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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • In fairness, the only thing many people will lack is water. It’s not an exclusive stash, but in addition to what’s in your cupboards.

    You can get 10L or 25L quite cheaply. 1 should do per person, maybe with an extra for cooking. Or just grab some big bottles of water.

    A hand cranked flashlight, candles and lighter are all a must anyhow, for a power cut. It might also be worth having a cheap camping stove tucked away.

    Food wise. It’s just a big bag of pasta or rice, along with some cans/jars to make it pleasant to eat. Throw in some hiking snack bars and you’re sorted.




  • I’ve noticed 2 types on this, stick-in-the-muds and peak-hunters.

    Stick in the muds latch on to the first version of a belief they encounter properly. They will stubbornly hang on to that for as long as possible.

    Peak hunters are the opposite, they will rapidly change beliefs to maximise the results/find truth.

    Interestingly, after some time, the 2 groups look almost identical. The peak hunters tend to find the ‘best’ version of their belief, based on their existing memeplex. To budge them, you need to show a different belief is better, on their rankings (not yours). This is hard when they have already maximised it. Without knowing how they are weighing things, they can look like stick in the muds.

    The biggest tell is to question why they believe what they do. If they have a reasonably comprehensive answer, they are likely peak hunters. Stick in the muds generally can’t articulate why their belief is better, outside of common sound bites.




  • The complication is the double jump.

    In the early days of COVID, there were 2 strains spreading. One of those fizzled out and disappeared after a few weeks. Genetically, they seemed to be independent jumps. A single mistake wouldn’t account for this.

    It’s also worth noting that the first known infected all spent time in Wuhan wildlife market. They got fairly good tracking from mobile phones, even if the direct evidence was destroyed by the containment/cleaning effort.

    Basically, the surrounding evidence doesn’t fit an accidental leak (2 jumps). It doesn’t really fit an intentional release (very geographically focused). It is consistent with it jumping from a sustained infection pool in the market. (Multiple jumps from the same small area at different times).




  • The same way your mortgage is backed up by your house. If you default on your mortgage, the bank can take your house in foreclosure.

    Rather than sell shares to raise the money, Musk has backed his borrowing with Tesla shares. Basically, if he doesn’t pay back the loan, the banks get the shares. Unlike houses, shares can change value quite quickly. If the value of the loan exceeds the value of the shares, then the banks start to get VERY nervous. They will call in the loans to get what they can, before things get worse. This could crash the share price further, since they will want to offload the shares as soon as possible.

    Musk is extremely rich. However, like most extremely rick people, his money is tied up in shares. If Tesla falls fast enough, he could end up owing more than he has in assets. As soon as his creditors pull the plug, he becomes bankrupt.






  • 5g is a lot more capable and flexible compared to older generations. The main one is a massive increase in capacity, for the same frequency allocations. Compounding with this is that it can be directional. This allows several phones to use the exact same channel simultaneously, so long as they are positioned at different angles to the tower.

    5g also uses more frequency bands, allowing even more data to be moved around. Unfortunately, 2g has most of the lower frequencies, higher frequencies carry more data, but have less penetration into buildings.

    Finally, 5g allows for priority and context awareness. E.g. the police can have their phones prioritised, or VoIP calls given priority over video streaming. It can also trade bandwidth for range. This allows a tower to either reach further to cover a larger area, or focus down, to provide more bandwidth locally.

    In theory 5g could have a similar range to 2g. However, that rarely happens. It requires it using the lower frequencies, that 2g currently uses, and well as dropping its data rate to improve range. Most of the time it’s optimised for shorter range, and more towers using higher frequencies. This gives impression of a far smaller range. But give a huge increase is available bandwidth.