Daniel Marks

I am an engineer that makes open source hardware projects in my spare time. You can find my github with all the projects at:

https://www.github.com/profdc9

I wish to promote them because I hope the projects will be both practically useful and help engineering education.

I am amateur station KW4TI. Also, I am a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with experience in Optics, Radar, Electromagnetics, and Programming.

Public Key

npub1yc38uh2s6hsmdahp2lzj6rd4gfdvxft7l7hczlzzwwemj4l3jdkqyz8p0a

NIP-05 Address

profdc9_at_mastodon.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqszvgn7t4gdtcdk7ms403fdpk65ykkry4l0ltup03p88vae2lcexmqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsl83shf

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1yc38uh2s6hsmdahp2lzj6rd4gfdvxft7l7hczlzzwwemj4l3jdkqyz8p0a

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Last Notes

2025-07-04 19:44:57 UTC

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Enlighten me then.

2025-07-04 19:26:46 UTC

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You can care about abuse all you want. I don't condone that behavior either. However, caring alone does not stop catcalling or any kind of abusive behavior. If you want to stand up to bullies or abusers, you have to outlast them. Staying in a bubble doesn't do a thing for it.

2025-07-04 19:24:09 UTC

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Actually yes. Isn't that what blocking is for? Because there are people who aren't considerate or don't behave? Is the implication then, that if there was not a feature to block, then one would be required to moderate one's behavior, whereas with blocking you wouldn't be? Social media has people you don't like on it, and you don't have the right to dictate what they say. So are you enforcing your version of "moderation" on them?

2025-07-04 19:06:07 UTC

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I didn't tell you to leave. I said I don't understand why you are here. Maybe you don't really want to interact with people here if you are willing to twist words. If you insist on being right at the expense of being untruthful, that itself belies bad faith. At any rate, Mastodon already has a feature for you. You can block me or anyone else at any time you like.

2025-07-04 18:49:37 UTC

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I don't understand why you are on social media then. I understand you promote your Youtube channel here. I can not understand why those who promote themselves and become very public figures then complain when all of the responses to them are not positive. Some of the responses are certainly objectionable, but it's not reasonable to expect everyone to be reasonable. Mastodon is one of the more benign social media platforms but has its share of trolls, myself probably included now.

2025-04-12 19:57:22 UTC

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I wouldn't be surprised if they bring back execution by firing squad or some other grisly public spectacle in order to make a point. If they do, it may not be the point they are looking to make. The death penalty has never been a deterrent for crime but executing those for whom the public has sympathy definitely has made more than one martyr. If Mangione anticipated he would be executed for this crime, being executed only because he assassinated a CEO couldn't make his point better.

2025-04-09 13:40:12 UTC

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Xi can not afford to look weak, especially compared to Trump who is a buffoon. He can even use the tariffs to shore up his domestic support in opposition to an aggressive foreign power. It may increase his influence internationally because of the vacuum a USA that is hostile to trade leaves, so he can further form trade agreements and defense alliances.

2025-03-25 13:13:53 UTC

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Trump likes Orban, Erdogan, and Putin. It's just some Europeans he doesn't like.

2025-03-22 20:38:11 UTC

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No thanks, I don't need that. It's just more echo chamber BS, and there is already plenty of that on Mastodon. I don't need another "thought leader" in my life. I already got my own and that's enough.

2025-03-19 15:01:50 UTC

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The problem with Tesla is that Musk's debt is a big problem for the banks. You know the saying, if you can't repay a million dollars to the bank, you have a problem, if you can't repay a $100 billion to the bank, the bank has a problem? Well, Musk's creditors are now effectively his investors too and if they call in his loans, they will probably end up having to write off the debt. So they don't really have incentive to call in his loans.

2025-03-10 15:52:56 UTC

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I don't know if I would attribute this except perhaps to general market sentiment probably because of Trump's disruptive and chaotic economic proclamations. The market also tends to have highly correlated movements between stocks. In addition the market, especially the tech sector, has been extremely overpriced and due for a correction. If the earnings are affected that is a stronger sign of distress.

2025-03-08 00:50:45 UTC

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Generative Pre-Trained Transformers are what they claim to be... statistical models that predict the next word based on the previous words. Such a model is suited to make sentences and text that sound just like what they have been trained on, so much so that the mistakes are hard to distinguish from valid text. This is what makes them so dangerous in that their generalizations are "truthy" enough to be convincing but not reliable enough to be trusted.

2025-02-19 20:45:13 UTC

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AI is about the pretense of getting work done, not the value of the work.

