Mad Max nailed it: gasoline is where it's at when the shit hits the fan. Without gasoline, you're on foot, and that just sucks for all kinds of reasons.
Yeah, I withdrew about $500 in cash as the storms approached, but more importantly I secured supplies of water, gasoline, and non-perishable food.
Even though we could have driven out the morning after the storm (we were lucky, the 1/2 mile of old trees along our road didn't block us in), we didn't have to. Even though the gas stations were still pumping, we didn't need them. Even though we were able to run the generator to keep the freezer going for a month with the stockpiled gasoline, that wasn't really necessary because of the store of canned and boxed foods. We use propane from big tanks to cook all the time - the only thing that really changed after the storm was the lack of air-conditioning, but the generator was big enough to run a strong floor fan, so that was liveable. And we never lost 4G data, so I did hotspot into work from a laptop once or twice, just because I could.
Point being, if you're self-sufficient for a week or more (and not located on an isolated island, up the self-sufficiency requirement about 10x there...), then you don't really have to worry about cash, check, credit card or bitcoin. Even if you have the money, often times the stores will be stripped of goods, gas stations unable to pump due to lack of electricity, roads impassable or otherwise dangerous, etc.
Money is worth quite a bit less during storm-crisis situations, just have the goods you need on-hand and save the money for when it is back up to normal value. And... don't stockpile stuff that's not readily consumable as part of normal life after storm season passes - that 15 gallons of extra gas in the garage is going in the cars for normal use come November.
Gold is very valuable because people have, throughout the past many hundreds of years, considered it very valuable. The fact that it is hard to mine, relatively easy to refine and store, etc. does help, but in the end the value of gold comes down to people's willingness to pay for it - and that willingness to pay for it has much more to do with its historical value than its current and future intrinsic worth, it's just a financial investment.
Bitcoins have negative intrinsic worth, but they've managed to hang on as the "cybercurrency of choice" even while they are hardly differentiable from dozens, maybe hundreds of alternate blockchain based cybercurrencies. The only thing propping up bitcoin is people's willingness to continue paying for it and mining it. It's worse than betting on Coke or Pepsi. But, then again, plenty of people got stinking filthy rich by investing in Coke, or Pepsi.
It's not just the raw CPU processing power, it's also the sensors and specialized data reduction front-ends (FPGA) - sooner or later they'll get out of FPGAs, but with the rate at which these things are developing/changing, they'll probably stay re-configurable for awhile.
There's rings, and then there's RINGS. Jupiter has rings, too.
Topic switch: seems like the hundreds of dwarf planets in the far reaches of the solar system would be an interesting setting for a future fiction universe - one without FTL travel, transporters, etc. All you would need out there is a fusion power source to replace the sun, and I'm guessing that there's plenty of water hanging around in pockets out there.
These constructions reduce the frequency of flood damage, but when they fail the areas they protect are generally unprepared for the failure - and the failure tends to be dramatic.
They also have (heretofore) unforeseen consequences with respect to deposition of sediments, shoreline erosion patterns, etc.
It is an expensive solution, both in up front and (punful) downstream costs. Simply moving high density development away from the low lying areas is far more economical.
Not just in taxes and politics, marketing is at its core influencing, and influencing is deception. If influencing were not deception, it would be the fair and balanced presentation of all known facts, backed up by diligent and unbiased thorough research. While much marketing takes on the appearance of a fair and balanced presentation of all known facts, the fact is: those "facts" and their presentation are biased to the benefit of the employer, if they're not, the marketers are not doing their job (serving the share holders) to the best of their ability. Marketers are retained based on performance, and the marketers who perform the best are the ones who influence customers to the benefit of the company.
Who in their right mind would stand up and be accountable for operations that exceed their personal fortune by factors of 1000s? What possible form of compensation could be adequate for such liability?
Yes, corporate operations transparency and accountability are great measures to improve the current situation. Unfortunately, we're more likely to get gun control and single-payer health care passed first.
Not just cost, but also operational complexity / opportunity for failure.
If you make two "gravipods" and tether them, theoretically they can spin and achieve whatever force you want on the occupants - longer tethers mean lower RPMs for the same force, but no matter how you configure it the whole thing has to be stronger to withstand the forces, and docking with something spinning like that isn't nearly as easy as 2001 made it look.
