Posts by gzuckier

Reminds me of some of the post-Asimov robotic fiction, where a truly intelligent robot goes mad when it realizes that no matter what it does, there are countless humans being harmed out there that it is unable to prevent,

Re: Gross misunderstanding of the tool

ChatGPT and the like are AI in the same sense that a mirror is an artificial face.

Re: The cruel realities of conservation of energy.

Basically, then, they haven't developed a new way of making hydrogen, they've invented a new way of pulling water out of dryish desert air.

Re: Storage ? Transport ?

Ironically, just last week NASA, no less, had to postpone the Artemis launch because of hydrogen leaks.

Twice.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nasa-struggles-with-familiar-problem-on-artemis-i-a-hydrogen-leak-11662381000

ethics

There is a real huge ethical problem here, obviously; if a doctor really believes a drug is effective, it is unethical to withhold it from the control population. If a doctor doesn't believe a drug is good for what ails a patient, it is unethical to give it to a patient just as a test (Dr. Mengele anyone?) particularly when it is toxic as chloroquine is, and also if it means the patient is not given other treatments which may be effective.

That's why clinical trials are a Big Deal not tossed together by every doctor who thinks he's got a Miracle Cure.

Re: Donald Jenius Trump

There is in vitro evidence that quinine derivatives interfere with viral reproduction, and a suggested mechanism involving pH of lysosomes and post-translation protein modification or some such.

But that's not terribly specific, it's pretty much the old anti-cancer trick of finding some poison that hopefully kills off the bad cells before killing off the patient.

Re: Donald Jenius Trump

Except that potassium rich foods are nutritious and do generally taste nice, so there's an upside to the statement.

Chloroquine being toxic and there being no real evidence for its efficacy in this case, Trump's statement was more like stating that cyanide rich foods are nutritious and generally taste nice, and somebody reading that going out and putting potassium cyanide on their food. Most people would at least consider there being some responsibility (or irresponsibility) on the part of the poster.

Re: Donald Jenius Trump

Not a "trial", just anecdotal evidence that provides a promising hint.

But this doesn't even meet that hurdle. Some folks got chloroquine, some didn't, there wasn't any difference in the folks who were severely sick, the folks who weren't too sick and got chloroquine got better, but nobody who wasn't too sick didn't get chloroquine so there's no reason to think that they would have done worse without the drug. They were, after all, not too sick

Re: All this talk of hydroxychloroquine is making me want...

Note that tonic water has been limited to 83 ppm of quinine for quite a while now, due to quinine's toxicity. Which is cumulative over long periods, BTW.

Re: Uh - how about a bonus of 20% of net pay after 5 years without a hack?

You mean "without detecting a hack". That's a lot easier.

Re: Doesn't seem very useful

Lazer may refer to:

Lazer, Hautes-Alpes, France

Lazer, a brand of Turkish chewing gum

Panther Lazer, a car

Lazer 103, a Wisconsin radio station

Lazer 99.3, a Massachusetts radio station

Lazer Team, a 2015 feature film by Rooster Teeth Productions

Major Lazer

But if the default format for email isn't HTML, then how can the sales department send out their 1 paragraph missives as 5 meg powerpoint slides?

Re: but...

There is/was a weird bug in a recent version of Excel that would prevent it opening perfectly fine spreadsheets at pseudorandom; the same spreadsheet format with varying daily data would work 9 days out of 10 but the tenth day it wouldn't open. Has something to do with the new file format, zipped xml, in some way I assume.

I miss the older version.

Re: Storing semi text data in a tool designed to process numbers automatically.

If the column is not preformatted as the desired format, pasting as text doesn't help. And once it's been converted to floating point, it's rounded off and you can't format it back to integer.

"Automatic conversion of gene symbols any user input to dates and floating-point numbers is a problematic feature of Excel software"

As in, 60,000 distinct 14 digit ID numbers pasted into excel all coming up as 5.42342E14 and when reformatted as number, all coming up as 54234200000000? You mean that's not what was desired?

Re: Bah!

The true purpose of the mission is to find the Lunar Rover we left behind so they can copy it.

Re: Bah!

