relativitypro's comments

relativitypro | 5 years ago | on: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

1. This dumping was litigated in the 60s and happened before this 2. You can’t predict the future 3. This is the efficient market at work, don’t solve any problem until it becomes a social, political or environmental reality you can’t legalese your way around.

relativitypro | 5 years ago | on: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

1. Saving human lives may not be the best metric (given that even this metric is evolving in time, and I claim unknowable) 2. The green revolution benefits were several orders more significant, and will be seen as the spark that enabled climate change. Responsibly using technology is our biggest task.

relativitypro | 5 years ago | on: The world needs nuclear power and we shouldn’t be afraid of it

“Renewables” doesn’t address climate change, low carbon grid-scale power does.

relativitypro | 5 years ago | on: Dr.Mario 64's gzip implementation is taken almost verbatim from gzip source code

Screenshot displayed seems generic coding style.

relativitypro | 5 years ago | on: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

Yes. We do many worse things to ourselves, and they have all the potential and realized risks that nuclear promised. The only difference? We’ve been inundated with ads from the coal industry.

Deaths from nuclear power, including all the heritable effects from all nuclear accidents, are less than all power sources except hydro.

relativitypro | 5 years ago | on: Tech firms face growing resentment of parent employees during Covid-19

Well. I’d like to have had kids, and am jealous of those that have. While the pandemic is a curveball, people With kids are investing in their future and continuing their families. I think the frustration comes from the perspective that your personal life is enriched with kids, while some of the pressing daily grind is put off your shoulders. It isn’t humane to say, but it also isn’t meritorious.

relativitypro | 5 years ago | on: CNN reporter arrested live on air while covering Minneapolis protests [video]

Cannot be the right call. The tax payers lose in the coverage and they lose in the lawsuit.

Having police officers paid so little that you put up with 18 violations, or willfully ignore them out of comraderie is fundamentally a system that is not sustainable or worth having pride over.

relativitypro | 5 years ago | on: US Secret Service: “Massive Fraud” Against State Unemployment Insurance Programs

I guess the equitax data breach will lead to real consequences. Just not for equifax.

relativitypro | 5 years ago | on: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

Is this your env or you? Chances are you are a Silicon Valley native, and you have at least 4-5x the reaources and advantages of kids on average in the us. Many don’t or can’t go to college, not because they wouldn’t if they were you, but because they can’t because they aren’t you.

relativitypro | 6 years ago | on: Nearly half of global coal plants will be unprofitable this year

Energy markets are highly subsidized, in China too.

To have this discussion, one needs to include information about the entire energy market. If you heavily subsidize low-no carbon footprint sources, you devalue the others.

Additionally you need to separate base load sources from load following sources. Load following coal plants might be more prevalent by number (ie 95%) and in direct competition with natural gas. The smaller the total energy output the more competition you have from solar and wind, which are highly subsidized and reduce margins.

Reuter’s would do better to give this proper context.

relativitypro | 6 years ago | on: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators

Saying it is easy to ramp up machinery implies that it actually is... while your point that human capital is more valuable than tools is correct, ask yourself why a sophisticated pump costs 10k$ and requires a medically trained person to operate it.

There is a lot of money to be made by keeping these barriers in place, through legal, technical means and by limiting people’s access to “experts” that know what to do with them.

relativitypro | 6 years ago | on: The U.S. tried to build a new fleet of ventilators

This seems to be the cutting edge of capitalism, emboldened by legal force and lobbying.

Once you allow incumbents to rewrite the rules, they will do so to entrench and enrich themselves.

“Too big to fail” “Too big to jail” “Lower interest rates to fix covid-19”

relativitypro | 6 years ago | on: Nuclear energy is a vital part of solving the climate crisis

You had me at nuclear, and lost me at technology that won’t ever be licensed by the nrc in the next 20yrs. How will you save the climate?

relativitypro | 7 years ago | on: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

Proper time is an invariant that could be used for this... still corrections apply (as you suggest, for the two observers).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_time