This has been known forever, but is hideously expensive and complex as compared to a non-spinning solution.
Take two ISS modules, put them on a tether and spin, what could be cheaper? Nothing... until you have an operational snafu that destroys the whole thing.
Failure in space is not considered an option, anymore.
Maybe, but someone paid $700 for one and gave it to us... it was a really nice device for a couple of years, and built like a tank, unbreakable even by 7 & 9 year old boys using it unsupervised. There's no (justifiable) reason why it had to "upgrade" its software into an unusable state - the software worked just fine before they revised it.
We got later iPads, but they were physically fragile - kinda taking a break from the whole tablet scene with the kids now.
Yes, Sputnik was scientific, so calling Vanguard-1 the first scientific satellite is a little reaching.
Preening over who was first - 60 years later - when a mere 164 days separated their launches, seems like way too much vacuous national pride for a healthy perspective on anything.
In the larger corporate world, the distinction between created and bought becomes less clear or important.
In the act of acquisition, you often "rebrand" the acquired talent under the corporate identity. Sure, YouTube was initially developed outside Google, but many of the developers remained after the acquisition, and YouTube hasn't been a static entity since acquisition - what it is today is heavily shaped by Google.
Just because some guy in a coffee shop sketches an idea on a napkin, and that idea goes on to be developed by a startup and that startup gets bought by a large corporation and that corporation develops and grows the idea into a much larger global business - doesn't mean that the corporation didn't bring the idea to you. All credit does not reside with the napkin sketcher.
But, yeah, historically YouTube was pretty big before Google helped them to muscle out the competition.
AI has been overhyped since the computer in Willy Wonka refused to tell where the golden tickets were...
Now that it has been monetized, the people selling it are going to hype it up like everything else that gets sold for profit.
Also, of course, "Machine Intelligence" isn't the same thing that we consider human intelligence to be. And, no, they're not likely to go SkyNet on us (anytime soon), but the Flash Crash of 2010 was a small taste of how AI can, and does, affect our lives, and as AI gets more integrated into more aspects of human endeavors, the unpleasant surprises will be getting bigger and more impactful.
Makes sense that 3, the more significant figure, correlates to month instead of day.
I thought there should also be a special moment of celebration:
Month 3
Day 14
Hour 15
Minute 92 - toughie, do we go for 92.6539% of the hour at 3:55:35.54 ?
so, what do we do at that moment? Something that relates the radius squared to the area of a circle would be appropriate. As the tau punks point out, circumference to diameter is kind of clunky.
We participated in a test market of this concept in 2003. Place order online, food arrives direct from the distribution center in refrigerated truck next day - friendly service man puts on paper booties so as not to mark up your floor and delivers the groceries straight into your kitchen - letting themselves in is a new twist, but otherwise the same concept.
It could work, I feel like the grocery chain we trialed with aborted the program because it would have lessened their brick and mortar presence in the market area - potentially stunting their growth. The charge per order back then was $10 - on a $300 or $400 order of groceries, I'd say that's more than worth it.
I think WalMart will abort the program because they'll lose "K-Mart effect" tack-on sales. Go to the store for milk and juice enough times and most people will end up also buying a $50 lego set for the kids, a $60 PS4 title, a new HD tv set, and a couple of potted plants for the balcony.
It's not approximating bullshit, it's straight up species based racism/bigotry. Which is how things have always been, and is a big part of the macro attitudes that allow exploitation of the natural world to a point that we're going to collapse its ability to support the human race. But, hey, that's mostly my grandkids' problem, why should I even care?
Looked more to me like he spotted the sparkles of laser on dust in the air and traced that back, but, yeah, many many things could have happened. (though, visual acuity is probably one advantage humans have over cats...)
Slashdot Mirror
Mad Max nailed it: gasoline is where it's at when the shit hits the fan. Without gasoline, you're on foot, and that just sucks for all kinds of reasons.
Yeah, I withdrew about $500 in cash as the storms approached, but more importantly I secured supplies of water, gasoline, and non-perishable food.