That's where the Chinese advantage is. Being on the far side of the earth, they can see the far side of the moon.

Consider; we here on the near side of the earth can see the near side of the moon; but we can see neither the far side of the moon, nor the far side of the earth. Obviously the situation is reversed in the case of China.

Re: Just one question

Since we can't see the far side, how do we know it isn't always dark? Maybe there's a big umbrella.

The "pause" depends entirely on the fact that 1998 was a really really warm year. It's warmed since 1999. It's warmed since 1997. And so on for whatever year you want to begin with. Any competent statistician can inform you that means the "no warming" conclusion is shaky beyond any reasonable benefit of the doubt.

Of course, we've slowly worked our way up until we've reached the record level of 1998 routinely now, so even that thin denial will need to be retired soon.

Yes, they can't predict the weather a few hours in advance, and yet they try to tell me that winter will be colder than summer. Ha!

Re: @hemidude - Review your math before trying physics again

"Yet, you claim CO2 is 0.4% of the atmosphere. Since you're off by 10x on this easily-checked fact, readers will be unlikely to take your other claims seriously."

Once you've made up your mind CO2 doesn't make a difference, it might as well be 400%, you're still going to say it makes no difference.

Re: Antactica is melting too

Everything has "approaching-infinite variables."

Yet the tidal charts seem fairly accurate despite the unknown effects of objects in the Kuyper belt, for one instance.

At some point, a model is accurate enough for the intended use. This is true for all models, for all uses. I can drive a car without having to consider relativistic effects, nor quantum uncertainty.

I can estimate the average temperature for this region next July, despite the approaching-infinite variables involved there.

Re: Antactica is melting too

You really don't understand radiative forcing.

"our currently stable negative forcing environment "

What does that mean?

" A positive forcing (more incoming energy) warms the system, while negative forcing (more outgoing energy) cools it. Causes of radiative forcing include changes in insolation and the concentrations of radiatively active gases, commonly known as greenhouse gases and aerosols."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing#Climate_sensitivity

Re: Antactica is melting too

"CO2 is 0.4% of the atmosphere it has no effect on global temps "

It's been known for a century that the earth is approximately 33 degrees C warmer than the solar energy received can account for. Compare to the temperature of the moon, for instance, adjusting for different albedo.

http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/files/pr72.pdf

"The global average mean surface temperature of the earth is 288 K (Table

2.1). Above we deduced that the emission temperature of the Earth is 255K,

considerably lower."-2.3 The greenhouse effect http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/387h/Lectures/chap2.pdf

"The Earth has a moderate greenhouse effect which increases the surface

temperature by some 40 K over the blackbody temperature." http://www.astro.uvic.ca/~venn/A201/maths.7.planet_temperature.pdf

Have you ever tried your experiment?

Re: Antactica is melting too

Sure... it's too hard to believe that CO2 absorbs energy even though you can demonstrate it in the lab, it's much easier to believe the earth suddenly tipped over in its rotation for no particular reason, without anybody noticing, no coriolis effects, no gyroscopic effects.

Well, we've got the warming is because the earth tipped over, the sun's getting warmer, sunspots are keeping cosmic rays from forming clouds to cool us, volcanoes, and the earth isn't getting warmer after all. Yep, that "can't be CO2" theory just keeps getting better and better.

Re: Antactica is melting too

How does the Antarctic ice increase if the earth is a closed system?

Gee, do you think it's associated with the years of drought experienced in the US Southwest, and the Middle East; and the existence of a device called a "cold trap" which you use to dehumidify air, by passing it over a cold surface so that the water vapor freezes out?

Or does your understanding of global warming make you think that Antarctica is now significantly warmer than the freezing point of water?

Re: Antactica is melting too

fer crissakes, the Antarctic land ice has melted to the point where it's affecting the earth's gravity.

Antarctic ice sheet losing mass, says University of Colorado study

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/uoca-ais022806.php

Isabella Velicogna, "Increasing rates of ice mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets revealed by GRACE," Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L19503 (2009).

Skepticism is demanding proof.

Denialism is continuing to insist it's not true, when there is proof.