throw_pm23 (u/throw_pm23)

throw_pm23 commented on Where does air pollution come from? ourworldindata.org/air-po... · Posted by u/kamaraju

PeterStuer · a year ago

It is easy to be 'green' and 'net-zero' when all you do is exporting your polluting production elsewhere and importing the goods while leaving the dirt on the manufacturer's books, and trade away your own pollution with nifty 'carbon credit' scams.

Top marks for never curbing your consumption while claiming the superior virtue position.

Extra credits for wagging a damning finger at those 'polluters' that actually make and ship your stuff.

throw_pm23 · a year ago

The top ten countries by air pollution listed in another comment hardly produce anything the developed world uses, they mostly export natural resources.

throw_pm23 commented on xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B twitter.com/elonmusk/stat... · Posted by u/rvz

paxys · a year ago

Facebook is a product, Meta is a company. It was always weird to say Facebook in the context of Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus etc. Heck who even uses Facebook now?

throw_pm23 · a year ago

Yeah, I call the company Facebook, I don't care enough to follow their terminology, and I don't keep track of their products.

throw_pm23 commented on xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B twitter.com/elonmusk/stat... · Posted by u/rvz

gwbas1c · a year ago

I get a kick out of how the link in this story is "twitter.com" instead of "x.com".

Personally, I think everyone should just continue to say "Twitter."

throw_pm23 · a year ago

And Facebook instead of Meta, although if I think of it, I'd rather not say any of those in any context.

throw_pm23 commented on California bill aims to phase out harmful ultra-processed foods in schools thenewlede.org/2025/03/ca... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

Beestie · a year ago

I applaud the intent but the devil dwells in the details. I keep up with the latest nutritional gurus in the US and UK and even staunch advocates of abstaining from Ultra Processed Food (UPF) self-admit to having a very hard time defining exactly what that means. In addition, there are not a wealth of studies to support the harm of UPF - its mostly, avoid till more is known and educated supposition. This frustrates attempt to be precise about what's in and what's out.

Secondly, why push the deadline out to 2032. Start banning the clear junk next week. Ok, maybe it takes a while to hammer out a definition that works but start with simple rules - ratio of dietary fiber to total carbs <= 5; at least one fresh veggie and one fresh fruit per meal (fresh = not the canned in syrup stuff). CA produces a significant portion of US produce so should be somewhat easy for them. Not so much for Minnesota but baby steps.

throw_pm23 · a year ago

Even if there were no reliable studies, the precautionary principle would suggest to limit food that is highly processed and somehow of a novel form, very different from what was consumed in the past.

Anticipating a critical misreading, this does not mean that everything that was consumed in the past is automatically good.

throw_pm23 commented on The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants bfi.uchicago.edu/working-... · Posted by u/ryan_j_naughton

casey2 · a year ago

Restaurant dining rooms are a complete waste of valuable real estate. Everybody wanted to live like millionaires in the 50s without a thought for sustainability. Two hour drive into downtown to park your cat in a reserved spot and walk your wife and 2.5 children to their reserved seats, eat a 3 course meal with a waiter all for under 100 bucks including gas and tip.

It was never going to last. If you don't use your resources efficiently from the very beginning your country is going to stagnant

throw_pm23 · a year ago

I loved the typo "parking your cat" -- that would indeed be the height of decadence.

throw_pm23 commented on The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants bfi.uchicago.edu/working-... · Posted by u/ryan_j_naughton

vkou · a year ago

Is that more or less likely than the state deciding to block your access to freedom, and arresting and imprisoning/deporting you?

When you live in an authoritarian state with arbitrary law 'enforcement', the problem isn't the payment system that you're using. It's that you no longer live in a country of laws.

And that's not a problem that's going to be solved by using dead tree money.

throw_pm23 · a year ago

More likely, by a huge margin, since it takes only checking a box in some software system, whereas the alternatives you mention need a lot of messy work to achieve.

throw_pm23 commented on NIST selects HQC as fifth algorithm for post-quantum encryption nist.gov/news-events/news... · Posted by u/gnabgib

whimsicalism · a year ago

Give how quickly quantum is potentially coming, I wonder if we should/could find some way of using multiple quantum-resistant algorithms simultaneously as a default, in case a fault is found after the limited time we have to verify that there are no faults.

Also - should we not be switching over to these algorithms starting like... now? Am I wrong that anyone collecting https traffic now will be able to break it in the future?

throw_pm23 · a year ago

Sorry if my question appears ignorant, but how quickly is quantum really coming? If your prior belief is "nothing practical is ever likely to come out of quantum computing", then so far there is nothing that would seriously suggest you to reconsider it.

I do not say this lightly, having followed the academic side of QC for more than a decade.

throw_pm23 commented on Mysterious tunnels sketched by Leonardo may have been found cnn.com/2025/03/01/scienc... · Posted by u/simonebrunozzi

joarv0249nw · a year ago

Rembrandt van Rijn is known as Rembrandt. Vincent van Gogh is known as van Gogh.

throw_pm23 · a year ago

Yes, I guess in most of Europe the 200-250 years between Rembrandt and van Gogh is exactly when family names solidified from a simple description "the one from village X" or "son of Y" or "the one with a red hair" to become a hereditary name essentially detached from its meaning.

throw_pm23 commented on TeX Live 2025 Released texastim.dev/tex-live-202... · Posted by u/elashri

jf___ · a year ago

the masochism of latex is becoming increasingly irrelevant with every typst [1] release.

no going back once you experience realtime rendering of your document, and support in VS Code is stellar IMO.

[1] http://typst.app

throw_pm23 · a year ago

Typst may have its pros and momentum (I haven't tried it myself yet), but I find this attitude and language used by its proponents very offputting.

I've only heard Knuth and Lamport speak respectfully about the technologies that came before tex and latex.

throw_pm23 commented on US Ends Support For Ukrainian F-16s ukrainetoday.org/us-ends-... · Posted by u/ctack

this_user · a year ago

What alternative plan is there for them?

If the PRC should actually decide to invade, it is going to be extremely difficult to hold that off on their own for an extended period of time. Which means they need allies who can rapidly deploy a sufficiently large force to stabilise the situation.

But the only way to get there is with a naval force, and air supremacy would likely be critical to the outcome of that fight, which means you need someone with a large carrier fleet, and that is pretty much a pool of one.

Without US help, there is very little hope that Taiwan would not be overrun sooner or later. Their only real hope would be a nuclear weapons programme that would allow them to credibly threaten to nuke Beijing if invaded. But the PRC would never let it get that far and would make sure to strike before that could be completed.

throw_pm23 · a year ago

There is a trivial alternative that military strategists have been suggesting for decades. For a nation of 20+ M, having a reservist army of 1M would be feasible and make the island impossible to invade even if the rest of Earth would join forces to do that.