C'est un Let's Encrypt basique sans aucune info en plus. Le WHOIS en apprend pas plus

En général, ces trucs-là, c'est maintenu par un des candidats. Alors, c'est lequel cette fois?

I have gone back and forth on vertical farming. There are scams in the field, but there are also some merits (most of them apply to urban farming in general).

The main issue you have with vertical farming is that there is only so much stacking you can do before you get out of light. A pillar like in the illustration projects a shadow, in which you can't really put plants.

However right now sunlight is not the limiting factor for plants growth. IIRC depending on the plant it is either water or CO2 so you can do some amount of vertical farming. To me, the interest is not to come as a replacement for regular farming (so growing grains is not the issue, you will have a hard time beating the efficiency of a flat field + tractor), the interests are:

• freshness. Having herbs that you can cut as you need them is really a taste changer.
• air cleaning. Some plants do have the ability to fixate some VOCs.
• less transportation. Having the plants grown in the same building block means that the CO2 footprint will be much lower
• more efficient water usage. Careful with this one, in some places water will be more scarce in city than countryside, but water consumption of such systems is generally lower.
• less refrigeration. If the food has less transportation it also requires less refrigeration
• local fruits all year long. Assuming they are put in a controlled environment like a greenhouse, getting food that normally requires a lot of transportation locally becomes possible.

So to sum up, it is less of a solution to make regular agriculture sustainable and more to make sustainable agriculture more enjoyable. Actually one does not need tasty herbs and exotic fruits, but the ability t have them without poisoning the planet is nice and, well, solarpunk.

Yes! This has been very frustrating for me as an engineer. I chose this path in order to help solve the big problems of our times. And then realized that we don't need engineers for that, solutions are lying unused on the floor everywhere.

Climate: We know electrification displaces fossil fuel usage. And we know how to produce electricity without emitting CO2 (yes, nuclear, but now increasingly renewables). We don't have one solution to get out of the climate crisis, we have a dozen. I don't have any work there as an engineer. There is a political opposition to overcome, from conservatives mostly but shockingly also from ecologists who refuse to do their homeworks and still claim EVs or nuclear energy is not part of the solution. We could have solved the CO2 emission crisis in the 90s.

Work automation: My main focus as a roboticist. I started doubting my path when I realized that subway trains were not automated 50 years after it became possible (and done in a real world deployment). We could be in a post-labor society today, but the transition period to it is so scary that we refuse to take the jump.

Inequality: Redistribution works. Proven, published, profitable to the majority. Ergo, the minority of rich make sure democracy remains broken.

Fascism: Education works. Population educated about critical thinking and media literacy spread far less misinformation. People who know about the Milgram experiment are less likely to fall for unethical orders. Yet we do not do it.

It is weird. I am a big technophile and hard science lover but if I were back in my 18s I would rather choose either social science or arts as a lever to change things for the best. Engineers have done their work. We will continue to make it easier to bring good to the work but when you see ecologists moan about wind turbines being ugly, EVs being non-ideal and conservatives about coal being manly and chunky vibrating thermal cars being cool, it feels a bit like installing an escalator to the fitness center: the problem is not in the accessibility, it is in the will.

Interested in other peoples take on it btw.

I'll give another factoid:

In a sunny day, around noon, many EU countries have below-zero prices for electricity exports:

It comes with a different set of issues, but this is not prospective or a hypothetical: this is the world we are living in, with the operator of the French grid warning that we are currently at solar saturation.

Now we need the other part of the puzzle: energy storage. On a HUGE scale.

Pirated many things when I was student. When I started earning a living I realized that the amount they ask for is really not excessive so started paying for several media, but they keep insisting on making sure that what you pay has less usage value than what you pirate. Stopped buying CD when one was designed to not play on my computer. Stopped paying for movies since they decide to tell you where and when you are supposed to watch them.

I gladly pay for books (which half of the time I then pirate to read on my eReader) and video games but the other digital media are trying to establish a toxic relationship and I'll have none of it.

"Most obvious fascist candidate in US history"

"Does not go to vote"

"Wait we can have genocide and fascism at the same time?"

Note that they are not that new: They exist since 2009 and have been a long time competing tech but they recently are becoming more efficient.

silicon, over which China has had majority market control

Worthi noticing that the only reason for that is not geological reserves but the fact that free market applied to minerals makes the country with the lowest wage, workers right, and ecological regulation the one with the most competitive offer.

Not having mines locally is a political choice.

Make perovskite a profitable mineral to sell in huge volume, China will become the main producer if we do not break that logic.

EDIT: But sorry for the negative tone, it is indeed good news that solar has many techs supporting its growth. Redundancy and alternatives means resilience, we can't be against that!

