NaibofTabr

redneck engineering energy

On May 22, 2010, now known as “Bitcoin Pizza Day,” Laszlo Hanyecz, the Florida man, agreed to pay 10,000 bitcoins for the delivery of two Papa John’s pizzas.

[…]

Nine months after the purchase, Bitcoin reached parity with the U.S. dollar, making the two pizzas worth $10,000. In 2015, the fifth anniversary of Bitcoin Pizza Day, the two pizzas were valued at $2.4 million. On May 22, 2024, Bitcoin was at just over $69,181 making the pizzas worth…you get the point.

https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoin-pizza-day-celebrating-20-million-pizza-order/

A ten-gallon hat on a one-quart head.

Now there are three of them!

Arch often seems to ignore the fundamental rule:

don’t break userspace

Linus is in the right. Arch developers are frequently in the wrong.

Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing to inform you of a fire that has broken out on the premises of 123 Cavendon Road…

Ah yes, finding the rotting corpse of a long-dead rat, maggoty and moldy, bones and fur and decay… much less disturbing.

Ah yes, finding a bloody rat screaming and twitching, trapped under the wire, its spine broken… much less disturbing.

Deflation increases the value of money vs. goods and services. As a consequence, deflation concentrates economic power in the hands of people who already have money.

If you have debt, deflation increases the value of your debt making it harder to pay off.

Deflation is worse.

It’s not just the convenience of running water, it’s all of the infrastructure around making sure that water is clean and safe, which involves government regulation and audits, massive engineering projects, a lot of maintenance effort and a considerable amount of tax dollars.

Just as an example, leptospirosis is a common bacterial contaminant in untreated water:

Signs and symptoms can range from none to mild (headaches, muscle pains, and fevers) to severe (bleeding in the lungs or meningitis). Weil’s disease (/ˈvaɪlz/ VILES), the acute, severe form of leptospirosis, causes the infected individual to become jaundiced (skin and eyes become yellow), develop kidney failure, and bleed. Bleeding from the lungs associated with leptospirosis is known as severe pulmonary haemorrhage syndrome.

If you go hiking in places like Hawaii (where the government gives a shit about public health) you’ll see warning signs about lepto around pools and streams because people have this delusional fantasy about tropical paradises with clean flowing streams. If you go hiking in other places the lepto will still be there but the warning sign won’t. Untreated, uncontrolled water is a hazard.

Everyone can’t be an expert on water sanitation. Employing some experts to provide that service for thousands or millions of people is a fantastic solution. It’s probably impossible to overstate how much benefit water infrastructure provides for society.

So I disagree with you. “Running water” (centrally managed water sanitation and delivery) is one of the best things human society has ever done. The benefit to public health is incalculable.

The only reason you might discount how much benefit you gain from this system is that you’ve grown up with it as normal. You’ve never had to worry about groundwater contamination, about boiling every cup of water before you drink it, about filtration or desalinization or testing for lead. Which is why I describe having access to this as a privilege - because we take it for granted.

it’s hard for people so used to the comforts of capitalism to realise this is actually luxury

being inside, seated comfortably, doing non-manual work, educated, can read, listening to music, this is a job better than 99% of people who have ever lived have had

Hell, if you’re in this situation you have immediate and convenient access to potable water in your living space. This is a level of privilege beyond almost every other human that has lived in all of history.

Would this mini pc be a good homeserver

For what purpose?

One of the biggest problems they would have is just pointing their communications equipment in the right direction. The Voyager probes have a complicated guidance system (AACS) which takes input from a three-axis gyroscope and several other reference instruments to keep the 3.7m antenna pointed at Earth. If the antenna goes out of alignment then the radio beam will not hit Earth and will not be received.

The only reason this works is that the Deep Space Network on Earth is actively listening for the signal from the probes, and the people operating it know exactly what direction to point the receiving antennae to get the signal from the probes. If you don’t have very precise targeting you probably won’t get the signal.

Next year Voyager 1 will reach a distance of one light-day from Earth and it’s already a very difficult problem that is only solvable because it was planned for extensively prior to launch, so never mind trying to accomplish this at a distance of hundreds of light-years with no planning.

This ^. You can think about a radio source just like a visible light source. It fades out over distance because the energy emission is spreading out. If there are other light sources that are of similar or greater strength between you and that light, it will be basically impossible to distinguish the one light that you care about from everything else.

Also, friends to plays with.

More information about this dangerous chemical: https://dhmo.org/facts.html

Slashdot?

Welcome back to the Dark Ages.

umm…