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I scrolled through the resulting cruft with all of the attention that its full-screen headings commanded. I did not watch the video.

I have no idea what the concept aims to improve, why it is useful, or how it is an advantage over any other concept.

Help?

How does a person get started on working with it?

It was ~$22 back in August of '24. It is ~$66 today in November of '26. That's ~3x in a little over two years; that's fairly excellent.

If he had a magic looking glass and sold at the recent-ish peak of ~$120, then that'd have been even better. But it's still a very good (potential) return if he still holds it today.

Casinos are awesome! So welcoming. :) (/s)

We produce a lot of oil in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_extra...

I decided I was going to sneak onto the floor anyway.

So I positioned myself to be ready for the lights to drop as the opener, Rasputina, finished up and I hopped over the bar and tried to disappear into the crowd on the floor below.

It didn't work. I was instantly spotlighted by a man with a flashlight. Someone else grabbed my shoulder and corrected me by indicating rather forcefully that my intended destination was not the mosh pit, but was instead the entrance gate at the back of the arena.

They didn't kick me out, but once we got back to that quieter area I was informed that since I didn't have a ticket to be in the pit, then I was definitely not going to be in the pit. I was further made aware that I would not be trying this kind of thing again.

So I sauntered back to the assigned seat that I started from and watched the show from there, where some usher became increasingly livid at the despondent teenagers who were smoking cigarettes at a rock show in the 1990s (but who was apparently powerless to do anything about it).

The show was good. I'd seen it before, and I would also see it again.

---

That was almost 30 years ago. Certainly, some aspects have been lost to time.

Was it Harrisburg? Maybe it was Pittsburgh. It probably wasn't Wheeling -- that show was differently-memorable because I had Gideon's bible in my pocket and people were getting arrested for throwing snowballs at the Christians who were holding a vigil across the street, with candles, as they prayed for our souls. It might have been Wheeling anyway.

And the usher? I definitely remember issues between smokers and an usher. But maybe that guy was at a show somewhere in Ohio instead.

Did I make my move during Rasputina, or maybe it was some other opener? Was Rasputina even at that show? (Maybe it was unrelated to the opening act?)

I do know that I hopped over a barrier and immediately got sent to the back, and that's the important part of the story that I wanted to convey. The rest is just context.

And the trick is to just fill in enough believable details about that context that the story works. (It's even easier if you believe those details yourself.)

IIRC it didn't work with a CRT using MS operating systems after Windows 2000 due to driver changes or something.

But Timex also a sold little single-LED blinkenbox that plugged into an RS-232 port that would do the trick. That was intended for computers with LCD screens like laptops, but it worked with later operating systems too.

Their names were Kim, and Pinky. Kim was the wife and Pinky was the husband.

I haven't ever gotten into it myself, but I had a DSL connection that would go wonky on sunny evenings due to an increase in reception of a nearby AM radio transmitter that drowned out the useful signals. (Amusingly, the hardware on my end provided charts that pinned down the frequency perfectly.)

That circuit had lead sheathed cable for part of its path. After one call to retentions, I had an AT&T convention at my house once or twice per week.

They were all in uniforms, driving fancy logo'd trucks. They all failed to make it work correctly.

Until one day, some dude with facial piercings who was dressed like me in jeans and a black tshirt showed up. I don't know what back office they pulled this guy out of, but he insisted that this was his problem now, that he was the most qualified person to correct it, and that he would be working on it until it was identified and fixed, and that he would begin as soon as he went back to get a bucket truck.

I don't know what all he got into. He worked until well after dark. And then he came back to the door and pronounced with great confidence that he had found an issue with some old lead sheathed cable and corrected it, and that this would absolutely resolve my problem.

And it did. 10/10 stability after that.

(Shoulda kept his contact info. He'd have been a good one to hire.)

The Magnusson Moss Warranty Act protects against that kind of thing.

If you modify function A, and then make a claim for warranty service for a defect in unrelated function C and they don't want to cover that because of the modification, then: The onus is on the warranty provider to prove that your modification of A caused the defect in C before denying the claim.

And they know this. The first layer grunt on the phone or in the chat box may think it is some other way but the larger organization definitely knows what their responsibilities are.