Alexandra Elbakyan deserves a Nobel and a presidential pardon. I doubt any other person alive now has made more for science.

Does Walmart have a monopoly on kinder chocolate? The idea is to have several distributors each with as complete a catalog as possible. Having such a shattered offers between platforms makes it very noncompetitive against any piracy solution.

Land.

50 trees take a lot of space. The idea is to put these boxes where trees can't fit.

Note that these algae are not taking the room of 50 trees, that's really not the way to look at it. We want more trees inside cities, and whether or not this happens is totally decorrelated to whether or not we see these algae boxes or advertisement in the bus stops.

how much more expensive is manufacturing and maintaining them than planting and watering a tree is?

I don't think it is hard to imagine that a box of algae takes less maintenance than a tree inside a city. Typically you don't plant a seed in a city to grow a tree. You grow very specific resistant species in a tree farm and then transplant them once they are tall enough in a city. This is a long and expensive progress. Trees require maintenance: they need to be trimmed, healed, they may have fallen leaves that need cleaning, they may need watering when it is too dry, they need removal if they are too damage.

I think a tree has probably a similar level of need than these boxes, so 50 trees will largely exceed that.

We need both.

There is more to life than basic services, but these should definitely be provided for in a non-profit way.

Remote working from the countryside, taking my electric car (second hand, cheap, low range but recharged daily) to the fablab to discuss our current projects:

• A solarpunk video game (in discussion)
• A publicly funded research program about automating small scale production of several intermediate vehicles, focusing on Vhélio, an electric cargo bike. (ongoing, funded)
• A plastic press for making plastic sheets our of recycled plastic (done with 2 industrial partners, currently suspended but funded and started)

Last weekend I went to a local non-profit event of resistance against the far-right. Yesterday I got a call to help form a citizen's list for the next municipal elections.

To think that I went as far as rural Japan to find the things that I was looking for and that they were waiting for me in my native country (France), just next to where my parents live.

Not really. They have a very simple tax device that ensures EVs are cheaper than thermal cars. China has put in place something similar. It is not a rich country thing. It is about being serious about its transition

In the 20th century, one of the big boost in general health was a better understanding of hygiene and its importance.

I do form the hope that in the 21st century we will make a similar progress towards mental hygiene and make sure to not create too toxic environments, give kids the kind of nurturing they need, and treat infections before they become deadly.

Some groups have managed to "teach empathy" to juvenile delinquents who are diagnosed with psychopathy. Finding a treatment is the first step. Then we need to grow as a society and realize that giving healthcare including mental one to everyone is not giving away "free lunch" but actually improving the overall society.

I don't know if the point of view of a foreigner is welcomed or relevant but hey, you know, American politics invites itself too much into European politics so I'll give my opinion anyway.

we ran a shitty candidate again?

A week ago, Harris was hailed like the second coming of Christ and now she is the cause of the fall of USA into fascism. The dumb personification in US politics is super tiring.

He won. The DNC is to blame.

No, the half of your country that is fine with fascism is to blame. The issue is not with democrats or the DNC, it is the fact that Trump's numbers are very stable despite all the bullshit he does and say. The DNC is the tool to motivate the other half of the electorate, but don't lose sight of the half that is responsible for it.

What exactly are we protesting at this stage?

A protest has two functions: showing discontent to the rulers but also to meet, organize and network in order to resist. A protest is a social gathering where people who care enough about issues to come and spend a whole day on it can meet each other.

Or is it that we’re protesting only in the blue states or cities where it seems unfair to be governed by the will of the hillbilly underbelly.

To know the theme, you had to be there. The media NEVER represents a protest accurately.

If you really believe that Trump is going to install a fascist dictatorship, you are supposed to start organize the resistance.

Oh look, Russian propaganda coming to lemmy! That's proof of growth here!

Note qu'on n'est pas sur /r/france ici, tu as le droit de modifier un titre trompeur pour dire ce qui s'est vraiment passé, à savoir qu'il a été condamné à verser cet argent et qu'il a demandé à avoir 10 ans pour le faire, donc il n'a pas du tout proposé de les verser, il a proposé de retarder le versement de la chose qu'il a été condamné à payer.

REND L'ARGENT!

I think they fit a different niche.

After years going to hackerspaces and makerspaces, and being desperate of not seeing them produce big projects, I realized that they were not tool libraries for most of them. They are actually social spaces. Big projects, they start there but they usually move to more adapted places. A lot of the people with the knowledge and know-how to use these tools, they have ways to get access to them. They don't need that space. But as the stereotype says, as geeks we are not that good at recognizing our social needs and we crave talking about tools, about making, about exchanging knowledge.

