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snickms

140 karma · joined November 13, 2019

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snickms··on Piano teacher gets copyright claim for Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata [video]
These collection societies are actually the opposite of the mafia.

They collect royalties on behalf of the composers. If the composer has a publisher, the royalties are forwarded there instead (so the publisher can take their contractual cut).

They are the only way to protect your work if you are unsigned (think struggling artists).

snickms··on NASA's Perseverance rover sends stunning images
What if in the future we could examine the contents of a particular rock from space? Have instruments sensitive enough to detect the remnants of Vogon breath from their visit millions of years ago?

A pristine planet has value beyond 'I want this' IMO - it is an opportunity to perform experiments in an almost perfectly isolated test tube.

As a human, I also find it beautiful. As you say though, this is an anthropocentric view.

snickms··on NASA's Perseverance rover sends stunning images
This mission is an incredible achievement. The images are as advertised (stunning) and I'm sure all the sciences - and even art - will benefit from the data.

What I find a little sad is that we seem incapable of doing this without leaving a particularly human signature wherever we go.

We arrived on Mars with jets of pollution https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/25672/black-and-white-smoke-... followed by the dumping of the two pieces of trash required to enable the landing.

For all the data we have gained, we have lost a pristine planet - which makes me wonder if we are doing this at the right time.

snickms··on Explore the Bayeux Tapestry Online
Spoiler alert -

If you were looking for the controversial 'Harold was smitten in the eye by an arrow' scene, its at the '57' mark.

I'll leave it for others to decide what killed him, but from the lower part of the tapestry, battles in those days must have looked like hell itself.

[Edit] clarity

snickms··on Australia to introduce Google, Facebook legislation to parliament next week
They should have explained that copyright belongs to every author and singling out one industry as being worthy of compensation works against the spirit of the treaty.

They could then explain how their content uses excerpts of copyrighted material to direct the curious to the source.

It should have then asked for legislation on what constitutes fair use in this context.

If the government insisted on fees, then they should have asked them why news businesses are more worthy of those fees than individuals.

snickms··on Australia to introduce Google, Facebook legislation to parliament next week
> ...used to control politics in three major large democracies

Five eyes my foot.

As you have noted, three of them appear to be completely blind. If they cannot protect us from this, then what are they there for?

snickms··on Australia to introduce Google, Facebook legislation to parliament next week
> The way some people are angry at google here reminds of of Brexit.

Indeed. Both are the result of flooding the media with specious arguments designed to make people fight over irrelevant details.

'Google is a grifter' 'The EU are robbing us of our NHS'

Google is not rich because of news articles. The NHS was not underfunded due to the EU.

snickms··on Australia to introduce Google, Facebook legislation to parliament next week
Quite a few people here think that this legislation exists solely to prop up various News Corp outlets.

https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/11/26/coalition-news-corp-fun...

snickms··on Dyson air purifier outperformed by cheap DIY box fan filter in Marketplace test
My neighbour used to have a Dyson leaf blower.

I would wake up thinking I was in the men's room.

snickms··on Dyson air purifier outperformed by cheap DIY box fan filter in Marketplace test
To be fair, the Dyson model claims to heat and cool the air as well as filter it - unlike the DIY purifier.
snickms··on Podman: A Daemonless Container Engine
I've used podman-compose for a few web projects. Rootless means you can't bind to privileged ports etc. but after a bit of fiddling I can now spin up my choice of DB/server/mock pretty quickly - just like I could with docker.

The lack of 'cannot connect to dockerd' mysteries makes for a much-improved developer experience if you ask me.

snickms··on Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
If those damned Argentinians would just mine bitcoin exclusively, we could all get on with our lives.

We also need to talk to South Africa about Youtube.

snickms··on Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
True - and even with this tremendous waste, it pays for itself. We have never looked beyond monetary return to justify the existence of anything and i fear we are doomed to stay that way.

Thankfully, renewables are becoming more profitable. If we built enough, we could power the USA. Imagine that.