In this way, grid power could come and go rapidly and the switches wouldn't even notice. There there was no handoff, or switchover time. The chemical batteries just changed from being held at a steady SoC to being discharged, which is something they can do without complaint or interruption. KISS.

After that, at least for the AT&T-built central office down the road from where I grew up, the generators would engage and keep things going indefinitely (or until fuel ceased to flow).

The VRADs scattered around the city included a battery that worked for as long as it worked. But I never did discover how long those batteries would last, because AT&T brought portable generators out to supply power to their VRADs.

I kept my end alive with the portable generator that I was using intermittently for everything else along with the backup battery that the modem came with.

The VDSL circuit never dropped during those two weeks -- and yes, I read the logs afterward with some astonishment. :)

(Since the RF environment was extremely quiet, wifi had fantastic range. I opened up an SSID for anyone within earshot to use and some folks actually did use it.)

---

Fast forward a dozen or so years. When the power dips in my neighborhood, the cable network drops out with it. So, sure: I've got a small UPS for my little stack of network gear, but fat lot of good that does when there's nobody for it to talk to.

And I've got ways to use LTE/5G as a backup, but the performance of the cell network also nosedives at that same time. It's not clear to me if that's due to a service interruption or instead due to everyone's pocket supercomputer switching from wifi to cellular data, but whatever the cause: It turns pretty useless.

(I'm on FTTH fiber now but it's only been a week. We'll see how it does the next time there's a power issue.)

In all of my decades I recall only one telephone outage one time, at home. A truck (or something) had snagged a line feeding the house. It was repaired less than an hour after reporting it.

And I'm nostalgic for that kind of reliability, but it's gone now.

I was chatting with a tech who was installing a new county 911 system a few weeks ago. There was a time, not so long ago, when 911 had been robust: Fixed circuits to multiple different areas (to walk around network issues). Slow, redundant, robust analog modems on leased lines for caller data and call control. Eventually, things like PRI or T1.

Either way, there were great racks of redundant gear at the 911 PSAP for managing calls.

But now? It's just VOIP over the public Internet. 911 calls get the same not-special class of service that posting this comment does. The huge gear-filled racks are gone. In their place is a router and a switch, and a collection of dispatch PCs.

(There's a backup IP connection, of course. This backup connection uses cellular data.)

It's just a bit of temporary[1] redundant local infrastructure that is hopefully never used at all, and when it is used it won't be used for very long. The fuel will remain available for as long as any of us reading this are alive.

The price of the fuel may go up (it probably will go up), but it doesn't really matter much at this scale whether it costs $25 per day to run or $100 instead -- the power grid will come back online soon enough.

[1]: It's a backup generator, not an heirloom. In 50 years, people will look at that old thing and laugh at how interesting its archaic nature is. They might tinker with it. They might give up and have Jeb haul it off as scrap. And that's all fine, too.

For me where I am, things are different. We don't get hurricanes here.

Our longest power outages tend to follow ice storms. We need heat because these things happen in the winter time when it's cold outside, and that's dangerous for various human and infrastructure reasons (pipes freezing and breaking).

But I use natural gas for heat and I don't recall ever having a weather-related natural gas outage. So that's helpful. And ice storms tend to happen when it's cold, but not damn cold -- that helps, too.

My furnace uses about 600W of electricity while running. It does not run all the time. According to my charts on a random day/night cycle last February with a high of -8C and a low of -16C, it was running with an average duty cycle of about 30% over that period.

600 Watts × 30% × 24 hours = around 4.3kWh for that 24-hour period, just for heat.

I'll also need to keep the fridge cold, and some lights running, and will surely be getting some use out of a laptop and some network stuff.

A common-enough home battery size is 48v, 100Ah, or 4.8kWh. They cost around $1,000 right now (some more, some less) in DIY-friendly shapes.

As a spitball effort: If I live more-conservatively and dial back the thermostat (it is a power outage, after all), I can probably get enough power to live a productive, comfortable-enough life on one such 4.8kWh battery, per day. Ish. If I'm careful.

