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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • In the moment, yes.

    However, the longevity of digital data is problematic. Computers have existed for less then a 100 years, but you’d already be hard pressed to read the data off a deck of punch cards or reel of magnetic tape.

    Modern protocols and formats are much more complex, so I’d say that reading your data in 100 years will be harder then reading 100 year old data today. Have a look at a pdf in a text editor. Imagine trying to figure that out once the documentation is lost. (… or stored in the pdf)

    Without continual efforts to convert data or preserve hardware and software, the data will be lost.

    Compare that to written documents. We have writing that’s thousands of years old, and it’s still legible and understandable. We have paper documents about as old as we’ve been able to make the stuff.









  • I don’t think tiktok is worse then any other large platform. All platforms have brain rot, all platforms have dumb challenges and all platforms do a lot of spying.

    I’d hope this is just a freakout about someone else spying, but It feels like an excuse to start banning a whole bunch of stuff for flimsy reasons.

    … and as for the spying itself, I would be far more worried about my local government getting that data then China. I don’t live anywhere near China, what are going to do? Sell me stuff? like google does?







  • Not directly. That electricity is converted to heat when it’s used: All devices are space heaters, some just do other things as well. Even if not used, it would still be converted to heat by the panels. There’s no getting around the conservation of energy.

    In theory, we could send that power out into space as microwaves or light, but in practice the effect would be negligible. The direct heat output of every human activity is nothing compared to the sun: All the electricity generated on earth is around 3 Terrawatts, while the sun hits us with 200 Pettawatts, 66 thousand times more.

    On the other hand, burning fuels releases gasses like CO2, which can traps sunlight and creates thousands of times more heat than the actual amount of power generated. If we stopped burning fuel, it would stop the current massive increase in global temperature, which would then slowly be reversed by things like the carbonate-silicate cycle.