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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: September 2nd, 2023

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  • There’s going to be some fuzzy math hidden behind that article, I’d only expect a 9x difference when comparing lemons with melons, new small electric cars vs older non-hybrid SUVs for example. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they also ignored less favourable conditions like highway driving or colder temperatures. How they came by their numbers is mostly opaque, but I suspect that this source is pretty biased.

    I do believe that if you need a new car and if you can charge at home, that EVs should now be a no brainer for most people. I just don’t believe this article.



  • The best succinct description of llm that I’ve read was “plagiarism machine”, because that’s basically what they are: automated plagiarism. At best they create a collage of other works, at worst they copy one work verbatim, but they never create something original because they can’t.

    Copying something is a lot easier and thus cheaper than creating an original work from scratch, so genuine creators cannot hope to compete on cost. Which leads to less people being able to afford to earn a living from creating works, which leads to less original works being created.

    Short term that’s great for the neoliberal company executives: fire the expensive artists, create cheap slop with the plagiarism machine, and thus maximize profits now. That the plagiarism machine becomes stagnant because not enough new original works are being created is a future problem, by which time the current executives will have already jumped ship.

    But while it’s great for the neoliberal business model, for the rest of society it will suck. So now that we have confirmation that the AI executives know how bad their products are, and that they were just publicly lying about it in the style of tobacco executives, will anything be done about this “astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions”? Personally I doubt it, there’s too much regulatory capture.










  • The OP’s images are doctored, but regardless of those, I believe that there has been a real large increase in nighttime lights in the last few years, at least since North-Korea started getting paid by Russia for helping fight Ukraine. The large increase doesn’t seem to be caused by increased night time activity, but rather by making illumination itself the goal. The new NK night time lights aren’t from traffic/gaudy commercial light displays/street lights/random late sleepers/…, but rather from illuminating a bunch of normal buildings from dusk till dawn on the outside. Getting internationally humiliated by the dark night time photos must have hurt someone’s feelings.

    A June 2026 picture of the NK border town Sinuiji, taken from the Chinese side of the river:

    My source of the photo: https://www.rfa.org/english/korea/2026/06/27/north-korea-solar-plant-boom/ The theory that NK is doing these illumination projects purely to appear brighter on photos is entirely my own. I see it as Potemkin villages in a modern jacket.



  • In southern Europe AC is common. In northern Europe floor heating with a central heatpump system seems to be the most common solution for new builds (in the part of Europe I know at least), but it was unfortunately seldom installed with cooling ability. New builds in northern Europe are very well insulated, and double glazed glass with a low solar transmission factor is common, as are built-in blinds. Proper ventilation was an issue when we first started with insulating and sealing everything up, the rules have since been made more humane, but imo still too focused on mechanical solutions.

    Every new build/renovation has to have an energy + ventilation study done and meet certain minimum standards. The result of that study is prominently featured on any immo platform, so renters know what to expect.

    But when it’s 35+ °C outside for several days in a row, those new builds without active cooling still get too hot. Our legislation simply hasn’t caught up yet. When it gets that hot, people now often make due with mobile airco units to keep a few rooms livable, which is silly for a home that’s only a few years old imo. We should have been prepared for this, we knew it was coming :)