Paper is paywalled, but from the SciTech article it looks like mostly it was sodium sulfate. They did also make some “ocean-degradable plastics”.

Thanks for the link and breakdown.

It sounds like a better description of the estimated thinking speed would be 5-50 bits per second. And when summarizing capacity/capability, one generally uses a number near the top end. It makes far more sense to say we are capable of 50 bps but often use less, than to say we are only capable of 10 but sometimes do more than we are capable of doing. And the paper leans hard into 10 bps being a internally imposed limit rather than conditional, going as far as saying a neural-computer interface would be limited to this rate.

“Thinking speed” is also a poor description for input/output measurement, akin to calling a monitor’s bitrate the computer’s FLOPS.

Visual processing is multi-faceted. I definitely don’t think all of vision can be reduced to 50bps, but maybe the serial part after the parallel bits have done stuff like detecting lines, arcs, textures, areas of contrast, etc.

Ah. They would never do anything good because they’re evil, and they’re evil because they would never do anything good. Logic so airtight not even the tiniest fact can penetrate.

2,300 different charities according to her website. You can see the whole list here: https://yieldgiving.com/gifts/

Well MacKenzie Scott has given away $17 billion of her ~$60 billion over 5 years, so she’s not terrible.

Yeah, such a shameful lack of bigots’ POV.

50% of Americans read so poorly that they are unable to perform simple tasks such as reading prescription drug labels

Maybe they could start them off with something easier, like Finnegans Wake

If it was primary research then it should have methodology.

But since the data is “cobbled together” from other sources, then it’s by definition secondary research (and should list those sources).

omg Toad, you can’t just ask people why they’re purple!

If there was a government-mandated monopoly on coffee and it was sold in L/s, we probably would.

Surprised not to see any posts referencing the Arbitrary List of Popular Lights or !flashlight@lemmy.world.

One of the requirements to make it on the list is:

A user interface where a single click turns the light on in a reasonable mode, and another single click turns it off.

That assumes “you” are just the conscious part. If you accept the rest of your brain (and body) as part of “you”, then it’s a less dramatic divide.

Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization

-Jo Walton, Among Others

Oh man, don’t stop

You got it! Here’s some other consumer protections the administration has introduced recently:

• Direct filing with the IRS
• Price limits on asthma inhalers and insulin for seniors
• Requiring ISPs to provide consistent up-front information and pricing
• Restrictions on college junk fees and disallowing witholding of transcripts

Hungry for more? Check this out:

White House Statement on Junk Fees

That’s from October, so some of it overlaps, but among other stuff there’s still a “Click to Cancel” rule working its way through the FTC.

Sadly Biden has been spending a bunch of time on lame crap like climate change, human rights, health care, infrastructure, election integrity, etc., so it might take a bit longer for him to single-handedly usher in consumer utopia.

This seems entirely opposite to my observation. I’d say Biden and his administration are unusually focused on unfair or annoying business practices. In just the past two weeks the Biden administration:

• Set clear rules requiring cash refunds for flight delays
• Banned non-compete clauses
• Set new rules on “junk fees” for credit cards
• Increased the minimum salary for overtime exemption
• Expanded fiduciary duty to retirement “advisors”
• Announced a lawsuit against Live Nation (TicketMaster)
• Re-instated net neutrality

Funny running across this article after reading https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

Spoiler: the author does not have a high opinion of Raghavan.