> an innate ability for language

His theory is pretty good descriptively but there's a South American tribe that speaks in a way differently than what his insistence on specific biological structure supports.

The precept that language is innate vs. how language works being innate are probably different claims.

Academic linguists of the Expert Class type get super mad when people bring up that tribe.

IMO it's better to be a scientist than an acclaimed Expert.

People who trust Zuckerberg.

(the reader may fill in the next phrase)

That's an interesting comparison I had missed. Good call.

Presumably the military needs decent chips fabbed on US soil. Doesn't have to compete with AMD or Samsung in the PC CPU market.

GF bought IBM fabs, TI isn't relevant, TSMC is just coming online but is still controlled by Taiwan. Is Motorola/Freescale around anymore?

With an engineer in charge maybe Intel stands a chance of a rebound. Competition is good so let's hope so.

I haven't bought an Intel desktop or server chip since 2018 but plenty of their low-power SoC's , Atom/n1xx. They still make good stuff in certain markets.

Selling railcar loads of Xeons for a 20x markup to buy Marketing people McMansions is likely never coming back.

See the HF Acid Leach Process on page 290-291 (and in general the rest of Appendix 5E LMF Chemical Processing Sector, all outlined with an eye towards self-replicating lunar factories, from NASA under the Carter presidency): https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2FAd...
        "[From the Intro] Mission complexity has increased enormously as instrumentation and scientific objectives have become more sophisticated. In the next two decades there is little doubt that NASA will shift its major focus from exploration to an increased emphasis on utilization of the space environment, including public service and industrial activities. The present study was sponsored by NASA because of an increasing realization that advanced automatic and robotic devices, using machine intelligence, will play a major role in all future space missions. Such systems will complement human activity in space, accomplishing tasks that people cannot do or that are too dangerous, too laborious, or too expensive. The opportunity to develop the powerful new merger of human intellect and machine intelligence is a result of the growing capacity of machines to accomplish significant tasks. Indeed, the growth in capability of onboard machine intelligence will make many missions technically or economically feasible. This study has investigated some of the ways this capacity may be used as well as a number of research and development efforts necessary in the years ahead if the promise of AI is to be fully realized. ...
        [From Appendix 5E] Mining robots deliver raw lunar soil strip-mined from the pit to large input hoppers along the edge of the entry corridors into the chemical processing sector. The primary responsibility of the materials-processing subsystems is to accept lunar regolith, extract from it the necessary elemental and chemical substances required for system growth, replication, and production, and then return any wastes, unused materials, or slag to an output hopper to be transported back to the surrounding annular pit by mining robots for use as landfill.
        It is possible to achieve qualitative materials closure (see sec. 5.3.6) - complete material self-sufficiency within the Lunar Manufacturing Facility (LMF) - by making certain that chemical processing machines are able to produce all of the 84 elements commonly used in industry in the United States and the global economy (Freitas, 1980). However, such a complete processing capability implies unacceptably long replication times T (on the order of 100-1000 years), because many of the elements are so rare in the lunar or asteroidal substrate that a vast quantity of raw soil must be processed to obtain even small amounts of them. By eliminating the need for many of these exotic elements in the SRS design, replication times can be cut by as much as three orders of magnitude with current or foreseeable materials processing technologies."

Whether that is "reasonable technology" in today's economic system is obviously debatable. I also did not see any of the critical minerals in the article (like Cobalt or Neodymium) on the list of the "Total of 18 elements" the study listed as key to build these systems in the box on page 282 on "TABLE 5.11. MINIMUM SEED ELEMENT AND PROCESS CHEMICAL REQUIREMENTS" . So maybe, as you suggest, they are harder to extract but the study participants knew of workarounds -- for example using Iron in a battery or to make electromagnets?

Anyway, I had a copy of the page with that HF Acid Leach process up on the wall in my office for many years as a symbol of hope and abundance -- even if in reality HF acid is nasty stuff best avoided (or left to automation in far-off places).

