Readit NewsI don't know why "->" should render as an arrow when we could just use an actual Unicode arrow. If need be, have macros for your editors that allow you to convert the "->" into an actual arrow.
> have macros for your editors that allow you to convert the "->" into an actual arrow.
Or, as suggested here, use language macros:
#define → ->
sampo commented on Is Software the UFOlogy of Engineering Disciplines? codemanship.wordpress.com... · Posted by u/flail
> More than 20 years ago, I corresponded with famous UFO researcher Stanton T. Friedman. His central claim was that “the evidence is overwhelming that some UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft”.
I don't believe in UFOs. But if I had to believe in UFOs, this would be my position:
We have had modern humans for 500 000 years [1]. If it takes 10 000 years to make it from stone age to space age, we have theoretically had time to make that 50 times over. Maybe there was a previous version of a human civilization [2], then wiped out by ice ages or something, but a small number of highly advanced humans have survived and keep hiding from us. I think this could be somewhat more plausible than interstellar travel.
[1] Or maybe 1 million https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45510582
If India can have voters vote and tally all the votes in one day, then so can everyone else. It’s the best way to avoid fraud and people going with whoever is ahead. I am sympathetic with emergency protocols for deadly pandemics, but for all else, in-person on a given day.
> If India can have voters vote and tally all the votes in one day, then so can everyone else.
In most countries, in the elections you vote or the member of parliament you want. Presidential elections, and city council elections are held separately, but are also equally simple. But in one election you cast your vote for one person, and that's it.
With this kind of elections, many countries manage to hold the elections on paper ballots, count them all by hand, and publish results by midnight.
But on an American ballot, you vote for, for example:
- US president
- US senator
- US member of congress
- state governor
- state senator
- state member of congress
- several votes for several different state judge positions
- several other state officer positions
- several votes for several local county officers
- local sheriff
- local school board member
- several yes/no votes for several proposed laws, whether they should be passed or not
sampo commented on What is going on with all this radioactive shrimp? consumerreports.org/healt... · Posted by u/riffraff
Wikipedia page doesn't have any estimates on when the contamination event might have started (so products processed before that would be safe). It only tells that the food recall in the US started 2 months ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_radioactive_shrimp_recall
sampo commented on What is going on with all this radioactive shrimp? consumerreports.org/healt... · Posted by u/riffraff
What was the local impact of this pollution incident?
> "Some of the highest levels of contamination detected in the area were reportedly found in the company’s furnace, which is about 1.5 miles southwest of the BMS Foods facility where the shrimp was processed. Investigators think that radioactive dust was released into the environment after PMT inadvertently smelted scrap metal containing cesium-137. “Because it’s airborne, the contamination can be carried by wind,”..."
> Radiation scans revealed at least 22 plants in the industrial zone were contaminated. The Indonesian taskforce did not name the 21 other production facilities, but said they would immediately undergo decontamination procedures conducted by Indonesia’s nuclear agency.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/09/radioactive-sh...
The paper claims that 1/5 of people experience Long COVID after an infection. Given that approximately everyone has caught COVID by now, this does not track with how rarely I've heard of people with it.
Wikipedia lists much lower numbers on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_COVID (6–7% in adults, ~1% in children, less after vaccination.) and seems to use a more liberal definition than this paper, as it mentions "Most people with symptoms at 4 weeks recover by 12 weeks" (while the paper only considers it "long COIVD" if symptoms last past 3 months).
I've found studies (peer reviewed, as far as I can tell) claiming anything from well under 10% to well over 30%.
What's going on here?
> this does not track with how rarely I've heard of people with it.
Maybe you are not the type of person that people feel comfortable to share their health problems information with.
sampo commented on Climate goals go up in smoke as US datacenters turn to coal theregister.com/2025/10/1... · Posted by u/Bender
How else is the US supposed to keep up with China? They are building new nuclear + coal plants every week.
"There are no rich, low energy countries"
As of past 1.5 years, the use of fossil fuels for electricity generation in China seems to have reached a plateau. They are building new coal plants, more new plants than they are retiring old plants. But even with new coal plants, they have not been burning more coal.
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-...
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-china-is-still-bu...
sampo commented on All-natural geoengineering with Frank Herbert's Dune governance.fyi/p/all-natu... · Posted by u/toomuchtodo
Where did you find this? I don't remember reading about it - could it be in his son's books?
> Where did you find this?
I put together the pieces mentioned in various places in the first Dune book. Every step sounds good and plausibly science(-fiction)-esque when presented separately, like the book does. Only when you put all the steps together, the picture starts to look like an M.C. Escher drawing.
Our current age will show up in future ice cores as a massive spike; we affect CO2, Methane, Sulfates, and probably a lot more. Additionally we produce and have produced various synthetic compounds that will remain detectable in the environment for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions.
In order to circumvent this lack of evidence such a society would have had to had a very small footprint, taken very specific industrial steps, and had a focus on research that wasn't exploited. This is highly unlikely - most of our lessons have actually been learned from exploitation, and most of our research facilities require astounding amounts of labour to construct. This isn't even touching on the social improbability of maintaining such a society.
Absolutely. But are visitors from other star systems any less unlikely?