I hate to be that guy, but… Is it time to get DSL?

To not post this?

Yeah, I get how that’s their intended use, I’m just saying I have my doubts about that business model. If this is their pitch, I don’t think they’re gonna sell many.

The thing is, they will be expensive. And it’s not an expensive service, it’s an expensive product. A state or a nation will have to buy a bunch of these, likely for hundreds of thousands each. And then just sit on them millions of dollars worth of energy infrastructure just sitting around not generating energy… Then when it’s time for them to be deployed you have a whole bunch of government workers saying “uh, I’ve never set one of these up, where’s the user manual?”

If instead you had them in regular use, when it comes time to deploy them in an emergency, you’d have people who actually know how to use them. Plus you could be generating power with them wherever extra power might be needed.

I did catch that, I was just pointing out there are additional problems with the statement as well. But I’ve edited my statement to make that more clear.

Hmm interesting. I don’t see how it could be economical as an emergency-only power source. To build them and store them for occasional use seems pretty unappealing. Surely if you had them, you’d use them to generate electricity/passive income.

You could think of them as easily mobile power systems, available to respond to emergencies, but used wherever is convenient the rest of the time.

So yeah, they’ll still be a hazard for air traffic, but luckily we do have an established solution for that, the blinking red light. Also, controlled airspace around airfields.

Would it be possible to use heat to get it to float, instead of helium? Heat it up with electricity.

Sure, that would be possible. The generators themselves will produce some amount of heat. It’s also going to have a fair amount of passive lift, as it’s essentially a kite. So simply being able to maintain a rigid shape and effective airfoil could do a lot to produce the desired lift. If it were redesigned with that in mind, shaped more like a glider/kite/parasail, something to maximize lift, it’s possible that it could be done without a light gas, though it would also be more reliant on favorable winds.

I have to wonder though, how much the power transmission lines weigh, that seems like a serious limiting factor on maximum attainable altitude.

The transmission line question is interesting though, there’s a complex optimization problem there. Traditionally with wind, larger turbines are more efficient. As you increase the turbine blade size, the area that the blades cover (and thus power generation potential) increases more than the mass of the blades do. So the result is (generally speaking) a larger wind turbine is more efficient than a smaller one. But now factor in the transmission line… The larger the turbine the more power it generates AND the thicker (and heavier) the transmission line has to be for its entire length. To complicate things more, higher altitudes mean stronger and more reliable wind. So now how do you optimize for turbine size/cable gauge, and cable length/altitude?

It seems tricky, but like perhaps there’s just a right answer, an optimal size.

So that “10,000 meters” didn’t scale right, clearly. But you also can’t possibly call those “high altitudes”. Small planes like cessnas fly at low altitudes, like 2,000 - 5000 ft, a 747 flys at a high altitude, 40,000 ft; 1600 ft is nothing, that’s lower than some buildings.

I think I agree with Cory Doctorow’s opinion

I’d say that’s always a good position. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him come out on the wrong side of a topic.

(not the op) but yeah, I agree with that.

That said, with the example of your mom, it sounds like it could be insecurity as much as it could be a closed mind. Some people really struggle with the idea that others might think they’re dumb, especially their children. So they assert things as fact, because they want to maintain the image that they have all the answers. Especially when kids are bright, some parents will fight tooth and nail to maintain an air of intellectual superiority, to assert intellectual dominance.

It may seem sad, but it’s pretty understandable, relatable even. - Humans be like that.

I mean as a buyer, use whatever coins you want, that’s fine. It’s not like you have to choose just one. You’re only limited by what coins any given store is willing to accept. That said, Bitcoin is accepted in more places than any other crypto. Similarly, there are more people with Bitcoin accounts than any other crypto. So as a seller, if you want to offer an option that more people can use, Bitcoin also makes sense from that angle.

But honestly, do whatever you want. Really that is the strength of crypto, the freedom to make your own choice and the inability of anyone else to stop you.

But it’s the easiest to acquire and the most universally accepted, I’ve used it to buy things and it wasn’t hard.

I’m not saying it’s perfect, I’m not commenting on the ethical aspects, the environmental impact, any of that. Your thoughts on that are probably perfectly valid. But, if your goal is to use money that nobody can stop you from using, right now, Bitcoin is the right choice.

Ok, but who cares about the 99.9% of coins… If you’re buying something, use Bitcoin.

people still buy those games full-priced, so…

Wait, does nobody pirate games any more? I don’t think I bought a single game until I turned 25.

Well to me, borderlands 2 was the most fun I’ve had with a shooter since half-life 2 or CoD4. It’s one of the funniest games I’ve ever played as well. I think the writing in general is really top notch (props to Anthony Birch), the characters are memorable, the weapons and abilities are fun. All and all, BL2 really hit the mark in a lot of ways for me.

Borderlands 3 on the other hand, just wasn’t as good. It had a ton of great quality of life improvements, so that was nice. The player abilities were also largely really good, I liked most of the classes. But it had a ton of weaknesses… The level design was pretty awful, the much bigger maps really spread out the action absolutely killed the pacing. The story was pretty dumb, and while the villains were detestable, it was only in the way that all obnoxious teenagers are detestable. And the greatest sin, the loot was a mess. They actually threw way too many guns at you, so many that you never really get a chance to enjoy any of them. And way too many of them were uniques (with mysterious effects they never bother to explain).

Have they? Is Roku dominant in this market?

Space exploration. It feels like the one awesome thing humanity is doing right now. Also maybe the most important thing humans are doing right now.

I might switch to a flip phone if it had gps and maps.

That’s simply the killer app for smart phones, at this point it’s a necessary part of my life. Without it I need a separate device just for that, and that device is actually less useful.

Edit: now that I’m reading other responses I have to agree, secure messaging and 2fa are really important too.

I could live without everything else, but to be honest, I don’t use much else. A few games, Lemmy, music apps, audiobook apps. Of those, Lemmy is the app most likely to leave me feeling upset, or like I want to doomscroll.

I think limiting the apps I use is the biggest thing I can do to not make the phone a negative influence for me. But to be clear, if that starts happening, Lemmy is the first to go, I already don’t use any other social media.

A long time back I got this game for free from the epic game store, it totally blew my mind. The world this game exists in is so well developed, I think the setting is my favorite character. I loved the panopticon, I loved offices covered in insane sticky notes, I of course loved the ashtray maze, oh my God that was freaking awesome.

This game is something special.

Unrelated wasps seem to prefer prosciutto over any other item on a spread filled with meats and cheeses.

But so do I, this is terrible news! The prosciutto is the only part I don’t want to throw out!

I’m about to be seeing a lot less Roku…

They know they’re entirely replaceable right? Like the Amazon fire tv, apple tv, Chromecast… Making their platform shittier really shouldn’t be their top priority if they want to stay in business.