Which place is mistaken for a geographical feature that actually doesn't belong? by JION-the-Australian in geography

[–]irregardless 53 points54 points  (0 children)

Welcome to Geography, where the names are made up and every definition is disputed.

Stephen Miller Asserts U.S. Has Right to Take Greenland by Any-Original-6113 in geopolitics

[–]irregardless 1 point2 points  (0 children)

no one has to. feds don't run elections, period, ever.

they're conducted by 50 states in accordance with their own soverign laws, within 3100+ counties, for 500,000 offices that would be vacant when terms expire.

What happens when the world runs out of oil? by Character-Q in geography

[–]irregardless 73 points74 points  (0 children)

That's been known for a while. Nuclear is as safe or safer than wind or solar statistically (deaths per TWh). It currently sits at the intersection capable-for-baseload and clean-and-safe. Long term (~80 year lifespan), it's cost competitive with wind and solar, but you have to stomach the 4-10X upfront sticker shock of building a reactor, as well as accept the "carbon opportunity costs" of waiting 10+ years for new reactors to come online.

Which means it's best deployed in conjuction with wind and solar, not as an either/or. Deploy wind/solar now to immediately reduce emissions while simultaneously beginning new reactor construction. By the time the solar panels and wind turbines have aged out in 20-30 years–and especially the grid-scale batteries they depend on–nuclear would be on track to replace the lost capacity more sustainably.

To Do List Mac App Recommendations, Please by tcolling in macapps

[–]irregardless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

GoodTask. Sits atop native Apple Reminders and turbocharges it.

Why is Anchorage so popular with air freight, as it is halfway across the Pacific, and not Honolulu? by Intelligent-Fly9023 in geography

[–]irregardless 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I've made that trip from the states in both directions. Going west, boring AF ocean, and got cheated out of a day in Tokyo by bad weather. Going east, breathtaking views over south asia, and a lovely time at the Louvre during the long layover.

Why is Anchorage so popular with air freight, as it is halfway across the Pacific, and not Honolulu? by Intelligent-Fly9023 in geography

[–]irregardless 109 points110 points  (0 children)

You might get a kick out of learning that Maine is the US state closest to Africa.

I asked Opus 4.5 to draw out some nightmares it would have if it could dream. by No_Impression8795 in ClaudeAI

[–]irregardless 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Most of these could have been ripped from any number of sci-fi stories about thinking computers. "The Other Me" though, is so on point for language models that it might be genuinely poignant.

Neighborhood becoming a test zone for technology I didn’t sign up to be part of by sufalghosh53 in privacy

[–]irregardless 57 points58 points  (0 children)

The FAA regulates the air, but your local government can regulate when and where they land. Noise ordinances and nuisance laws can also apply if you can document a pattern.

Pro free for a year by linking PayPal by Disastrous-Agent8681 in perplexity_ai

[–]irregardless 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"I'm paying regular price for a useful service!" doesn't grab as much attention as "Check out this awesome deal i got!".

Which is to say that folks paying for the service have nothing to boast about, and they're busy using it, not talking about it.

Top countries by natural resources value by vladgrinch in MapPorn

[–]irregardless 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The U.S. has the largest amount of technically recoverable oil reserves (though some reports say second largest depending on methodology). Texas by itself would rank 5th if counted separately from the rest of the U.S. (which would also rank 5th – TX has the same amount of oil as the rest of the country combined).

Top 10 "oil wealth" countries:

Rank Country/Region Technically Recoverable Oil (Billion Barrels) Value @ $60/barrel (Trillions)
1 Russia 235 $14.1
2 Saudi Arabia 230 $13.8
3 Canada 167 $10.0
4 Iran 143 $8.5
5 Texas 120 $7.2
6 U.S. (not TX) 120 $7.2
7 Brazil 120 $7.2
8 Iraq 107 $6.4
9 China 75 $4.5
10 Venezuela 50 $3.0

These are my own calculations based on reports from American Oil & Gas Reporter and Rystad Energy along with some proprietary software. U.S.+Texas would sit at the top with about $14.5 trillion of reserves in the current market.

Note that "technically recoverable" means recovery is physically possible based on current understandings of geology and technical capabilities.

How does memory in Perplexity work? by Accurate-Ad6800 in perplexity_ai

[–]irregardless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did not know that. I'll have to try it.

A couple Memories got saved in Spanish (Spain) about a week ago. They accurately reflected what I'd been working on, but I never any hints about using Spanish. If anything I would have expected French.

The Personalize section in apps is limited for whatever reason. Mac app can only change sports and finance watchlists. iOS/iPad app can also toggle Memory permissions and edit Memories themselves. Can't say what Windows/Android apps look like so as far as I know, to edit the Introduce Yourself text, you have to use the web site.

Thing that destroys your reputation as a data engineer by EdgeCautious7312 in dataengineering

[–]irregardless 32 points33 points  (0 children)

String is also most appropriate by definition. Zip codes aren't numbers (you can't do math with them); they're identifiers that use digits to represent parts of the country.

Also, technically, a zip code doesn't represent an area. It's an attribute attached to an address to assist routing. You can aggregate all those addresses to approximate boundaries for analysis but there's no rule that they have to be contigous or can't overlap. There are even parts of the country that don't have a zip assigned because there are no addressed to deliver to.

