbasedweebon Atlantic Ocean's Circulation Is Weakest in 1,600 Years

There’s also no way that any amount of your preparations will materially improve your chances. If you stockpile, and civilization collapses, you will be raided for your stockpiles by stronger, better armed people. There will always be stronger, better armed people. If you prepare to live off land, how is that going to work when the land is dead?

There’s no escape for you or your family, except averting disaster in the first place, or death. Unless your prepping amounts to a suicide pact, then it’s just a fantasy to keep you from being too afraid. As comforting fantasies go, prepping seems like a particularly expensive and time-consuming one. Unless you’re desperate for the illusion of control, your time and money is better spent elsewhere.

dbasedweebon Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

Lovely, and I applaud your vision of rugged individualism, right up until the moment I remember that you might not just be killing yourself. No offense, but I don’t want to be the victim of the intersection between your principles and a company’s willingness to risk lives for profit. You might not hit a barrier, you might hit a person.

It’s not just your decision when those choices impact everyone who shares your environment. If you want to beta test features on a closed course, be my guest, but on public roads you need to think of people other than yourself.

dbasedweebon Atlantic Ocean's Circulation Is Weakest in 1,600 Years

And the answer is that if we turned all of our energy to salt production, it wouldn’t even be a drop in the ocean, and our efforts would of course liberate more CO2 and contribute to global warming. Of all the possible ways we could geoengineer (all of them bad ideas frankly) this has to be one of the worst, least effective, most limited, and least likely to succeed.

If we’re going to hasten our demise, we might as well try sulfate aerosols or something with a more global effect. We’d still end up killing ourselves, but at least it wouldn’t be quite so much like trying to get a sailboat to move by blowing on the sails.

dbasedweebon Atlantic Ocean's Circulation Is Weakest in 1,600 Years

Joking, right? If not, I’ll match your talent for understatement with my own: the ocean is very big.

dbasedweebon Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

If you’re willing to die for this, then by all means go ahead and sign up to be a dummy on a test track. If you know other people who feel the same way, sign up as a group. If you’re just talking about letting other people die so that someday, maybe we’ll have fully automated cars, that’s monstrous, especially when they’re not volunteers and don’t get to opt out!

A laudable goal doesn’t give anyone the right to kill people by taking unnecessary risks. The reason that Tesla and Uber do what they do the way they do, instead of a more conservative approach is an attempt to profit, not save lives. If you don’t have to spend lives to make progress, but choose to do so for economic experience, there’s s word for that: evil.

dbasedweebon Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

The problem as always with driving is that you can be as attentive, sober, cautious as humanly possible... while the guy who jumps the median into your windscreen may not be. We need to be more concerned and proactive about stopping this running experiment with half-asses automation in which we all unwillingly participate. I want lvl 5 automation just like anyone, but I don’t believe it’s anywhere close, and I’m not interested in being part of a Tesla or Uber’s attempt to be even richer.

Public roads are not laboratories. It’s not just Tesla owners who are participating in this, it’s everyone on the road with them.

dbasedweebon The story of Australia's wild camel

It make sense, the outback is absolutely vast and not densely populated, and while SA is big, it’s a speck by comparison. The camels must be pretty happy there, for whatever values ofmhappy apply to um, camels.

dbasedweebon Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

Arguing with Tesla/Musk fanatics now is like arguing with Facebook/Zuck fanatics was ten years ago, or saying that a Google was bad news in their “don’t be evil” days. You’re right, but only time and loads of evidence will convince some people that what they desperately want to believe isn’t true.

Of course “Autopilot” is intended to evoke the common meaning as a marketing tool, and not the nuanced, highly technical meaning understood by pilots. Understand though, that when someone argues against that point the pedantry is just a proxy for their fanaticism, and until the fanaticism dies, the excuses will be generated de novo. You’re bringing reason and logic to an emotional fight.