Yes, moving away from China
Were they "cancelling in-progress solar and wind projects and claiming the feds will never approve another green energy plant"? That's the "likely outcome" we're discussing.
Readit Newsburkaman commented on Grok Code Fast 1 x.ai/news/grok-code-fast-... · Posted by u/Terretta
China controls 80% of the supply chain for solar and has most of the rare earth magnets needed for wind. Since China is America’s bugbear and containing China’s influence is a bipartisan issue, this was a likely outcome whoever is in office
https://www.iea.org/reports/solar-pv-global-supply-chains/ex...
Of course, renewables aren’t the only source of energy
We don't have to guess what the most likely outcome might have been, someone else was in office 7 months ago so we can just look at what they were doing.
burkaman commented on 'Rocks as big as cars' are flying down the Dolomites bbc.com/future/article/20... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
I learned recently that parts of Malaysia are subsiding more than 20 times faster than Venice. Ground water depletion can cause a lot of issues and at least in theory we could stop that.
This is a problem across the whole planet: https://www.propublica.org/article/water-aquifers-groundwate.... One thing I learned from that article is that the California Central Valley is 28 feet lower than it was 100 years ago because of groundwater depletion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_land_subsidence).
had to check: toyota owns 5% of mazda which makes them the largest shareholder.
Technically a bank is a much larger shareholder (https://www.mazda.com/en/investors/stockinfo/situation/), but Mazda and Toyota have been collaborating for a long time with joint manufacturing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_Toyota_Manufacturing_USA) and technology sharing. Toyota has similar arrangements with other companies like Subaru and Suzuki.
Weirdly, the majority of the British public a) support age verification, b) aren't willing to use age verification themselves and c) don't think it'll actually work.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/britons-back-online-safety-acts-...
Reading the polling questions, it doesn't actually seem that contradictory.
> To what extent do you support or oppose the introduction of age verification checks to access platforms that may host content related to suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and pornography?
Most people say support, presumably thinking "yeah those things seem bad and kids shouldn't be able to look at them".
> How likely or unlikely would you be to submit any proof of age (e.g. a photo/ video, photographic ID, using banking information, digital ID wallets etc) in order to access... Messaging apps / Social media websites / Online discussion forums / User-generated encyclopedias / Dating apps / Pornography websites
"Ok no I don't like this method, and obviously I'm not going to submit a photo of myself to look at porn." I don't think anybody hearing the first question was thinking "yes I support age verification even if it means blocking Wikipedia".
> And how confident, if at all, are you that the Online Safety Act will prevent children and people under 18 from seeing illegal and harmful material online?
Nothing contradictory about supporting a policy that you don't think will completely work, especially after realizing that you yourself would probably try to get around it.
I think combining or switching the first two questions might produce very different results.
burkaman commented on The contrarian physics podcast subculture timothynguyen.org/2025/08... · Posted by u/Emerson1
> but was rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office on grounds of being a perpetual motion machine
The implication that being a “perpetual motion machine” is a specific reason for patent denial is kinda funny.
The patent office specifically calls out perpetual motion machines on their general "how to apply" page, presumably because they've gotten so many applications:
> A working model may be requested in applications for alleged perpetual motion devices.
burkaman commented on Lab-grown salmon hits the menu smithsonianmag.com/smart-... · Posted by u/bookmtn
From https://www.wildtypefoods.com/our-salmon :
> "We harvest the cells from our tanks and integrate them with a few plant-based ingredients..."
Gross. This should not legally be allowed to be marketed as salmon, at all.
I don't really care if it's called salmon or not, but why is that gross?
burkaman commented on Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team annas-archive.org/blog/an... · Posted by u/jerheinze
Openai need to train their models based on these books, not stackoverflow or reddit.
They do: https://xcancel.com/vxunderground/status/1888019174133276846, https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/9/23788741/sarah-silverman-o...
The tweet only names Meta, but it would be very surprising if OpenAI didn't do the same thing.
Yep. My city did a deal with Hyperloop to build an express airport train instead of contracting with a European or Japanese company. Hyperloop pulled out and now there is no train, what a surprise.
You might ask "why don't they just re-bid the contract?" Answer: The new 'progressive' city government is opposed to building a train for 'rich people' since there's already a non-express metro that goes through some of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods of the city. Of course no businesspeople use it and they all take Ubers (many of which are Teslas)
Are you talking about Chicago? An express train sounds great, they should absolutely build one, but I think you're being a little harsh on the existing train. By America's (very low) standards it is quite convenient. It is already much faster and cheaper than driving, I have never even considered taking an Uber and I'm not sure it would be worth paying much more for an express train.
> the US already has "facial recognition vans" on the road in the form of Waymos that will provide video to police upon request.
These seem meaningfully different than UK's facial recognition vans. The government has to request the footage from Waymo for a specific place/time. I don't think they can put in requests like "analyze all Waymo video data for this particular face and tell me where they were and when". It's much narrower in scope.
It is definitely different. I do think they could put in a request like "give me all footage between these hours in this area", and then do the facial recognition themselves.
It's conceptually pretty similar to cell tower dumps, where they ask for all data from a cell tower during a particular time frame. This was recently ruled unconstitutional (https://www.courtwatch.news/p/judge-rules-blanket-search-of-...), but they used it for like 15 years before that (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/how-cell-tower-d...). I can imagine blanket car footage dumps working for a similar amount of time.