Even though we could have driven out the morning after the storm (we were lucky, the 1/2 mile of old trees along our road didn't block us in), we didn't have to. Even though the gas stations were still pumping, we didn't need them. Even though we were able to run the generator to keep the freezer going for a month with the stockpiled gasoline, that wasn't really necessary because of the store of canned and boxed foods. We use propane from big tanks to cook all the time - the only thing that really changed after the storm was the lack of air-conditioning, but the generator was big enough to run a strong floor fan, so that was liveable. And we never lost 4G data, so I did hotspot into work from a laptop once or twice, just because I could.
Point being, if you're self-sufficient for a week or more (and not located on an isolated island, up the self-sufficiency requirement about 10x there...), then you don't really have to worry about cash, check, credit card or bitcoin. Even if you have the money, often times the stores will be stripped of goods, gas stations unable to pump due to lack of electricity, roads impassable or otherwise dangerous, etc.
Money is worth quite a bit less during storm-crisis situations, just have the goods you need on-hand and save the money for when it is back up to normal value. And... don't stockpile stuff that's not readily consumable as part of normal life after storm season passes - that 15 gallons of extra gas in the garage is going in the cars for normal use come November.
Gold is very valuable because people have, throughout the past many hundreds of years, considered it very valuable. The fact that it is hard to mine, relatively easy to refine and store, etc. does help, but in the end the value of gold comes down to people's willingness to pay for it - and that willingness to pay for it has much more to do with its historical value than its current and future intrinsic worth, it's just a financial investment.
Bitcoins have negative intrinsic worth, but they've managed to hang on as the "cybercurrency of choice" even while they are hardly differentiable from dozens, maybe hundreds of alternate blockchain based cybercurrencies. The only thing propping up bitcoin is people's willingness to continue paying for it and mining it. It's worse than betting on Coke or Pepsi. But, then again, plenty of people got stinking filthy rich by investing in Coke, or Pepsi.
It's not just the raw CPU processing power, it's also the sensors and specialized data reduction front-ends (FPGA) - sooner or later they'll get out of FPGAs, but with the rate at which these things are developing/changing, they'll probably stay re-configurable for awhile.
There's rings, and then there's RINGS. Jupiter has rings, too.
Topic switch: seems like the hundreds of dwarf planets in the far reaches of the solar system would be an interesting setting for a future fiction universe - one without FTL travel, transporters, etc. All you would need out there is a fusion power source to replace the sun, and I'm guessing that there's plenty of water hanging around in pockets out there.
Levees and vaults are great, until they fail.
These constructions reduce the frequency of flood damage, but when they fail the areas they protect are generally unprepared for the failure - and the failure tends to be dramatic.
They also have (heretofore) unforeseen consequences with respect to deposition of sediments, shoreline erosion patterns, etc.
It is an expensive solution, both in up front and (punful) downstream costs. Simply moving high density development away from the low lying areas is far more economical.
Not just in taxes and politics, marketing is at its core influencing, and influencing is deception. If influencing were not deception, it would be the fair and balanced presentation of all known facts, backed up by diligent and unbiased thorough research. While much marketing takes on the appearance of a fair and balanced presentation of all known facts, the fact is: those "facts" and their presentation are biased to the benefit of the employer, if they're not, the marketers are not doing their job (serving the share holders) to the best of their ability. Marketers are retained based on performance, and the marketers who perform the best are the ones who influence customers to the benefit of the company.
Free market + free speech = freedom to deceive.
Who in their right mind would stand up and be accountable for operations that exceed their personal fortune by factors of 1000s? What possible form of compensation could be adequate for such liability?
Yes, corporate operations transparency and accountability are great measures to improve the current situation. Unfortunately, we're more likely to get gun control and single-payer health care passed first.
Not just cost, but also operational complexity / opportunity for failure.
If you make two "gravipods" and tether them, theoretically they can spin and achieve whatever force you want on the occupants - longer tethers mean lower RPMs for the same force, but no matter how you configure it the whole thing has to be stronger to withstand the forces, and docking with something spinning like that isn't nearly as easy as 2001 made it look.
This has been known forever, but is hideously expensive and complex as compared to a non-spinning solution.
Take two ISS modules, put them on a tether and spin, what could be cheaper? Nothing... until you have an operational snafu that destroys the whole thing.
