Someone upon which nothing is wasted.

  • 0 Posts
  • 21 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
Cake day: August 2nd, 2023
  • Jose A Lerma@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.world•Timeless
    8·
    3 months ago

    Nah, they’d still be extinct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon#Hunting

    After being opened up to the railroads, the town of Plattsburgh, New York, is estimated to have shipped 1.8 million pigeons to larger cities in 1851 alone at a price of 31 to 56 cents a dozen. By the late 19th century, the trade of passenger pigeons had become commercialized

    Even if adjusted for inflation, 31 cents a dozen doesn’t sound like a lot, but then market saturation happened and your prediction came to pass:

    The price of a barrel full of pigeons dropped to below fifty cents, due to overstocked markets. Passenger pigeons were instead kept alive so their meat would be fresh when the birds were killed, and sold once their market value had increased again. Thousands of birds were kept in large pens, though the bad conditions led many to die from lack of food and water, and by fretting (gnawing) themselves; many rotted away before they could be sold.

    Those who don’t learn from the past are something something

  • Jose A Lerma@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret
    2·
    4 months ago

    That’s some good diligence!

    It looks like the ecoflow values are lower:

    https://www.inchcalculator.com/convert/kilowatt-to-btu-per-hour/

    Since one kilowatt is equal to 3,412.14245 btu per hour

    30 KWh/day x 365 days x 3,412 Btu/KWh = 37,361,400 Btu

    Which is half the value I found for 2015. Does ecoflow have more current data and houses are twice as efficient? Maybe. They’re also trying to sell something, so maybe it’s based on data from their products. They don’t mention where they got it from.

    The welovecycling conversion is off by 1000 (maybe the kilocalorie threw them off?)

    https://www.inchcalculator.com/convert/joule-to-kilocalorie/

    Since one kilocalorie is equal to 4,184 joules

    1 kcal = 4,184 J so 1 J = 1/4,184 kcal = 0.00023900573613 kcal

    Otherwise, your math was right, just off by 3 zeros, so a household is more like 3.6 bagels per hour.

    The nist site also doesn’t specify a unit of time, but if it is 20 watts/hour (Wh) we’d only need to move it 3 places for KWh, or 0.020 KWh.

    Too many conversions can introduce errors, so we can go from KWh to kcal directly:

    https://www.inchcalculator.com/convert/kilowatt-to-kilocalorie-per-hour/

    Since one kilowatt is equal to 860.420815 kilocalories per hour

    0.020 KWh x 860 kcalh/KWh = 17.2 kcalh

    Which, yeah, is not much of a bagel per hour. Keep in mind that the daily recommended calories for an average adult is 2000 kcal.

    All in all, this was a fun thought experiment, so thanks for looking into it further!

  • Jose A Lerma@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret
    2·
    4 months ago

    The original article doesn’t specify a unit of time:

    Most experts agree that nuclear fusion won’t contribute significantly to the crucial goal of decarbonizing by mid-century to combat the climate crisis. Helion’s most optimistic estimate is that by 2029 it will produce enough energy to power 40,000 average US households; one assessment suggests that ChatGPT, the chatbot created by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, is already consuming the energy of 33,000 homes.

    Based on context clues, it’s probably consumption per year

  • Jose A Lerma@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•A Florida high school required parents' permission for students to watch Disney's 'Tangled,' prompting some to say local education laws are 'out of control'
    2·
    4 months ago

    As with most legal matters, it depends: https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/index.html

    Purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes: Courts look at how the party claiming fair use is using the copyrighted work, and are more likely to find that nonprofit educational and noncommercial uses are fair. This does not mean, however, that all nonprofit education and noncommercial uses are fair and all commercial uses are not fair; instead, courts will balance the purpose and character of the use against the other factors below. Additionally, “transformative” uses are more likely to be considered fair. Transformative uses are those that add something new, with a further purpose or different character, and do not substitute for the original use of the work. Nature of the copyrighted work: This factor analyzes the degree to which the work that was used relates to copyright’s purpose of encouraging creative expression. Thus, using a more creative or imaginative work (such as a novel, movie, or song) is less likely to support a claim of a fair use than using a factual work (such as a technical article or news item). In addition, use of an unpublished work is less likely to be considered fair.

    I don’t know many schools willing to bother finding out whether the use was fair.