In today's world it does not take long to be reminded that we cannot have nice things. Or maybe the gov't has their own bot army to wreak havoc and convince voters that actually, we really do want privacy-ending ID verification laws after all.

Which now has ascii penises and other art and ... colorful commentary.

Just in the comments, right? That is where I see it. If I were the site owner I would just turn comments off. It was a cute idea when someone on HN suggested it, but without moderation open commenting becomes a cesspool in a hurry.

Took me two clicks of the "Stumble" functionality to hit unsavory stuff that someone clearly made on purpose.

Try clicking "Stumble" a few times...

Yeah I see that now. Also clicking on the all entries list shows pages of garbage. Just takes a few sucky people to ruin things.

I wonder how long it will be before Canis dementialis becomes a standalone meme.

> It's one of the few sources of energy capable of a black start

Doesn't hydropower count for like half of our black start capability?

> Renewables generally aren't capable of a black start, wind turbines in particular use induction generators that require external power.

Wind farms and PV both can use batteries to support black start capability.

> He gave me a look, scanned me down-and-up, and then looked forwarded at the elevator door.

I would have burst out laughing at the absurdity of that experience. And then I might have apologized, because man how awful it must feel to be inside the head of someone like that.

Knowledge work, of course, meaning it pays well but is less honest than real work.

But I agree with you. It’s a trade. Just more recent than plumbing.

I often compare software to plumbing. No one else cares how it was done.

Much of software is a trade. But above a certain level, it is engineering.

For example, in my discussions with electricians, they understand very well how to wire up a house. But they don't actually know very much about electricity. For example, they had no idea what I was talking about when I objected them running the phone lines through the same holes as the high voltage. I said that due to inductive coupling, the phone lines would acquire a 60 Hz hum. The phone lines had to be run at 90 degrees to the high voltage wires.

They had no idea what inductive coupling was, whereas that's freshman electronics material.

I wound up removing all the phone lines and rewiring them myself. No hum!

To further it, nobody cares until it breaks. Then they still don't care, they just want it fixed as quickly as possible, cost be damned once you get to that point.

Great analogy, I'm going to use this.

Maybe speling mistakes will become more common, as a signal of non-AI content.

For a while, at least.

> We have access to only 1 because there's only one distributor of bananas in the US.

Aren't there 3, at least? Dole, Chiquita, and Del Monte?

In the US, there's at least that many.

I've also bought Fyffes bananas [in the US] in recent times; those probably came from Aldi.

The more diverse ethnic marketplaces surely have other sources. They've got their own ways of doing stuff. :)

Most? You mean all. 240V [0] as been the standard in the US basically since electrification started in the late 19th century. 120V has for all practical purposes never been a thing, it has always been an artifact of split-phase 240V. A deliberate choice to offer two voltages to every consumer.

[0] Okay, technically 240V did not become official until around 1967, but the split-phase design was there from the beginning. They capped it at 240V to stop the creeping up that had been going on in the earlier part of the century. This is why you still have a lot of people (not all of them old enough to have been alive in 1967, oddly enough) that refer to 240V as 220.

In tge early days they did sometimes wire 120 only houses. That was mostly done before WWII

Sure, but that is the exception proving the rule. Not quite urban legend, you can find people on mikeholt.com who have actually seen one in the wild. Usually because of some shenanigans the local power company pulled to directly connect more houses by giving each one a phase of a three-phase feed.