So for batteries, alone, I'm at $1,000 per day. I'll need an inverter as well. That can be either minimal or extensively integrated, grid-tied or not, solar-accepting or not, and etc. Let's just pin that at $3000, with the wiring and accoutrements, and assume I'm doing the labor for free.

I'm now at ~$10k to survive a week of power outage at home in the winter on batteries alone. That's expensive[1], yes, but a whole lot less than half a million bucks. A whole lot less than a very nice, installed, low-RPM generator, too. :)

...except, realistically: It's more like $13k for a week, because future-me will surely not be as careful with energy use as present-me suggests that I should be and 3 more batteries adds some safety capacity. :)

---

And that can be supplemented. Solar input can obviously be used (if available), but may be limited by winter sunlight conditions and storm accumulation.

Gas-fired generators can also be used. An inexpensive-ish portable inverter generator does the trick well when combined with, say, an EG4-6000XP do-all inverter.

That particular inverter wants to see at least 2 of these batteries connected, so let's play with that minimum: 2 batteries, 1 inverter, 1 generator. ~1.4 batteries worth of load every 24 hours, as with the safe $13k figure above.

The generator can be run pretty hard (it has a continuous max rating for a reason), and it can be run intermittently. The EG4 allows programming of generator input power.

So let's pick a generator: Champion 201509. It can do 7kW continuous, and we'll load it to 75% of that, or 5,250 W. From this 5,250W, it provides for the house's present consumption while it runs, and it restores the charge of the two batteries to 100% SoC[2].

If it is run once per day, it can do this job in about 2 hours and then be switched off until tomorrow.

If it runs like this once per day for a week, I guesstimate that it uses about 11 gallons of gas over this week. That's a very manageable quantity of fuel.

So we're at $2k for batteries, $3k for inverter+stuff, and $2k for an appropriate generator. That's $7k to run ~indefinitely, or as long as I can keep bringing in fuel, with enough power to survive a blackout (with heat, lights, refrigeration, some entertainment) long-enough on batteries alone for the roads to become passable and then decide if I'm making a run to fill up the gas cans with fresh fuel.

Not so bad for a relatively quiet time of living in a temporary blackout, and the house gains a gains a big UPS for some stuff (which is nice). (The installed gear also offers an easy entry into solar power.)

But I'm not in hurricane country. And while I do love me some aircon, our summers are pretty survivable, usually. My needs are not the same as your needs are. :)

---

[1]: Except, for the price of this kind of self-sufficiency: Draining/blowing out the plumbing and staying at a hotel or with friends/family for a few days in an unaffected area might be a better option. The cheap portable air compressor I have doesn't leak down at all, so it's always got a full tank of air while just sitting there unplugged. I'll figure something out: Power outages are very quiet, creative times.

[2]: 100% SoC? Yep. It's a temporary blackout where the batteries are operating as a UPS, not a long-term operation where the typical 20%-80% SoC goals are important for longevity. They won't stay at 100% for very long, anyway.

I do wonder if the relative inaccessibility of negative feedback paths is due to malfeasance/dark patterns/whatever or just stupidity, though.

If the purpose of YouTube is to show ads to people (it is), then that means maximizing viewership. In this way, it doesn't really matter what people are watching as long as they're actually watching it. More hours of streaming consumption = more hours of ads viewed, and the clock doesn't care if it's positive and enjoyable content or rage-inducing clickbait.

So with meaningful feedback, the good stuff should be able to float up to the top. That would gain viewers, which gains ad placements, which gains money. Everyone wins.

---

Unless, of course, I'm wrong about society. Maybe the majority of potential viewers really do enjoy sitting around and being angry and/or fearful, and find some kind of emotional reward by being incensed.

And clearly, some are: Switching on an AM radio in Anywhere, USA demonstrates this well (the vitriol is off the charts).

I'm just not willing to accept that this represents most people, at least not just yet.

(But if that is an accurate portrayal of the state of things, then: Ragebait means more viewers and more dollars. And thereby, there can be no hope for the platform ever recovering at all. If it pays more to get worse, then it shall simply become worse.)

Number might go down more. Number might go up more. Number might even be a better buy today than yesterday, or number may be far worse.

1.25 is still a number. It hasn't burst.

