Skip Navigation

Posts
25
Comments
1,511
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • There is a real reason that the caps are painted. Glass beverage bottles are usually stored in a crate and grabbed from the top, so the design on the lid is what restaurant or store employees used to distinguish what drink is contained within it. This allows employees to distinguish similar-coloured drinks (e.g. Coca-Cola vs Pepsi or two different brands of beer) just from looking down at the top of the bottle.

    But there probably is a way to paint them without using plastics

  • Something can be both shocking and uplifting, can it not? If I found out I won the lottery tomorrow then that would be both shocking and uplifting.

  • Parent commneter implies that people who consume soft drinks or alcohol aren't concerned about their health because these beverages are not healthy

  • Odd. I would have thought that the paint, being on the exterior, wouldn't leak into the beverage contained inside the glass.

    But apparently, they found that blowing air over the caps reduced the amount of detected contamination by 60 per cent. So it seems like an easy fix that manufacturers can implement inexpensively (literally just an electric fan)

  • This is a fantastic idea. The brilliance of the 47th president strikes again. Give them work permits, ensure they are paid a fair wage and the labour standards are adhered to, and it will guarantee that they become hardworking honest taxpayers who contribute to the American economy.

    Wait, that is the plan... right?

    Right...?

  • The Chromebook does exactly what it says on the tin. It is a cheap notebook which runs Chrome. And it's fairly competent at that task. It's exactly as advertised. The problem only arises when people think that the ability to use a Chromebook is acceptable as a substitute for the ability to use a normal computer.

  • The Chromebook does exactly what it says on the tin. It is a cheap notebook which runs Chrome. And it's fairly competent at that task. It's exactly as advertised. The problem only arises when people think that the ability to use a Chromebook is acceptable as a substitute for the ability to use a normal computer.

  • This is at least true in China. Chinese Internet censorship is quite famous but if you have a foreign SIM then you are not subject to the firewall.

  • Permanently Deleted

    Jump
  • No, I go online and just order another one for same-day pickup from a local electronics retailer. Then I restore my files from my backup.

  • I hate the line of thinking that says Israel must be defended at all costs because it's the "only democracy in the Middle East". While that might technically be true, democracy itself doesn't make a country's government worth defending if the people in that country are always voting to massacre the people next door.

  • I agree with that generally, but what "methods that work" do you suggest?

    Edit: To add, the protest spoilt ballots and low turnout in Hong Kong did exactly what they were supposed to do. It convinced other Hongkongers that the elected Legislative Council is not legitimate and was installed, not elected. This is particularly troublesome for the Government, because Hongkongers have a famous tendency to protest, and sometimes rather intensely.

  • I'm trying my best not to call you names here, but the point of that exercise was not to exert democratic power but to cause embarrassment for the Government. The Government tried their hardest to make it look like a legitimate election but got utterly humiliated instead with low turnout and large numbers of spoiled ballots.

  • No, because the spoiled ballots are, in many cases, actually counted. This is what people did in Hong Kong when the Government imposed electoral reform designed to prevent pro-democracy and localist groups from winning. Since it was illegal to tell people to not vote (pro-democracy groups had urged a boycott), people showed up to cast spoiled ballots. That election had among the highest numbers of spoiled ballots in the region's history.

  • Then spoil a ballot, write in a nonsensical candidate name, or vote third-party. If you refuse to vote your action is literally indistinguishable from someone who has no opinion at all.

  • If this law is enacted, the Supreme Court will say that states can't frustrate the operations of federal agents with these sorts of laws. Chief Justice Roberts will write the opinion and compare it to giving states the power to ban bulletproof vests from being worn by federal law enforcement and call it "a step from anarchy". Clarence Thomas will then write a concurring opinion saying that federal agents acting on orders from the president should actually be immune for any type of civil or criminal liability for any of their actions, lawful or not.

    Then, when a Democratic president takes office the court will walk it back and say "well, actually, there's this exception, and this exception, and that exception..."

  • It would be cringe if you were using a shared server and set this as a default for everyone or if it was interfering with something. But if you're just minding your own business I could not care less what customisations you put on your terminal as long as it isn't using excessive resources

  • Heroes

    Jump
  • There are some languages that use strictly phonetic writing systems. Cherokee (indigenous American language) and Esperanto (constructed international auxiliary language) come to mind, but I'm sure there are others. None of the major world languages (English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Russian, Standard Chinese) are perfectly phonetic.

  • Heroes

    Jump
  • French people will see a 10-letter word and pronounce it as a single syllable. No language is particularly good in this respect, English is just the most common target of criticism for this

  • It's not an LLM, but Stockfish does use AI under the hood and has been since 2020. Stockfish uses a classical alpha-beta search strategy (if I recall correctly) combined with a neural network for smarter pruning.

    There are some engines of comparable strength that are primarily neural-network based. lc0 comes to mind. lc0 placed 2nd in the Top Chess Engine Championships in 9 out of the past 10 seasons. By comparison, Stockfish is currently on a 10-season win streak in the TCEC.