2025-02-14 03:31:06 UTC

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I think you are attributing too much rationality their decisions. They just know: I hate the other guys, I want to be on the winning side. Vote for obnoxious orange man. They probably will never even know who made them poorer or caused their privations, because they don't make the connection to their vote.

2025-02-08 05:09:03 UTC

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Do you send the request certified mail to prove that your landlord received it?

2025-01-20 23:55:05 UTC

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It probably doesn't matter that much, but the impedance of the windings is supposed to be about 150 ohms (the geometric mean of 50 and 450 ohms). If the wires are 1 mm diameter, they would probably be about 3 mm apart. Looks close enough. I usually line up three wires in a ribbon the correct distance apart and wrap those around the toroid. If you're using an antenna matcher it will not matter. Here's some files I wrote on it:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwFicJLV0O4jbVBHQkg2c2w1aFk/view?resourcekey=0-XgxAnFnNatEH02La3qawqA
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwFicJLV0O4jOHpobkJYa0UxYXM/view?resourcekey=0-s8gkLBnYaVrO7rKxdMpDeQ

2025-01-19 22:39:58 UTC

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What kind of MOSFETs are being used, LDMOS or ordinary vertical MOSFETs? LDMOS should have a negative temperature coefficient limiting the quiescent current. With vertical you need to drive them very hard to make it negative:
https://www.onsemi.com/pub/collateral/and90187-d.pdf
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/857/412/263/145/177/original/a74afca5af0a17d0.png

2025-01-18 23:16:49 UTC

I built the Metermaker #diy #electronics project ( https://www.github.com/profdc9/MeterMaker ) for creating banks of digitally-controlled analog meters to give your #hamradio that old-fashioned look while allowing for all kinds of cool indicators. It also has an #audio #speaker input so it can do VU metering as well.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/851/901/394/383/451/original/de14c3ee2c5e7979.jpg

2025-01-08 02:23:06 UTC

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Yeah, but did only the 1% get the benefit of the growth?

2024-12-23 01:29:55 UTC

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You could get on-line with less memory once upon a time.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/699/539/536/823/426/original/ac44800d230d39e4.jpg

2024-12-22 20:13:20 UTC

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Do you know what happens to countries that don't preserve the life of their troops? They run out of troops.

2024-12-22 17:35:13 UTC

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A part of this discussion rarely mentioned is how we measure such intensive quantities such as specific entropy, pressure, temperature, etc. In reality these operate under non-thermal equilibrium conditions, and issues such as ergodicity and convergence of estimators of random processes come into play. It can be difficult to nail down what these mean except in idealized circumstances.

2024-12-20 04:44:39 UTC

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yeah you can basically override almost anything, so there are many ways to can have your classes work. which can be a problem because then "classes" means different things to different people, but it's a neat idea. For example, a table entries can be methods, and you can do polymorphism by using the same table entry in several different types of tables (objects).

2024-12-20 04:30:00 UTC

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lua is a very clever language that has been around a long time. It takes the sematics of scheme but uses infix notation. So functions are first-class objects, and you can redefined almost anything. A deliberate design choice that annoys me is that variables are global by default. That was done so it is a configuration language, but that seems to invite side-effects and debugging headaches.

2024-12-18 22:04:20 UTC

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I already have a Copilot when I program.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/676/085/410/581/793/original/4f720dd5e88cf83f.png

2024-12-18 18:00:50 UTC

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usually I'm ready for the world at about 14 AM or 15 AM.

2024-12-18 14:34:15 UTC

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He measured e/m which is the electron charge divided by the electron mass, and realized that this could only be constant if a given amount of mass carried a given amount of charge. This suggested charge and mass were carried together in discrete units he called corpuscles. When later the Millikan oil drop experiment measure quantized electric charge, the discrete electron was definitively identified. 103 years later the Higgs boson was announced.

2024-12-18 11:32:09 UTC

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Next are the carnivorous deer.

2024-12-17 12:43:20 UTC

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The courts are going to be full of lawsuits against the government. We are going to see so much venue shopping. It is going to strain the courts to the breaking point.

2024-12-16 17:55:34 UTC

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The question of can things be organized into oblivion has been answered in the affirmative.

2024-12-16 17:02:52 UTC

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How is this going to sit with his BFF Elon? The one with his net worth tied up in an EV company? Oh yeah, he's President now, throw Elon under the bus too.

2024-12-16 12:08:26 UTC

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Will there be anything worth watching on these TVs in 2025?