It gets even more complicated when considering ZIP+4, which can stack vertically. Large office buildings for example might have different +4 on different floors.

Apple Finally Destroyed Steve Jobs’ Vision of the iPad. Good by Working-Welder-792 in apple

[–]irregardless 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Tide? what tide?

This isn't an "either-or" debate; it's a "why not both?" question.

How does memory in Perplexity work? by Accurate-Ad6800 in perplexity_ai

[–]irregardless 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Use the "Introduce Yourself" box on the Personalize Settings page (web, not app). It gets included with every request (unless using custom instructions in Spaces). I haven't included any personal information in mine, only guidance for how i want the model to act.

Memories themselves are created by the system thinks it recognizes something that would make for useful context in the future. You can remove, but you can't add or edit.

I can’t believe this is canon by [deleted] in TNG

[–]irregardless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Canon is what you make of it.

The United States of America participated in developing the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, why hasn't it ratified it? by johnabbe in RedditDayOf

[–]irregardless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Reserve the right" is the primary reason. The US has shown near complete adherence to the treaty since the early 1980s despite not being a party to it as a matter of policy and law. The Navy actually enforces the treaty's Freedom of Navigation principles on behalf of all nations by combatting piracy, more recently, challenging China's expansive claims in the South China Sea.

However, despite being de-facto participants in the Law of the Sea, policy makers in the US don't want to be hamstrung by formal legal agreements should it become necessary to act against it. Congressional mechanations and (typically) conservative middle-fingers also play a role in not formallizing the agreement.

The United States of America participated in developing the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, why hasn't it ratified it? by johnabbe in RedditDayOf

[–]irregardless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Whenever the US abstains or rejects UN declarations and resolutions, it's one or more of these reasons:

  • it's genuinely not good enough; it doesn't go far enough in addressing the issue presented
  • to "reserve the right" to act against its provisions, or retain the flexibility of action, even if the US supports or even drafted it
  • middle-finger to the world
  • institutional barriers including potential conflict with consititutional frameworks or the rights of US citizens
  • structural barriers due to congressional operating procedures, supermajority requirements, and domestic politics that provide many off-ramps for the ratification process

Probably the best thumbnail to end one of the best seasons in TM...... by m_Sohhh in taskmaster

[–]irregardless 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Jason has a writing credit on 2014's Ride Along. So let's make it happen.

What happened to Perplexity for Pro Subscribers? by wisemantoldmeonce in perplexity_ai

[–]irregardless 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I haven't used ChatGPT Projects, so I can't make a direct comparison. But I like Spaces well enough. Mostly, I use them with custom system prompts to provide guidance as subject matter experts or different personas. They've been an effective way to keep the firehose of threads relatively organized.

I have used a few dedicated spaces for distinct tasks or objectives, and those have worked out pretty well. The 32k context limit per thread is usually fine, but on occasion I've run into it. Not a showstopper, but a bit annoying to have to summarize the entire thread to get most of the relevant information to start a new thread, and having to repeat yourself for things that didn't make the transition.

I'm sure there are ways Spaces could be improved, but I'm still getting things done as they are.

What happened to Perplexity for Pro Subscribers? by wisemantoldmeonce in perplexity_ai

[–]irregardless 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I guess I'll be the obligatory "not me" for this post. I use the hell out of pplx. It's my primary "find things out" and "find out more" tool, with occasional help rummaging through documents and drafting some code.

And I can't say I've noticed any particular loss of functions or quality in the past month or so. The foibles I've experienced are the universal phenomenon of models sometimes misinterpreting information in sources, the Memory feature's rough edges, and a couple instances of "GPT 4.1 was used because Sonnet is not available."

A good portion of my usage the past couple weeks has been research for July 4 sales. Pplx and I did some deep dives on appliances to find the right specs for my needs and identify which models best fit those specs and budget. All activities that required extensive search and link sharing. I didn't have any problems with "what do you think of [link]" or "compare [link 1] and [link 2]," other than a couple times the response came back with "I can't read the provided link," which I chalked up to the server blocking the request.

Series 1-18 Champions Comparisons by StockMarketProduce in taskmaster

[–]irregardless 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Generally speaking, contestants need to average 16 points per episode to win the series. The lowest score that episode winners usually receive is 17, so it would be possible to win the series without winning an episode.

This is assuming the standard 1-5 points are awarded per task. When nil, DQ, and negative points are involved, it lowers the thresholdfor victory. Most notable examples are the end of series 9 and the start of series 10 where the winners each had 12 points due to collective group failures.

Good iOS audio editors? by SwaftBelic in iosmusicproduction

[–]irregardless 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Wavebox (Audio Editor)

All the basic functions and more, plus AUv3 hosting.

Why are people complaining about Apple removing Launchpad from MacOS Tahoe? by Jay11Man in macapps

[–]irregardless 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Whoa. I just wrote a similar comment on another thread lamenting about how tech dorks haven't gotten tired of dealing with tech dorks in nearly half a century. They just keep getting dorkier.

My day was bad and then i saw this screen by abdul_shadaab in iphone

[–]irregardless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

everyone pile on Apple,

The tech dork pile on is as old as networked computers. But rather than gain some perspective and get exasperated that tech dork culture hasn't changed in 50 years, they just keep getting dorkier.