• 2 Posts
  • 336 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
cake
Cake day: July 27th, 2023

help-circle

  • I work in aerospace regulation and the latest media coverage has been quite upsetting for me. There is a huge difference between delegation (how the aerospace regulator gives approval power to people in companies) and self-regulation, but I’m not clever enough to summarise them in this format. So instead I’d like to share two facts that can summarize the outcome instead.

    1. An airliner is a chunk of metal full of people 30,000 ft in sky propelled to near the speed of sound by burning kerosene in a tube. With all of that is safer than driving in your car or going for a swim. That’s aerospace regulation at work, and it has always included delegation. It’s almost the safest industry there is even when you include Boeing’s criminal fraud and attempts to abuse the system.

    2. Boeing had to ground their fleet for years and now is being charged with criminal fraud for deceiving the FAA (the aerospace regulatory body in the USA). Self regulated industries rarely face consequences.

    I’m not saying it’s perfect, and I wish I could explain the process better but I think it’s very effective and has a proven track record across the world. Almost all modern countries use the same regulatory framework because it delivers incredible safety at a reasonable (by aerospace standards) cost to the government.

    I hope more industries transition to a similar framework. If we had an FAA for finance and environmental protection, I think we could end scam shell companies and illegal pollution in a decade. But it would probably be “big government socialism” so there isn’t much hope.




  • Like evasive chimpanzee said we need to poop INDIRECTLY in crops. Hot aerobic composting for example has excellent nutrient retention rates and eliminates nearly all human borne diseases. The main problem would be medication since some types tend to survive.

    Also urine contains almost all of the water soluble nutrients that we expel and is sanitised with 6-12 months of anaerobic storage. So that’s potentially an easier solution if we can seclude the waste stream. Again the main issue would be medications.

    I don’t have the answer, if it was easy we would have done it already. The main issue is we don’t have a lot of people working on the answer because we’re still in the stage of getting everyone in the world access to sanitation. Certainly the way we’re doing it is very energy and resources intensive, unsustainable in the living term, and incredibly damaging to the environment. We’ve broken a fundamental aspect of the nutrient cycle and we’re paying dearly for it.

    The other problem is, like recycling, there isn’t a lot of money in the solution, so it’s hard to move forward in a capitalist system until shit really hits the fan.


    1. We mine and manufacture nutrient dense fertilizer at massive environmental cost.
    2. We use the nutrients to grow plants
    3. We eat the nutrients in our food
    4. We expel 95% of these nutrients in our waste
    5. We dump our waste into the rivers and oceans with all the nutrients (often we purposefully destroy the nitrogen in the waste since it causes so much damage to rivers and oceans)
    6. We need new nutrients to grow plants

    Before humans there was a nutrient cycle. Now it’s just a pipe from mining to the ocean that passes through us. The ecological cost of this is immeasurable, but we don’t notice because fertilizer helps us feed starving people and waste management is important to avoid disease.

    We need to close the loop again!


  • Hacksaw@lemmy.catoCommunism@lemmy.mlProtestation
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    7 days ago

    If 5 people including a janitor produce 1mil in profit. And having 4 people, no janitor makes 600k in profit due to having to work in filth and taking breaks to clean up then the janitor is worth 400k. It’s not really that complicated. Capitalists like to pretend these things are complicated when they’re not. Companies have a damn good idea of what their janitors are worth because it’s constantly compared with what they cost to see if they can do without them or outsource them to a contractor.

    When it comes time to PAY them they don’t care what they’re worth anymore, just how little they can pay someone to do the job.




  • AI isn’t “like a person” it doesn’t “learn like a person” it doesn’t “think like a person” it’s nothing like a person. It’s a a machine that creates copies of whatever you put into it. It’s a machine that a real person, or group of people, own. These people TAKE all the stuff everyone else created and put it into their copy machine.

    In fact it’s really easy to show that it’s a copy machine because the less stuff you put into it the more of a direct copy you get out of it. If you put only one song, or one artist, into it then virtually everything it creates would be direct copyright infringements. If you put all of the worlds music into it the copying becomes more blurred, more complex, more interesting, and therefore more valuable.

    Sure AI is a great innovation, but if someone wants to put my work into a copying machine they’re going to have to acquire it from me legally.

    No one is against AI, we’re just against the people who own the AI machines stealing our work without paying for it.



  • I think the main advantage to fixed stiffness springs was that it was controllable. So if it was a fixed strength magnet the advantages over springs is likely limited compared to the cost. Magnetic suspension is cool because it’s an active suspension system.





  • Hacksaw@lemmy.cato196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneRule.
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    20 days ago

    She did encourage him, on purpose, because she thought he would be easy to beat. Your source completely supports that, and that was unethical and foolish of her.

    However I can’t find any evidence that she or the DNC donated to him or his campaign.

    Perhaps you can make a small adjustment to correct your comment to avoid the spread of misinformation!