2024-12-15 23:05:21 UTC

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIty7RqbF9o

2024-12-13 17:54:31 UTC

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At least if the SEC can't prosecute him, Musk still screwed himself by offering a dope inspired $54.20 share price. He probably cost himself and everyone who backed him billions that way.

2024-12-13 00:23:59 UTC

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LLMs are glorified Markov Chains. Do Markov Chains reason?

2024-12-11 03:25:41 UTC

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I have two pieces of wood that move past each other, and that's a computer! Don't go wasting my time with your coconut nonsense.

2024-12-09 02:06:19 UTC

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What's a first? A functioning SCADA system, or a SCADA system as a storytelling element?

2024-12-05 14:45:35 UTC

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Maybe Doctorow will get a visit from the feds. I wouldn't be surprised.

2024-12-05 14:43:36 UTC

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Unfortunately there will almost certainly always be backdoors as long as they are an effective eavesdropping method, whether or not the government publicizes them. End to end encryption is necessary but not sufficient, as most devices like smartphones which implement them are too easy to compromise. Even heads of state have their traffic snooped.

2024-12-03 15:59:46 UTC

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commodity export bans are not very effective, see Russia and oil

2024-12-03 13:18:41 UTC

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It is OK to sell it if you list the bird flu in your ingredients? Now with extra immunological challenge!

2024-12-03 13:16:12 UTC

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Maybe they should buy the Charles Ponzi trademark and market using that too.

2024-12-02 20:28:48 UTC

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well if he objects to OpenAI becoming for profit, he should make xAI non profit.

2024-11-29 18:19:06 UTC

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being able to run a UNIX like system on my desktop at home, being able to develop in C, as compared to Windows 3.1. There were certainly pains (a.out shared libraries and jump tables anyone) but wow that was a huge step up. A couple of years FreeBSD followed once BSD4.4 was released.

2024-11-25 15:01:55 UTC

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This is just boilerplate ass covering.

2024-11-22 16:31:20 UTC

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At what point will Russians realize that these escalating measures are no longer a special military operation and the situation is not under Putin's control?

2024-11-21 16:03:59 UTC

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The produce industry may actually lobby for oversight if consumer confidence plummets so low it actually affects sales. Unfortunately this will not likely happen unless some die, and the Trump administration is going to be so corrupt and incompetent it will not be able to reimplement such monitoring. Then we will have so see if the administration can somehow spin the disaster as the fault of others. They somehow evaded blame for mishandling an epidemic.

2024-11-19 15:00:23 UTC

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Cortisol is a steroid and induces a stress response, depressing the immune system. Synthetic corticosteroids are already used for immunosuppression to treat autoimmune disorders.

2024-11-18 23:57:29 UTC

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So every frame of a movie will now have explosions, lasers, and chaotic superhero battles? I can't wait!

2024-11-18 16:45:46 UTC

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Hydrocarbon fuel energy density of 42 MJ/kg is difficult to surpass, perhaps only by liquid hydrogen, which presents its own difficulties.

2024-11-16 15:30:21 UTC

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This has been the case to some degree since the First Council of Nicaea when Christianity went from a faith of voluntary believers to a state-sponsored Roman cult.

2024-11-16 15:15:34 UTC

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In a world where knowledge is power, libraries represent a threat to authority.

2024-11-13 03:02:47 UTC

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We had better archive all of CDC's data regarding the bird flu before RFK destroys it.

2024-11-06 23:09:33 UTC

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Let's hope you're not in the same position as C. Everett Koop. You are not serving the public if you carry water for politicians who want to tailor science to support policy.

2024-11-05 21:36:37 UTC

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This is odd because NRO usually keeps a very low profile and for them to come out and say anything about their capability is incredibly unusual.

2024-11-05 02:41:09 UTC

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or different planets for that matter.

2024-11-04 19:10:07 UTC

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Lets hope this conservative Texas megachurch pastor doesn't have a scandal between now and the election.

2024-11-04 02:22:54 UTC

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Being an honest engineer is very hard these days because you are telling the truth to people who want to be lied to. They don't want to hear about problems, they want to hear about how they can make money and promote themselves. And if they are lucky by the times there's any problems they are long gone. So keep your head down, collect your paycheck, and let some other sucker try to right the ship. Being a competent engineer is pointless these days, as it only gets you in trouble.

2024-11-04 02:17:13 UTC

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I've worked with engineers, and there's always someone who promises we can make it 10 times as light, 10 times as efficient, save 10 times the cost, and do so at no additional safety risk. And then there's the guy who urges caution. And do you know who management listens to? When things don't turn out, and perhaps someone dies, do you know what happens to that engineer who just tells everyone what they want to hear? Squat. There's always someone willing to promise anything.

