don_esteban

6 ms·

1.
by don_esteban 21d ago
This. You could probably count 100+ people in the death zone of the border crossing video alone. The final death toll will be terrible, with most never found.
2.
by don_esteban 23d ago
Timely contribution from BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62m4zn1q6mo :-)
3.
by don_esteban 23d ago
That factory looked like it employed a lot of easily replaceable manual work. You don't have to replace 100% of workforce, replace just the ones whose work is the easiest to do by a robot. Replacing 50% of workforce buys you enough ti
4.
by don_esteban 23d ago
One of the (many) areas in which China is doing great is industrial robotics. Not the fancy dancing dogs, but robots that replace workers in factories.
5.
by don_esteban 25d ago
There is no choice. The Ukraine is bleeding and getting destroyed, day by day. And things are getting worse, by Russian reciprocal responses, for every escalation success Ukraine has achieved. Recent examples: Attack ships in Azov sea ->
6.
by don_esteban 25d ago
Hmm, 19 calories per day is well within the margin of error when calorie counting.
7.
by don_esteban 25d ago
This is very west-centric view. The countries of the south on the receiving end of US/western 'help' have been disabused of viewing US as 'a shining city on a hill' by their own experience, long time ago. They saw C
8.
by don_esteban 25d ago
There is no 'if' for 'the US can't/wont provide security'. Just look at the Gulf countries (or Ukraine, for that matter). The whole 'security' was by intimidation, there is no actual meat on that bone
9.
by don_esteban 25d ago
if they route your requests via their cloud, they have you by the balls, that's the whole point
10.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
There are also other areas, maybe less abstract, but still very much of the same flavour - emotional/social intelligence - musical - physical (as in being able to do various physical activities competently, without much, if any, traini
11.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
> Yes, it is, and the reason people fail with it is not because calorie counting doesn't work, but because people's maintenance calorie estimates are often poor. I would have thought that it would mostly be because they can&#x2
12.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
Nah, what changed is preponderance of highly processed junk food. When I lived, in my childhood, in communistic Bulgaria/Czechoslovakia, nobody was starving. Yes, we did not have bananas and Argentinian steaks, but there was enough bas
13.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
Yeah, I would be vary of accuracy of such tests. The infected unfed ticks have few spirochetes in them. The numbers grow by two orders of magnitude as they feed - the reason why old bites are much more dangerous than the fresh bites.
14.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
I grew up under communism. On TV, we had full movies without ads. There was 3-5min ad segment right before main evening news, that was it. I could not understand how people can watch movie interrupted 10x by an add break. Not wishing the re
15.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
My point is: Your post reeked by defeatist 'nothing can be done against market forces'. Yes, it can be done, and if we want to have a reasonable future, it should be done.
16.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
> Can you show me a place with high local productivity and low rent? Put the following prompt into your favourite AI and enjoy the reading: "How do rents relate to productivity in the area? How does Vienna compare to San Francisco?
17.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
I apologize, I have indeed mixed up the Fed and the Treasury in my last post. To respond to your previous post: I (naively?) thought that the Treasury had some Euro reserves lying around (like other central banks have USD reserves) and used
18.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
Yes, it is cynical. It is still the most likely outcome, based on past experience. Please, enlighten me what was the point of your post, I really, genuinely, missed it. To me, it reeks of toxic optimism and wishful thinking, nothing else. T
19.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
Yeah, that was the first thing that comes to mind. And the second thing: What about modern taxi drivers that rely almost exclusively on GPS?
20.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
No, that is your wishful thinking. Based on recent years and the power of personalized AI influence campaigns, the winning Presidential campaign message (after 4 years of 'change nothing substantial Democrat' would most likely be
21.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
This. I lived in a communistic country, where BBC/Voice of America/Radio free Europe were banned/jammed, under the pretext of 'your feeble minds will not be able to resist the insidious allure of western burgeois propaga
22.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
No, the point is that with human in the loop the downside is (usually!) rather limited, as common sense would stop obvious fuckups (ok, not always, but still). With an agent (especially incompetently employed), the danger of unwittingly des
23.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
There are two thresholds. Below the lower threshold, you have to worry too much about money to just get by. Unfortunately, too many people live below this threshold. Even in rich countries. Below this level, it is difficult to be truly happ
24.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
You know, convincing the masses to 'work super hard' is a good trick. Too bad you have to work super hard until you drop dead, never managing to build that nest egg. Surely you just did not work hard enough. Soo sorry, but its all
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by don_esteban 1mo ago
It is exactly like that. Yes, there are exercise nuts who are exercising like crazy, but the average population is getting weak and obese. The same with mental muscles. How many people can do mental calculations in their head nowadays? What
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by don_esteban 1mo ago
Eh, that has limited applicability. Ideally, you can simulate everything from first principles. That works well enough only for a rather limited set of systems. More typical is that you need to do real world measurements/model (not LLM
27.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
Fixing the politics is still necessary, and rather urgent. (Yes, I don't see how.) Otherwise we are in for a great societal upheaval that might make low price of solar irrelevant.
28.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
And, for what is is worth, this is what ChatGPT tells me: Here are the approximate recent (2024–2025) GDP per capita figures for the two countries: China Nominal GDP per capita: about $12,500 – $13,000 PPP GDP per capita: about $22,000 – $2
29.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
Now, think about all the own goals the USA and Europe has made in the last couple of decades. And, btw, China actually does comfortably have the largest economy (PPP, i.e. the real stuff you can use), for over a decade.
30.
by don_esteban 1mo ago
You still have your blinders on. Where did I say that the treasure had to borrow money? It creates money out of thin air. What I implied is that creating too much money raises inflation and reduces its credibility, i.e. it can't do it

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