It would be ideal to find a better way on Earth like perhaps bacteria or plants or other organisms that concentrate specific materials... The short-story "The Skills of Xanadu" from 1956 by Theodore Sturgeon, for example, suggests breeding a shellfish that concentrates strontium in its shell...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fia601205.us.archive.or...
        "At first, it seemed to Bril totally disorganized. These attractive people in their indecent garments came and went, mingling play and work and loafing, without apparent plan. But their play would take them through a flower garden just where the weeds were, and they would take the weeds along. There seemed to be a group of girls playing jacks right outside the place where they would suddenly be needed to sort some seeds.
        Tanyne tried to explain it: "Say we have a shortage of something -- oh, strontium, for example. The shortage itself creates a sort of vacuum. People without anything special to do feel it; they think about strontium. They come, they gather it."
        "But I have seen no mines," Bril said puzzledly. "And what about shipping? Suppose the shortage is here and the mines in another district?"
        "That never happens any more. Where there are deposits, of course, there are no shortages. Where there are none, we find other ways, either to use something else, or to produce it without mines."
        "Transmute it?"
        "Too much trouble. No, we breed a freshwater shellfish with a strontium carbonate shell instead of calcium carbonate. The children gather them for us when we need it." ..."

For example, on Cobalt, maybe we could breed cows and their gut bacteria to concentrate it? See: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...
"Cobalt is essential to the metabolism of all animals. It is a key constituent of cobalamin, also known as vitamin B12, the primary biological reservoir of cobalt as an ultratrace element. Bacteria in the stomachs of ruminant animals convert cobalt salts into vitamin B12, a compound which can only be produced by bacteria or archaea. A minimal presence of cobalt in soils therefore markedly improves the health of grazing animals, and an uptake of 0.20 mg/kg a day is recommended because they have no other source of vitamin B12."

Stop having Venmo narc every non-trivial txn to the IRS if you want people to unload their stuff.

They already paid taxes on the income and first sale.

OK, wait ... don't tell Trump that would help EV adoption.

Screw it, just promote Monero in your community. It's actually fungible.

FWIW I've installed several 220 outlets outside my house (generator, pressure washer, etc.). Not difficult and high voltage actually makes it easier becauae you need less copper.

The metal box I used has a cover that protects the outlet in all but driving rain. Only 50A for mine; it looks like this is high-end for home use with 80A being commercial, typically, based on one guide that came up on search.

> if his manager's account was disabled

Oh the chaos that would ensue. :)

Narcissists often get caught because they lack subtlety.

But even then 2020 was roughly half way from 2007 to the 2012 minimum, and it's likely to be another 15 years plus (2027-2030) before we expect to see 2012 minimum challenged

Ouch. Teach me to not proof read carefully.

Of course, that 15 years plus should be from 2020, not 2012, i.e. it will be significant if the 2012 record isn't approximately matched by unexceptional melt by about 2033-2036.

There's some evidence that Meta provided Israel with targeting data from WhatsApp used to flatten civilian apartment buildings in Tehran.

The IRGC put out an urgent plea to its citizens to uninstall WhatsApp within a day or two.

But people will say, "yeah, but there's no good alternative," so actually providing one is smart military strategy, if they've actually built a viable competitor.

If Americans think In-Q-Tel funded Facebook but don't have access to its data ... yeah, well they slept through the Snowden drops.

I've always got it. But you still haven't got it.

Their null hypothesis is that there's no trend, and picking a very short timescale they discover they cannot reject it. Woopie doo. Pick a short enough time scale and that is always going to be true unless there's no random variability at all.

So we first need to pick a reasonable null hypothesis. One reasonable null hypothesis is that there's been no change in trend in the entire satellite record and we find we cannot reject that either. And in my books, a 45 year trend beats a 20 year trend.

So their claim that there's no trend in the last 20 years is an "extraordinary claim" and so requires "extraordinary evidence" of which there's absolutely none in their paper at all.

They need to a) show that the decline 1979-2005 is much steeper than the full trend, b) show that the decline 2005-2025 is much less steep than the full trend and c) explain some physical reason why there was a step change in 2005. Needless to say, they won't be able to do any of those.

And for the avoidance of doubt, there is nothing in the historical record so far that allows us to reject the hypothesis that there's a linear trend in sea-ice decline. Intuitively it seems fairly obvious that at some point that has to be wrong - not least once we get to a blue ocean event in summer the trend has to stop by definition but even before then it seems likely that the trend will break down for various physical reasons.

2012 was an exceptionally low year for sea-ice. Every weather effect conspired that year to cause the sea ice to reach a minimum. Earlier in the summer the ice was dispersed due to the weather allowing lots of melt in the more southerly arctic waters. Late in the summer that reversed leading to compaction and a dramatic reduction in ice extent and area as the previously dispersed ice piled up near the pole.

2007 was another low year, not an extreme event like 2012 but well below trend. 2007-2024 is 18 years, and the lowest 18 years on record are 2007-2024.