It is not about the tools, it is about what you learn there.

At the makerspace, you meet makers. Once you have the knowledge you need, you go at the tool library and you get the tools to get your thing done. Chances are what you want to do doesn't fit in a shared workspace. Maybe you do something on a car, maybe you do something on a house, maybe you do something on a tree, maybe you want to show something to your young kid or to your family who lives in a remote place.

I write that from a workshop for my two mobile robots that I have founded thanks to the local makerspace. These robots they started their lives at the makerspace but now I need more room. I still go there when I have something to 3D print something or if I need the skill of the mechanical engineer there. But actually, I go there more than I need, because I like having lunch with them, I like hearing them exchange ideas about new machines, about the local politics, about board games, or about their latest crush.

Alors pour info je bosse dans le machine learning depuis quelques années et à temps quasi-plein depuis le début de l'année sur les modèles de langages, ce qu'on appelle désormais "IA" de plus en plus couramment. C'est un domaine qui va extrêmement vite et ce qui était vrai il y a 6 mois a des chances de ne plus l'être aujourd'hui. Je suis en train d'essayer pour un client plein de modèles, plein de prompts, je lis les publis autant que je peux (c'est chaud de tout suivre).

Je vais pas répondre à chaque commentaire, mais quelques remarques:

• C'est sûrement un LLM. Le coût d'accessibilité de ces technos baisse à une vitesse fulgurante et j'ai sur mon GPU pas-trop-pourri-mais-pas-le-top (12GB de VRAM) des modèles tout à fait corrects qui tournent. dolphin-2.1-mistral-7B en ce moment, mais ça fait un moment (2 semaines) que j'ai pas essayé les nouveaux sur ma machine.

• Servir 200 000 élèves je doute que l'état se soit équipé des machines adéquates, ça reste encore un peu touchy de faire tourner ça sans GPU. Ça passera sûrement par une boite privée (et franchement vous attendez pas à ce que l'équipe actuelle remette la régie publique au gout du jour pour les choses stratégiques). Des chances que ce soit lié à l'annonce d'investissements massifs dans le domaine de la part de Niels y a quelques semaines.

• Si ça arrive jamais ce sera en retard. Y a combien de promesses "dans les prochains mois" de ce gouvernement qui ont été tenues? Y aura les JO, le covid ou bien Sandrine Rousseau qui aura mangé sa copie.

• Perso j'attends un tel truc de mes voeux, et c'est un vrai tiraillement entre l'amour que le porte pour les profs de la fonction publique et l'incapacité qu'a le modèle éducatif à évoluer. Je pense qu'un truc de ce genre est vraiment l'avenir.

• Je m'attends à ce que ce truc là se plante en beauté. Je serais TRÈS impressionné qu'ils parviennent à déployer comme ça massivement et sans test un truc qui marche bien et qui sois pas rushé. Ma veille est pas parfaite, mais s'il y avait un truc qui marche bien dans les tuyaux en France, ça m'étonne un peu de pas l'avoir vu passer.

• C'est tout à fait possible de faire ça bien, Khan Academy l'a fait. Je m'attends à voir des versions FR de trucs américains avant la solution de l'éducation nationale. Je dirais bien que ça vaut le coup d'attendre s'ils font les choses bien, mais j'y crois pas.

• ChatGPT, surtout dans sa version 3.5 (gratuite) n'est pas l'alpha et l'oméga de ce qu'on peut faire dans le domaine. Les bons modèles sont capables de digérer dans leur contexte l'équivalent d'un petit livre de cours. (ou 2 bibles pour les plus ambitieux, mais je crois que Anthropic abuse un peu du marketing là). Quand vous mettez un texte dans le contexte, vous diminuez grandement les erreurs et hallucinations du modèle à son sujet.

• Ça va clairement pas être adapté à toutes les psychologies et tous les cas, j'espère qu'on ne va pas nous faire le coup de moule unique par lequel tout le monde devra passer. C'est un outil pour délester le travail des profs en aidant les élèves qui marchent bien comme ça

• Je suis un profil sur lequel ça aurait marché et qui aurait adoré ça. Pendant ma scolarité j'apprenais plus des livres (et sur la fin, d'internet) que des profs, mais c'est clairement pas le cas pour tout le monde.

• Par contre y a un aspect à mon avis assez universellement positif de ce genre d'outil: la patience infinie et le manque de jugement envers les "question bêtes". Tu peux la veille du bac lui dire "en fait j'ai jamais compris quand on écrivait «j'aurai» et «j'aurais»" et ça va te l'expliquer sans te sermonner sur ton retard et sans te juger. Parfois c'est cool d'avoir un humain de l'autre coté, mais parfois c'est super de pas en avoir.