That almost seems like a wilful misinterpretation of what I wrote, since I never claimed anything of the sort.

What makes you completely wrong is that you’re using the fact that petroleum companies are filthy rich and bribe politicians to hell and back as an explanation for why we’re still reliant of fossil fuels. The basic answer to why is that “fossil fuels and combustion engines are pretty damn hard to beat” to the point where we still haven’t found a viable alternative for some applications.

I get why you would say this, but it’s an oversimplification to the point of being completely wrong.

Fossil fuels have an absurd energy density. They’re just really hard to beat. Modern batteries and liquid hydrogen don’t even come close. Pair that with the fact that we’ve spent a couple hundred years optimising the steam- and internal combustion engines, compared to some decades (in practice) for electric-based stuff, and you start seeing why fossil fuels are so hard to push of the top of the hill.

Until very recently all alternatives were pretty much worse under every conceivable performance metric. There’s a reason electric planes are still in the prototype phase. It’s just technically really really hard to even get close to jet fuel and combustion engines.

You’re just clearly not interested in having a reasonable discussion about what I consider to be an interesting topic, and appear more interested in attacking me over opinions I don’t have, and positions I haven’t defended.

I’m not really interested in being talked down to be someone that appears to be wilfully misinterpreting me, so I’m probably just going to leave this comment section now.

It’s actually absurd to me that you’re able to read that out of my comment. I’m literally asking whether we have a moral obligation to use the technology available to us to prevent cancer, ALS, Alzheimer’s, compromised immune systems, metabolic diseases, and fragile backs in our future children.

I even specifically stated that this wasn’t about whether the same technology can be used for nefarious purposes, which is a different discussion entirely.

But that doesn’t answer the question of whether we are morally obliged to use it for good purposes when possible. It’s just a different point entirely.

I’m not saying that this kind of thing cannot be used for bad purposes. I’m asking the philosophical question of where our moral obligation to do everything we can to give our children the best possible life begins.

Should we let them be born “as is”, and then have a moral obligation to do everything we can to make the best of whatever genetic baggage they have, or should we do whatever is in our power even before they’re born to give them a better shot at a good life?

Explosives have caused enormous amounts of death, but also allowed enormous amounts of people to live in safer, more affordable houses, and have been critical for mineral extraction that essentially makes modern society possible, as well as modern transportation infrastructure. Explosives, like most technology, aren’t an inherently “evil” thing, even though they’re used for bad purposes.

We’re not just talking about autism here though. We’re talking about hereditary diseases, maybe a bad back, extreme allergies, etc. Their point is that if we had the technology to prevent our future child from carrying all sorts of genetic burdens (exposure to cancer, compromised immune system, terrible eyesight…) wouldn’t it be immoral to not use that technology?

Also, I actually have my doubts that the trolley could get through 8 000 000 000 people before stopping due to the resistance, so at least some people should be fine.

I think you’re misunderstanding their point here. They’re using “smart” in the sense of “an efficient method to achieve a specified goal”, where the goal in this case is “make more money”, and the method is “by whatever means possible”.

No matter how you twist it, what this person did is likely an efficient route for them to reach that goal. So in by the above metric, it is a “smart move”.

I can never help but be put off by the trivial “as my 30 year life cycle comes to an end…” when I read this comic. I wonder if we’ll ever be at a stage where we produce/program biological “robots” that are capable of having this kind of relationship to their own existence.

This is what people need to realise: Despite everything, the US still has a concept of free and fair elections (no national election has been blatantly called off or couped yet) and parts of the judiciary are still making a fuss about laws being broken.

While it may look bad now, remember that what we’re seeing is still miles from a full autocracy where elections are purely for show and the judiciary exists only to go after enemies of the state.

For all its faults, I think what makes C beautiful is that it gives you complete freedom do be an absolute idiot.

Whenever I decide to hack something together with an arcane macro, I feel like an animal being released back into the wild, with the (pre-)compiler yelling “Be free! Explore the mysteries of our incomprehensible world!”

You could not be more hilariously wrong, and I support you for standing for your beliefs.

If there’s more than two branches in the decision tree I’ll default to a if/else or switch/case except if I want to initialise a const to a conditional value, which is one of the places I praise the lord for ternaries.

Shame on you! If those poor kids facists could read they would be very upset!

Oh absolutely. As with all other infrastructure, there is a cost to be paid. However, when you look at an average to small river, even routing 10 % of the water via an osmosis plant before passing it to the sea is an absolutely massive volume. There’s also the point that you don’t want to build these things in large, meandering, flat river deltas. You want a large salinity gradient, which means relatively small, fast-running fresh water meeting the ocean more “suddenly” than what you get in a classical river delta is the optimal source here.

Because osmotic power has enormous potential in the sense that millions of cubic meters of fresh water is running into oceans all over the world every minute. If we’re able to get even a low-efficiency method of using the salinity gradient to generate power working then every place a river meets the sea is essentially an unlimited (albeit low-yield) power source.

This is tech that doesn’t rely on elevation (like hydropower) or weather conditions (like wind/solar) it’s stable and in principle possible to set up at pretty much any river outlet, which is great!

Hep look at Wuff. Hep do the bonking. Wuff only good for seeking. Hep think he can bonk Wuff too.

The sound of a baby’s scream is an incredible feat of nature. In a way, it’s almost sad that we lose the ability to make that sound at a certain age.

If you need more than 32 GB of RAM, I’m pretty sure you’re no longer looking for a laptop. I mean sure, you can get up to 128 GB on a macbook, but if you need that kind of volume you’re doing professional work on something that is specifically extremely RAM-intensive.

I didn’t support the apple-mouse, in fact I don’t like it at all, primarily because I don’t like the feel of it. Personally, I use a completely ordinary, cheap mouse with two buttons and a scroll wheel.