dlubarov

Yeah it's hard for batteries alone to compete with generators, unless we put a lot of weight on things like noise, or are just focused on small loads like fridges.

I think the more interesting comparison is generators vs solar, though it depends on the local weather etc.

This is a purely optional part of the crypto ecosystem, so I don't see how it's an argument against crypto in general.

One can also burn tokens, just as one can burn cash, but we don't tend to hold that against either systems since it's purely optional.

Well, not exactly. A malicious majority of miners could rewind the chain as they please. They could indirectly steal some funds by undoing certain transfers, but they couldn’t just directly reassign funds to themselves.

The Gaza MoH absolutely does incorporate those web form submissions into its numbers. They've said so themselves on several occasions.

The 11,069 number is from [1], or [2] is from a more neutral source:

> Gaza's health ministry has removed 1,852 people from its official list of war fatalities since October, after finding that some had died of natural causes or were alive but had been imprisoned. [...] Almost all of the names removed (97%) had initially been submitted through an online form which allows families to record the deaths of loved ones where the body is missing.

[1] https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/sites/default/files/pdf/...

[2] https://news.sky.com/story/thousands-of-names-removed-from-o...

Official or not, those web form reports are absolutely incorporated into the numbers you're citing. E.g. as of 03/23/2025, 11,069 of the counted casualties were from the web forms.

The 75k number is not at all limited to casualties recorded in a hospital. They've been pulling casualty reports from a variety of sources, including a Google form, which later became this form: https://sehatty.ps/moh-registration/public/add-order

Limiting charging below 100% (which many tablets now support) helps, but the battery is still likely to be the component that fails before anything else.

Moreover, Rust traits' associated constants/types get in the way of having a proper bottom type. What would <! as Iterator>::Item be? (In Scala I think it just doesn't compile?)

I also have limited memory though; surely that doesn't disqualify me from possessing general intelligence?

Granted I have more memory than can fit in currently-practical LLM context windows, but RAG mostly solves that. When an AI is thinking about math, it can have relevant math memories in context without needing all the other stuff.

I like to think that I possess general intelligence, yet I'm not sure I would do any better in my first two weeks of trying to remotely manage a cafe in Stockholm. But fair point about novelty.

[1] is sort of an example of this. It didn't go perfectly, but I'm not sure if the average human would have done that much better.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/markfaithfull/2026/05/07/heres-...

Why shouldn't an AI with RAG qualify?

An AGI test should be black-box; we shouldn't impose require requirements on internal components. As long as the overall AI is capable of learning and remembering things, it shouldn't matter if there's a stateless LLM internally.

Wouldn't agents that do inference in an infinite loop pass that bar?

There are also ads in News and Stocks.

You're quoting a civilian who has no role in the government, let alone its military command.

I don't love this either, but at least it's a short-term economic quirk. At some point fabs will figure out what the long-term demand looks like and scale up production accordingly.

That's not at all what the data shows. Lots of aid was crossing the border, but during some periods over 90% of it was being intercepted, according to the UN's own data (https://app.un2720.org/tracking).

> Philosophical opposition to AI's impact on society.

I think this is the real reason, while the others don't make that much sense when we really think about it.

Large datacenters are normally limited to industrial zoned land, so they're "competing" for space with other industrial projects, and their externalities are typically mild compared to other industrial projects.

Most datacenters create little traffic, minimal pollution, and no bad odors. They do use substantial power and water, but they pay for it (though in certain cases the economics aren't perfect).

I'd much rather live near a datacenter than a dump, sewage facility, refinery, etc. etc.

One of WMF's more controversial expenditures was its $4.5 million "Knowledge Equity Fund", a grant program that tries to fight racial inequity. The recipients don't have to participate in Wikipedia or anything.

They may be noble causes, but it's not how many Wikipedia donors expected their funds to be used, after seeing the donation banners begging for funds to keep Wikipedia running.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund

I think it's safe to say you're in the minority. Empirically, "fast and cheap" cosmetic upgrades like repainting usually more than pay for themselves.