All the bitcoin, teslas and visa transactions you would ever want, with no squabbling.

snickms··on Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
I think both the article and this comment miss the point. If we generated power cleanly in the first place, there would be far less environmental damage everywhere.

The fact that Bitcoin now uses half the power of Youtube (from a terribly unreliable estimate) should not be such a distraction from the real problem IMHO.

Terribly unreliable estimate:

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+total+power+cons...

snickms··on Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
If the goal is to educate the public on the scale of power involved, a comparison with a commonly used service would help a lot IMHO. Something like 'Bitcoin consumes 14 times the energy of Google and half (according rough estimates) that of Youtube' would make things easier to grasp before hitting the reader with country comparisons.

FWIW here is my list of 'if a service were a country':

Google Guatemala

Bitcoin Argentina

Youtube South Africa (unreliable data)

[Edit] whoops - no references

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+total+power+cons...

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+total+power+cons...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...

snickms··on Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
Lately I've seen boxes marked with just the penis - no 'Amazon' at all.
snickms··on Aerobics instructor appears to capture Myanmar coup in dance video
If there were one video we could archive to describe the world as it is right now, this would be it IMHO.
snickms··on Robinhood, in Need of Cash, Raises $1B from Its Investors
Would it make sense for these companies to make bets against their customer's trades?

My guess it that the customers are wrong most of the time.

snickms··on WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore
I'm not convinced that a plot formed openly on the internet actually qualifies as a conspiracy.

I'm sure things would have worked out differently for Nixon had he distributed a press release regarding an up-coming DNC burglary beforehand.

snickms··on Making VoIP Calls with Antique Rotary Phones
Its a little trickier in New Zealand, where one pulse means '9' :)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_Zealand_Rotary_T...

snickms··on A Polar Vortex collapse sequence has begun
Congratulations!

You've just shown us all that the gradient started to shift upwards less than 300 years ago.

Seriously, look at some basic calculus. Try to understand what you are doing.

I look forward to your further efforts in debunking climate data misinformation.

snickms··on A Polar Vortex collapse sequence has begun
When someone talks about anything changing over a period of time, they are talking about slope. There really isn't another interpretation.
snickms··on A Polar Vortex collapse sequence has begun
The data points at the top are at 16.6 year intervals. Recent data is represented by a line. The punch line is not the absolute temperature (as this wanders around a fair bit), but the gradient at the end.

Because the recent data is over a period of 166 years, you can turn the line into 10 dots which represent each 16.6 year 'line' average.

I think you should try this yourself. You will find that the averaging only smooths out brief transients between your new dots. In the case of the comic, it has no effect on the gradient at 2016.

Having more data doesn't change the average slope - it simply allows you to measure average slope over shorter distances.

So unless you think the joke was "haha we've been at this temperature before", I suggest it is you who is being ... what you said.

snickms··on A Polar Vortex collapse sequence has begun
I believe the parent is talking about rate of change rather than absolute temperature. Discounting collisions with large meteors, the statement that the average temperature over time has never risen so fast is true.
snickms··on A Polar Vortex collapse sequence has begun
The BBC is not a government-run service. It is a publicly-owned corporation.
snickms··on A Polar Vortex collapse sequence has begun
I think it highly unlikely that weather.gov is faking it's forecasts in either direction.
snickms··on CTO day 2: downsizing the team
If he has not communicated his vision clearly enough for the company to survive without him, then he has failed. That world.

[Edited] - as I thought you were asking a slightly different question. My bad.

snickms··on Car manufacturing hit by global semiconductor shortage
The article was paywalled for me, but if you made your cars in lisp, you'd run out of braces way before you ran out of semiconductors.
snickms··on The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours
Personally, I wish Twitter was one audio-only party line. Two minutes of listening to a million people yelling their thoughts in real rime would reveal exactly what is happening there - and what a complete waste of time it is.
snickms··on Electric cars make up 54% of cars sold in Norway in 2020
Surely the fuel cost savings would wipe out the price difference within a couple of years? Not sure what the average price of petrol is where you are though.

[Edit[ https://myelectriccar.com.au/calculator/ confirms this at least for a Nissan Leaf running in Australia.

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