rm_dash_r_star

joined 2 years ago
[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I think sci-fi has it right with that, I mean you'd only get up out of your chair or whatever receptacle to perform bodily functions. Most people think everyone would turn into fat blobs, but I think that's not the case. There's this one sci-fi where I think they got it right, most people became emaciated due to a failure to eat and get any exercise.

Oh and I'll take the blue pill, VR all the way, reality blows. Though some might say reality is already virtual. It's an interesting hypothesis, sure would explain a lot.

[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I would say this is likely not a practical super conductor… But it may well be the first ever room temperature super conductor.

Yes of course it would be a big deal if they create one to begin with. However if it's difficult and expensive to produce, that's not much help. It has to be mass producible and inexpensive to have industrial significance. I mean we already have expensive solutions. Don't need any more of those.

The first semi-conductors were not practical either, but we can all see where that led!

I don't know that semiconductors are a good parallel. Growing the crystals dates back to the early 1900s and was never an expensive or technologically difficult process. Doping silicon to create devices like diodes and transistors was something new, but was not exceedingly expensive or a great technological challenge. The migration to chips which require lithographic doping was more of a challenge.

In any case semiconductor devices were practical shortly after development. One of the first consumer products that used them was the "transistor radio" which was inexpensive and came out shortly after invention of the technology.

[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 24 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

A practical superconductor is a huge deal, it would drastically change the way we deal with electrical power distribution and electromechanical applications. So any development is going to be big news. Though we're not talking about an actual working conductor, it's just excitement over research advancement, yeah? I've seen this kind of "big news" before in other tech sectors and time often proves it unworthy. If it does present a big step toward a practical superconductor that's great, but I wouldn't count any eggs yet.

[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 31 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Microsoft’s name was basically equivalent to dogshit from the mid-90s until maybe the mid 2000s.

I'm old enough to remember well the Microsoft hate. It's not so much they've changed their ways, but Google has now taken the trident and diverted attention away from them.

[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 36 points 2 years ago

Dogs were instrumental in early human survival and they've benefited for it. There's almost a billion dogs in the world, but only a quarter million wolves. So in a natural selective sense that was a good move wolves made by becoming companions with humans.

Behavior has been bred into dogs going way back to the beginning. Fetch is one of those behaviors. I recently watched a documentary that showed the unique interaction of dogs with humans. Dogs are really good at understanding human body language. For example you can point at something and a dog will cue on it. No other animals reliably respond to that gesture, even chimpanzees which are genetically closest to us.

[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 4 points 2 years ago

uBlock Origin forever and always.

Haha, most important program on my computer. My browser is a uBO support system.

[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

I’ve already seen many commercials using what is clearly AI generated art and voices

I've been noticing that as well, freaky.

[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 14 points 2 years ago

I've ripped a good number of blu-rays to network storage. If you're looking for older, less popular stuff it's the best option. And older releases are usually just a few bucks. The new stuff I torrent because I can usually find a decent rip, but for stuff I want to put in my library a rip from optical disk is the best, but not free of course. You can even do it for free, public libraries often have a good collection of older releases on optical disk.

[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago

Would this potential superconductor work in devices like phones and laptops? Would it lead to more efficient operation?

If inexpensive it could be used in power components for consumer electronics like phones and laptops, but wouldn't make a huge difference since most of the power consumption occurs in chips and displays where superconductors wouldn't apply. Though it could lead to some reduction in size and better efficiency. Battery operated devices are considered low power. High power applications are where superconductors offer the most benefit.

[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 21 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Yeah nobody is all bad, even Reddit.

[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 50 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

That's good they won't be adopting WEI, but if my bank or some other critical site decides to enforce a desktop browser with it, I'm still in the same boat. I did think of a way to avoid a WEI browser on my desktop if it comes to that. I can probably substitute a phone app for any critical services, but that's still a drag. I don't like phone apps much, I use a desktop browser for everything.

I think Google's destruction of the Internet is most simply a matter of influence. If Chrome didn't have the huge market share they wouldn't be able to pull off this kind of thing, open source or not. Unfortunately people have a herd mentality with everything on the internet so we allowed it to happen by doing what we always do.

[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

A conductor with no resistance is a big deal for many electrical applications. Electrical resistance is often a big part of design. Removing that aspect changes things significantly. Electrical power losses and the size of conductors can be greatly reduced.

I've read lots of unsubstantiated claims about superconductors. A solution has to be producible in quantity at a reasonable cost. Otherwise it's not going to be a breakthrough. I mean we currently have expensive and bulky superconductor solutions, but they're limited to applications where it's reasonable such as MRI machines and particle accelerators.

An inexpensive room temperature superconductor would make the most difference in tech sectors such as power transmission, electromechanical, and power electronics. These are areas where power loss due to circuit resistance is a big part of design. The impact would be minimal for computing and logic. There may be areas where power loss can be reduced, but logic relies on semi-conductors which must have resistance to function, it's in the name. The term "semi" implies resistance.

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