2024-11-04 00:24:52 UTC

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You know people fly in those planes, right? People who put themselves in danger and don't have to?

2024-11-04 00:19:51 UTC

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Nowadays its: "We're contractually allowed to have this much structural failure..." The word overengineering has disappeared from the lexicon.

2024-11-03 00:38:08 UTC

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Some clothes dyes are colorless in the infrared so that using a near infrared camera one can see through clothes dyed with them. This was infamous back in the 80s when some cameras had poor IR cut filters and people noticed this.

2024-11-01 14:01:48 UTC

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Yeah surprise, the guy who has implants on his store sign, implants on his notepads, probably is on the implants lecture circuit, and probably enjoys weekends with escorts provided by the implant manufacturers wants to give you implants. Get a second opinion!

2024-10-30 19:03:36 UTC

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He need not worry. Completely synthetic actors are on the way that are always available, obey without question, never need rest, and can be doing as many projects at once as you like. Given how wooden most Hollywood roles already are, the only thing likely preventing this is the need to conceal that the actor doesn't exist.

2024-10-30 15:30:43 UTC

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Shouldn't the President as part of his official duties send the National Guard to ensure a free and fair election in Virginia?

2024-10-29 18:07:34 UTC

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Leibniz also introduced dy/dx notation for derivatives. We use a lot of Newton's calculus (not fluxions) but Leibniz's notation.

2024-10-29 14:53:21 UTC

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In case you're wondering who the jack booted thugs are that will beat the shit out of you to perpetuate a reign of terror under a totalitarian regime, well, they're here and they've always been here.

2024-10-29 14:41:57 UTC

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He owns AWS that runs a lot of the Internet. It goes way beyond that.

2024-10-28 13:07:48 UTC

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Do you mean like this: Trump and his companions are your friendly neighborhood Republicans/Nazis promoting political engagement to ensure national strength, security, and stability. They are implementing a plan of reinventing government to be more agile, decisive, and efficient, root out the corruption hampering progress, and rebuilding a nation on a core set of principles that cut through the ambiguity and hesitation that prevents the nation from achieving its full potential.

2024-10-27 21:38:07 UTC

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Wealthy people used to have some notion that their wealth is of no value without those who provide labor and services in return for it. Billionaires now believe that they are sovereign unto themselves, and that governments allow them to act with impunity does nothing to dissuade them of this notion.

2024-10-26 18:59:52 UTC

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You can't win at the internet outrage farming game. Any response simply escalates it. The only winning move is not to play.

2024-10-26 02:05:52 UTC

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Yeah, but Internet infrastructure is pretty centralized. A concerted effort could be made to shut down access to instances.

2024-10-25 13:10:04 UTC

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My router runs OpenWRT, so Linux does run on 128 MB RAM. And I bought my router for $5 at a thrift store.

2024-10-23 15:45:50 UTC

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Did you use an electric arc furnace to melt it? Or a kiln?

2024-10-23 13:20:24 UTC

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Engineering has become another hustle economy victim. There is no point in practicing engineering well when management and customers can be snowed so easily by glib bullshit. The goal is then to get customers to commit to you using any means possible.

2024-10-23 13:12:59 UTC

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Maintaining engineering talent and organizations is expensive. If one must show increased profits every quarter, cutting this cost is easy as the effects are not felt immediately. Your successors will struggle to be competitive, but you get rewarded. Eventually the competitive advantages of the organization are gutted and the company is a shell with assets to be liquidated.

2024-10-23 00:58:20 UTC

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Can anyone get access to the data? For example, can someone request access to the data as evidence to exonerate themselves at a trial? I'm guessing no, it exists only for law enforcement to use as a cudgel.

2024-10-21 19:57:39 UTC

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This is good advice for anyone. It can't hurt and you may want to see the world someday, or at least some part of it other than where you are now.

2024-10-20 22:57:52 UTC

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It's their neighbourhood.

2024-10-20 16:01:56 UTC

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Just wait until you find out about the empty set.

2024-10-18 17:19:43 UTC

Because of the Puritan/Calvinist #work #ethics, so much #labor today is performative. Only a very small fraction of #productivity fulfills basic needs, but we must all appear #busy at work. So there are more #useless #tasks to be performed conspicuously and fill our #time. Because the work is not #necessary, it can include any amount of #bureaucracy and #politics and still fulfill its function as conspicuous labor. It also decouples labor and #value leading to alienation from work.

2024-10-18 11:39:46 UTC

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There can be only one.