The 2025 winter maximum was the lowest on record. The trend for winter sea ice is much smaller than for summer sea ice, much of the arctic freezes every year and will continue to do so for a very long time. There is much less multi-year ice than there was 30 year ago and almost no ice that has survived 5 or more summers.

We don't have the 2025 summer minimum yet but it's likely to be a top 10 year (where top is bad/low sea ice) We've got maybe a month of melting still to go. For much of the summer, like many years, the sea ice tracked or was below 2012 levels, but the GAC (great arctic cyclone) of 2012 that caused ice area/extent to drop and keep droping right up to mid September has not recurred in any year.

It took best part of a decade for the trend to catch up with the 2007 minimum, and a decade and a half before the 2007 minimum was comprehensively smashed (with the exception of 2012). But even then 2020 was roughly half way from 2007 to the 2012 minimum, and it's likely to be another 15 years plus (2027-2030) before we expect to see 2012 minimum challenged unless we have another major weather event leading to unusually low ice.

> It's a scam, and that's why their warranty do not cover water damage.

yup.

Marketing: it's waterproof!
Finance: nope.

> It definitely takes a certain personality type to be able to do sales for a living.

Short-term gains, sure, but good sales people generate relationships that result in repeat sales.

When they started pushing batteries hard when I ran in for a relay I knew the end was near.

Your app has been updated.

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(coming this Fall)

> Like, over 200 years ago, sort out that individual state issues coinage was bad?

Sure, but the Constitution also says that States shall make no thing but gold or silver good for the payment of taxes.

And it says that all government spending must recorded on a public ledger available to the People.

We're in nobody-cares anything-goes territory now.

I'm failing to see what you're seeing. As I quoted above:

In my skim of the paper I saw:
The trend of September Arctic sea ice extent for the most recent two decades 2005Ã"2024 is Ã'0.35 and Ã'0.29 million per decade according to the NSIDC and OSISAF sea ice indices respectively (Figures 1a and 1b). The key point, we emphasize, is that these trends are not statistically significantly different from zero at a 95% confidence level.

But in case you missed it, let me quote the entire paragraph:
The main approach for analyzing simulated changes in Arctic sea ice cover is to compute the linear trend for the 20-year period 2005â"2024 for each individual member available for each model, as motivated by the observed changes (Section 3.1). This gives a range of 10â"100 members to examine the spread of simulated trends for each model and scenario. The main definition of pause used in this study is motivated by the observed 2005â"2024 September sea ice extent trends ( million /dec, taking the most conservative estimate from observations). We also use an alternative definitionâ"trends which are not statistically significant at the 95% confidence levelâ"to ensure that this specific observed threshold does not overly influence the results. This secondary definition contains information about the signal-to-noise ratio, and so is complementary to the trend threshold definition. However, we find that both definitions produce consistent results. When we report multi-model averages, we do so by using a square-root weighting scheme to take account of the number of members in each ensemble (see Supporting Information S1 for a detailed explanation).

Clearly here they're looking at the 2005-2024 range. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with doing that but it becomes difficult to tell if you're making up phantoms.

Very crudely, I'd guess that the zero trend line there has a value of 4.5Mkm^2. Maybe 5 on OSISAF. With me so far?

I can't be arsed to do the analysis but my guess on the trend line 1979-2005 would put the 2005 end point on or above 6Mkm^2.

So they've got a discontinuity in their analysis at their change point of at least the decadal loss, probably significantly more. And then they're claiming that there's been a pause?

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.realclimate.org%2Fin...
from well over a decade ago talks about the same issue with people "analysing" temperature.

No it doesn't show that. Definitely not by eye.

You do NOT see a change in trend by drawing a line between points A to B and B to C and declare that implies there's no trend in sea ice decline over the last 20 years.

You have to show that there's no possible trend from A to C that is consistent with the trends from A to B and B to C. (You also can't have a discontinuity at B which is another thing that doing it by eye can mislead)

My by eye look suggests that there's no significant change in change over the satellite record.

If there are statistically significant trend changes in that record (and I doubt that there are), then I'd expect two change points, one around 2000 and one around 2010. The pre 2000 trend and post 2010 trends being similar with a much steeper decline during the 2000 decade.

I wouldn't put money on it, I don't do this sort of thing often enough to be confident in my "guess by eye" but I'd be looking for a mistake in someones formal analysis that suggests that there's a statistically significant change in the trend in the current record at any point.