So you elect to raise some money by selling portions of that thing.

You mention this to me and it turns out that I'm more interested buying partial ownership of that thing than I am in retaining my own pile of money.

We haggle on price, and capabilities, and projected economics, and whatever else.

Eventually, we come to an agreement wherein:

You agree to sell me 10% of the thing, and I agree to pay you 1 million dollars for that 10% share. We know, with precision, that the value of that portion is 1 million dollars because that's what you and I agreed that it is worth.

This can be extrapolated to show that the thing (all 100% of it) is valued at 10 million dollars.

---

And this value can change over time. If the next buyer likes the thing even more than I do, then they might be willing to pay even more for a chunk of it and the valuation therefore trends upward beyond 10 million. But if they instead like it less, then the valuation can decrease to below 10 million.

At some point, if the thing is performing well, maybe I can sell my 10% share for 2 million dollars. I hypothetically walk away from it with an extra million bucks that you'll never see, but this sale increases the valuation of your thing.

Or maybe the thing turns out to be a bust, and the best deal I can get by selling my 10% share is fifty bucks from some dude with a pickup truck and a back-yard scrap metal operation. The valuation of your thing is now clearly in the toilet, but you get to keep the million bucks I gave you (or whatever it was you spent it on). I lose $999,950.

Good video, with a positive combination of presentation quality and a topic I enjoy? Watch it -- maybe now or later, but it gets watched. Thumbs up. Maybe even subscribe. That's what I'm there for.

Mediocre video, whether due to content or presentation? Watch parts of it, but probably not with any sense of completeness. No rating.

Bad video, with content I don't enjoy or with off-putting presentation? Stop watching. Thumbs down, and/or back out to use three-dot menu and "Not interested"

Bad ragebait scaremongering video with emotionally-distressing title? No watching at all. Three-dot menu and "Don't recommend this channel."

---

I get a lot of good stuff. Some mediocre stuff. Very little bad stuff. Almost zero ragebait.

It works well enough that an unfiltered, logged-out view of YouTube is completely and utterly appalling by comparison. That place is fucking awful without training.

(And no ads, because ads have never been a thing for me on YouTube and I experience no compulsion to change that.)

> The ChatGPT maker’s latest funding round values it at $1.25 trillion, less than its $1.4 trillion target

Java Monster Triple Shot Mocha comes in a can, and has 300mg of caffeine per can[1][2].

This seems to suggest that getting the equivalent of 3 cups of coffee in one can is, in fact, a thing that people can accomplish.

[0]: https://www.aboutcoffee.org/beans/decaf-coffee/ https://ific.org/resources/toolkits/caffeine/ https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...

[1]: https://www.monsterenergy.com/en-ca/energy-drinks/java-monst...

[2]: And they're delicious

But do the reviews of a ghost kitchen differ in these ways compared to a sit-down restaurant? If not, then: They each have the same reputation to build and uphold -- whatever that reputation is worth.

It can be easier to rebrand a ghost kitchen than to rejigger a restaurant to do other things, though. For instance: The decor doesn't even exist, much less match a certain theme.

A ghost kitchen can also do many things at once that would not traditionally fit together in a single restaurant.

I think that might be part of what some find off-putting, but there's no conceptual reason why the same location can't make awesome New Haven wood-fired pizzas, Texas smoked beef ribs, and Philly cheesesteak sandwiches on the same day. It can work as long as the volume supports each of them well-enough that they can retain workers who are able to master these things well-enough to keep a good reputation going.

It's just a building with a kitchen, and that kitchen does not have a size limit. It can do many styles of cooking at once.

And when compared to having several different sit-down restaurants to operate, management can be more-centralized while also keeping them closer to the work. This can improve quality and reduce costs.

(That doesn't make me a fan of the idea. I'd rather go to a restaurant and sit down than have anything delivered, aside from things that travel well. Pizza, BBQ, and cold subs can travel extremely well, for instance, while french fries and burgers usually turn into sadness in minutes. But other people want whatever they want and that's fine too.)

It looks like they normally sell for around $200: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=NUC11TNKi3&LH_Sold=1

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

Do we not have the freedom to be impulsive?