Failure in space is not considered an option, anymore.
IBM is ready for you, have at it: https://quantumexperience.ng.b...
That's free access to a 20 qbit machine via the web.
Maybe, but someone paid $700 for one and gave it to us... it was a really nice device for a couple of years, and built like a tank, unbreakable even by 7 & 9 year old boys using it unsupervised. There's no (justifiable) reason why it had to "upgrade" its software into an unusable state - the software worked just fine before they revised it.
We got later iPads, but they were physically fragile - kinda taking a break from the whole tablet scene with the kids now.
They sure as hell made the iPad One obsolete within 3 years of launch, entirely via non-optional software "upgrades."
Yes, Sputnik was scientific, so calling Vanguard-1 the first scientific satellite is a little reaching.
Preening over who was first - 60 years later - when a mere 164 days separated their launches, seems like way too much vacuous national pride for a healthy perspective on anything.
In the larger corporate world, the distinction between created and bought becomes less clear or important.
In the act of acquisition, you often "rebrand" the acquired talent under the corporate identity. Sure, YouTube was initially developed outside Google, but many of the developers remained after the acquisition, and YouTube hasn't been a static entity since acquisition - what it is today is heavily shaped by Google.
Just because some guy in a coffee shop sketches an idea on a napkin, and that idea goes on to be developed by a startup and that startup gets bought by a large corporation and that corporation develops and grows the idea into a much larger global business - doesn't mean that the corporation didn't bring the idea to you. All credit does not reside with the napkin sketcher.
But, yeah, historically YouTube was pretty big before Google helped them to muscle out the competition.
The whole exercise is good training for Internet users in general:
You can't trust the first thing you read on the Internet - even if you see it repeated 100 times.
Sources matter.
After the double bird strike put Sully in the east river, a shocking number of birds were killed in response.
If you only look for roaches, you will still find some evidence of rats, ants, and any other infestations.
On the other hand, if you only look in the kitchen, you are unlikely to find the dragons living in the basement.
...crickets...
AI has been overhyped since the computer in Willy Wonka refused to tell where the golden tickets were...
Now that it has been monetized, the people selling it are going to hype it up like everything else that gets sold for profit.
Also, of course, "Machine Intelligence" isn't the same thing that we consider human intelligence to be. And, no, they're not likely to go SkyNet on us (anytime soon), but the Flash Crash of 2010 was a small taste of how AI can, and does, affect our lives, and as AI gets more integrated into more aspects of human endeavors, the unpleasant surprises will be getting bigger and more impactful.
Makes sense that 3, the more significant figure, correlates to month instead of day.
I thought there should also be a special moment of celebration:
Month 3
Day 14
Hour 15
Minute 92 - toughie, do we go for 92.6539% of the hour at 3:55:35.54 ?
so, what do we do at that moment? Something that relates the radius squared to the area of a circle would be appropriate. As the tau punks point out, circumference to diameter is kind of clunky.
You think this is for the solar CEOs? Man, pull back one layer of onion and I already smell big oil here.
We participated in a test market of this concept in 2003. Place order online, food arrives direct from the distribution center in refrigerated truck next day - friendly service man puts on paper booties so as not to mark up your floor and delivers the groceries straight into your kitchen - letting themselves in is a new twist, but otherwise the same concept.
It could work, I feel like the grocery chain we trialed with aborted the program because it would have lessened their brick and mortar presence in the market area - potentially stunting their growth. The charge per order back then was $10 - on a $300 or $400 order of groceries, I'd say that's more than worth it.
I think WalMart will abort the program because they'll lose "K-Mart effect" tack-on sales. Go to the store for milk and juice enough times and most people will end up also buying a $50 lego set for the kids, a $60 PS4 title, a new HD tv set, and a couple of potted plants for the balcony.
It's not approximating bullshit, it's straight up species based racism/bigotry. Which is how things have always been, and is a big part of the macro attitudes that allow exploitation of the natural world to a point that we're going to collapse its ability to support the human race. But, hey, that's mostly my grandkids' problem, why should I even care?
Looked more to me like he spotted the sparkles of laser on dust in the air and traced that back, but, yeah, many many things could have happened. (though, visual acuity is probably one advantage humans have over cats...)