> I'd rather the outlet covers be original and clean than the new, usually oversized covers (with a slight color mismatch) I often find.

Any task can be screwed up if someone is careless enough, but this is extremely easy to get right. If a standard cover plate fit before, it's trivial to buy a replacement of the standard size and appropriate color.

Cleaning works too, I personally just wouldn't bother cleaning a part that costs ~$0.50.

> When I see sloppy caulk I first think of the time I'll need to spend to dig it all out.

Would you really rather see cracked caulk, which means (a) the original contractor probably used whatever cheap rigid caulk he found in his van, (b) it's been letting water through instead of sealing, and (c) noone cared enough to fix it?

To add a few more: it's similarly easy to swap cabinet handles, vent covers, outlet wall plates. Fresh caulk is nice too, even if it's a bit sloppy, still beats stained or cracked caulk.

The centralized leadership has no hard power though; the community normally goes along with changes they propose because they're normally sensible. If they go rogue, people will stop following their proposals.

In Vitalik's words: "If someone puts a gun to my head and tells me to write a hard-fork patch, I will definitely write it. If I publish a patch to delete a bunch of accounts, how many people here would download and install the update and switch to that chain? I see relatively few raised hands. This is called decentralization"

Moreover, the vast majority of active software development work relates to modern proof-of-stake blockchains like Ethereum, not Bitcoin which is mostly ossified.

There isn't really a technical difference that made PoS viable for Ethereum but not Bitcoin; it's a hard fork in either case. The differences are more cultural -

- For better or worse, Ethereum has more centralized leadership (mainly the EF) which helps coordinate upgrades. Hard forks happen pretty regularly, and don't typically risk fracturing the community, unless the changes are particularly controversial (see Ethereum Classic).

- PoS wasn't that controversial, since it was planned from the beginning (see the difficulty bomb). Some users still resisted the switch - see the EthereumPoW fork - but for the most part the community was on board.

- The Bitcoin community OTOH values ossification. It rarely accepts proposed hard forks as "still Bitcoin"; that has only happened a few times in its history. The community's response to most proposed hard forks is "interesting, but that's not Bitcoin, call it something else."

- The Bitcoin community is also more ideologically and economically invested in PoW, so a proposed PoS fork would be extremely controversial, and would fracture the community (at best, if it gained any traction at all).

Compared to traditional concrete, isn't hempcrete much weaker and less rigid? It's an interesting material for sure, but I thought it was basically considered non-structural filler.

Autoclaved aerated concrete is worth a mention as well - it's also a decent insulator and somewhat environmentally friendly, while additionally being, light, easy to cut, and somewhat usable as a structural element.

My point is essentially that there are no new problems here, just the usual problems that we already have regulatory frameworks to address. Sometimes those existing frameworks are imperfect, e.g. in some states, power companies can't charge large customers for many of the infrastructure upgrades needed to serve them.

There's no novel problem here that any particular industry would need to find novel solutions for. Just some states ought to tweak their rules about the costs of distribution infrastructure upgrades.

The rules shouldn't be specific to datacenters though; mechanics like Pennsylvania's "but-for" cost allocation make sense globally. If a new smelting plant requires upgrades to a substation, which wouldn't otherwise be necessary, the smelting plant should be charged accordingly.

Yeah - there seem to be a lot of pretenses which don't actually justify banning a particular industry.

If environmental concerns were the real issue, we'd be talking about how to tweak those regulations. If power distribution was the real issue, we'd be talking about the economics of power companies, and tweaking the rules about billing for infrastructure upgrades.

It's strange how we're suddenly talking about things like illegal concrete dumping, as if concrete foundations were somehow specific to datacenters, and not 99% of buildings built in the past century.

What do you mean? Proving things about sensitive data without revealing it is what ZKPs are for. If you mean that the tech isn't mature enough to be trusted yet, I think there's some truth to that, but it depends on what software we're talking about specifically. Zcash has been in production for almost 10 years now.

Right. Is your view that nothing can be done about the extortion? I think there are lots of ways other states could make it risky for ships to pay Iran; the US was at least attempting that before the MoU.