There is so much coal. There is at least 130 years worth at current consumption levels. And despite what everyone says about renewables and green energy and etc, world use still hit a high in 2024. We aren't going to run out of (coal at least) for a long time--and usage is still going up!
Also, China and India are both doubling down on coal after the Iran Crisis as their Coal Gasification [0] strategies [1] were made for this kind of supply chain risk in mind.
I feel like I am taking crazy pills. Are we really having an AI fart around with a mouse and clicking on things to accomplish stuff because we're not capable of making one kind of software query and command another piece of software? It kind of boggles my mind.
To the first point, why use AI for end-to-end testing at all? The main app I work on has accessible buttons, menus, etc, that can all be found deterministically, why waste the money having AI try to figure it out and possibly lie about the results?
What isn't part of the software? Can they just install as much garbage they want to, as long as they claim it is part of the "browser"?
Also, scale absolutely matters. If I pull up in front of your house and say "hey, mind if I park here?" and you say yes, then I park, walk away, and 10 minutes later park a fleet of 18 wheelers in front of your house, you're going to feel like I wasn't...entirely forthcoming about what I intended.
Routine corporatism and fascism is shameless to the point of being ho-hum these days. When the president has his own cryptocurrency and the federal government buys stock in this and that company for "strategic reasons", you're looking at a dystopia.
This is a strong thread that's needs to be plucked on again and again and again.
Cory Doctorow had an excellent thread yesterday that touches on this:
> You could be forgiven for assuming that this is just about reining in Wall Street greed, but that it isn't an especially political maneuver. That's not true: antitrust is the most consequentially political regulation (with the possible exception of regulations on elections). Every fascist power defeated in WWII relied on the backing of their national monopolists to take, hold and wield power. That's why the Marshall Plan technocrats who rewrote the laws of Europe, South Korea and Japan made sure to copy over US antitrust law onto those statute-books.
The well moneyed interests are getting everything they want, for the faintest little bribe. For showing the obsequiousness, for showing fealty to the regime.
The monopolization of power, allowing markets to en taken over by worse and worse foes of democracy, needs to be stopped. Needs to have some limit. The post talks about how:
> Under the Correcting Lapsed Enforcement in Antitrust Norms for Mergers (CLEAN Mergers) Act, any company that was acquired in a deal worth $10b or more will have to break up with its merger partner if it turns out that these mergers were "politically influenced."
I suspect the accelerationists, who appear more fascist aligned, are the ones upset by this. They go so far as considering regulation a form of murder.
This is probably seen as a win for the Bostrom crowd and the more sane people in the middle. The issues to tackle are incompetence and corruption and that has little to do with AI.
I use a lot of rechargeable AAA and AA batteries. They have lower voltage than alkaline batteries (by design apparently), which is not normally an issue, but sometimes is a deal breaker. E.g. my thermostat did not like lower voltage AA batteries and shut down prematurely a number of times.
There's challenges adopting standardized rechargeable batteries, e.g. trying to recharge alkaline batteries risks fire/explosion (and you know that will happen far too often given the number of people out there), but if we have had standard battery sizes, voltages, and capacities for rechargeable batteries, things would be so much better.
Probably not by design. Battery peak storage levels are set by chemistry, and not really subject to tweaking - which is why there are tons of 1.5 V battery types, but not a single 2.0 V battery out there.
Well I don't know of people claiming that microplastics are "killing us", there are dozens of papers that implicate microplastics in negative health effects from hearts to intestines, to sperm.
There are a lot of studies that find correlations, and then are studies like this one that show that the direct introduction of microplastics alters cell functions negatively:
I think at this point we should stop talking about how "there's no data" or "no studies" and "no one has shown" and graduate to "oh, maybe should figure out the extent of the damage."
Microplastic pollution is a global problem amongst a whole host of global pollution problems. We'd do well to try to figure out how bad it is, because it isn't going away. Oh, and we should probably work on fixing all of our pollution problems, especially cumulative ones like this.
I understood that article as there being many bad studies on how much plastics are in our body. But I find it highly unlikely there isn't any plastic in my body, from my toothbrush or chewing gum or water bottle or that old black plastic spatula I fry my eggs with or the air that pushes all kinds of particles into me etc. etc.
And studies like your parent comment's https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12692081/ make it seem likely that they could have some negative effect. So I'm not worried about it, but I also find it a good idea to be cautious (maybe I'll avoid heating food in plastic containers) and for there to be more research into it.
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