2024-10-17 01:54:09 UTC

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This only works so much.

2024-10-16 16:11:45 UTC

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"Would you rather vote for a visionary conservative leader or the criminal prosecutor career politician?"
"Do you believe that illegal immigrants are being employed in industries where natural born citizens are also employed?"
"Would you like to see legislation that restrains medical personnel from terminating a pregnancy without a strict adherence to a standard of care that considers the rights of the child?"
Questions can be loaded to produce an answer twisted for any purpose.

2024-10-14 18:46:46 UTC

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We need a phone app and corresponding internet appliance to help us liquidate former Unicorn IoT startups. I call it "iVCMoneyDownTheDrain."

2024-10-12 22:55:29 UTC

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It's more important that it's cheaper to handle Putin now than later. Trump will give Putin what he wants because Putin wants it.

2024-10-10 12:26:20 UTC

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The Windows guy is more like the witch who lures you inside the ginger bread house and then stuffs you in the oven and turns you into dinner.

2024-10-09 17:54:37 UTC

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Law enforcement has already weighed the risks and decided that the damage that foreign espionage can do is less important than their need for domestic surveillance. This is likely because they don't see themselves as bearing the cost of the foreign espionage, or at the very least do not think they will be held responsible for it even if their surveillance systems enable such spying.

2024-10-08 20:13:19 UTC

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And to think, ST:TNG cost 1.3 million USD per episode or 3.5 million USD in 2024. The Acolyte is 22.5 million.
You could make six ST:TNGs for the cost of one Acolyte.

2024-10-07 14:20:23 UTC

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Many markets have already tried to separate grid infrastructure and generation, sometimes with spectacular abuse and failure of these markets (see Enron). But these can be separated to make investment in infrastructure separate from generation.
Someone has to pay for infrastructure. Unless renewables somehow obviate the need for a grid, those attached to it need to share in its costs.

2024-10-07 13:13:19 UTC

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The money paid to utilities is intended to maintain electrical infrastructure. If the cost was paid only in delivered power, the infrastructure maintenance cost per sold kwh would increase and increase as renewables are deployed, and the cost would increase rapidly for those who received grid power. This subsidy probably is abused by utilities but it is likely that any viable renewables generation grid will require a lot of infrastructure to route and store energy.

2024-10-04 16:45:50 UTC

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This is end stage ensh$tiffication where Google maximizes profits by collecting their cut of App sales while doing the minimum to ensure the integrity of the Play market. All of us Android users are going to learn the real cost of the OS as Google gradually monetizes every place an ad can go and every piece of personal information that can be exploited.

2024-10-03 18:03:48 UTC

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I think a lot of people will welcome Satan if he takes a seductive form.

2024-10-03 00:13:23 UTC

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The ads will increase until morale improves.

2024-10-02 23:54:31 UTC

I want to ask a difficult question. Here is a topographic map of the Asheville District. This, Swannanoa River Road, and other areas look like they were low enough to be flooded. What does it mean for city planning for areas like this to be vulnerable? Do large areas need to be set aside for drainage and flood events? I live near Chicago, and huge areas near the Chicago, Des Plaines, and Fox rivers would need to be set aside.
#asheville #climatechange #flood #helene #chicago
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/240/529/522/349/546/original/f02a3b64ef7f7dfd.jpg

2024-10-02 15:54:44 UTC

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I don't think Trump employs any conscious strategy. He just says whatever he thinks is true or wants to be true or is convenient at the time. He has an instinct to attack. Calling it any sort of rhetoric dignifies it with undeserved credit.

2024-10-01 19:26:56 UTC

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Pay no attention to the humans behind the curtain.

2024-10-01 17:10:16 UTC

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This is Google's desperate attempt to wring a few dollars out of advertisers delivering ads to people who are actively seeking to avoid them. This doesn't bode well for Google's profitability if they have to pick this fight. They can certainly force the situation but it's just a show for the stockholders and what good will remains will fade away.

2024-10-01 12:56:49 UTC

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The grim truth is that the only thing that motivated a genuine effort to reach the moon and produce the ICBMs was existential fear of a worldwide takeover by Communism. With that not very likely anymore these programs just become pork barrel grift. So many military "moonshot" programs: F35, Zumwalt, Littoral Combat Ship become expensive boondoggles because success is not an option.

2024-09-30 20:05:24 UTC

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why would he do this? It's not like the UK Press is the only means that embarrassing information can leak. Is his injunction through the Official Secrets Act? It would either imply a serious breach of security or abuse of secrecy classification to cover up potential misconduct.