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Nitpick - your eyes are, in combination, a 3d sensor. Individually they're 2d sensors, but together they can detect three dimensional information.

Strictly speaking this doesn't make them a true 3d sensor, but rather a 2d sensor with an accompanying depth-map. In order for them to be true 3d sensors they'd be have to transmit information about both the near and far sides of an object simultaneously, for example.

Very true, a 4 dimensional being with 3 dimensional eyes would be able to look inside closed boxes, and see every side of every object at once. (just like we can see every part of a 2d scene all at once)

Not merely 2d + depth perspective.


Arguably, humans are 4-dimensional beings living in a 4-dimensional world—it’s just that one of the dimensions is accessible with much fewer degrees of freedom.

(Not unlike how a seemingly 2-dimensional world of a top-down FPS is actually 3-dimensional, you just have to follow way more rules when it comes to moving in the third one.)


Hmmm... Agreed that they're mostly 2D sensors, but apart from near-field the post-processing brain can use depth-cues to for us 'see' in 3D. Also, you don't see in 3D unless your head/eyes/target is moving, right?

You definitely get 3D from just having twin perspectives on an object. You get even more when moving your head.

Git, the internals, are simple, but not very functional. Git, the porcelain, isn't simple, is quite functional.

The git porcelain is functional, like a toilet.

And its UX stinks like one.

Grouping the dots would probably help.

Battery advances in the last couple of decades have also been incredibly impressive.

I'm curious. Are they in the market in large enough volumes yet? I've been waiting for ages for something better than Li-Ion and LiPo tech to become widely available. We need much higher energy densities, and preferably without the fire hazard.

Lithium-Ion density has basically doubled over the last decade. And the cost has dropped by 2/3.

See figure 2 here: https://rmi.org/the-rise-of-batteries-in-six-charts-and-not-... and the data here: https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/charted-lithium-ion-ba...

(Both of these are a couple of years old. I'm sure there's newer data out there that looks even beter.)

Newer batteries chemistries are slowly arriving, but they mostly aren't replacing Li-ion because Li-ion is getting better all the time. Except in specific circumstances. Like the Sodium-Ion ones that work far better at low temperatures and entered mass production two months ago:

https://carnewschina.com/2026/01/22/catl-unveils-worlds-firs...


Yes, cancer, bateries and computing has seen impressive progress.

Yet, in general the correlation between results "on paper" and results in practice is over a long period of time, if any.

It doesn't mean that new results aren't good, just that they may not translate into something practical very soon.


More information about how this was leaked, and the response is here:

https://fortune.com/2026/03/26/anthropic-says-testing-mythos...


Why would we run out of Ga?

There's a component of modern culture that trains and expects people to be extremely pessimistic about long term human development. It results in situations above, where without any further information people just assume by default that were going to run out of a thing and are on some collision course with not just a disaster, but every single conceivable one.

(Gallium is a byproduct of aluminum production. We aren't going to run out.)


My understanding of most elements is if we want more it’s either pretty easy to make from something else we have a lot of, or we need to redo the Big Bang, the latter being, in my opinion, a bit of a disaster scenario.

Even synthesizing helium is prohibitively expensive. Unless you want whatever heavy decay products we have from nuclear waste, synthesizing elements at industrial scale probably isn’t happening.

Unless by “make from something” else you mean extract the element from existing chemical compounds found in Earth, in which case we’re still just using existing deposits on Earth.


On the other hand, it is possible to run out of a metal when all of it is either somewhere in some device or scattered among landfills (i.e. not concentrated in a place like a mine).

It's a byproduct of aluminum production.

The earth's crust is 8% aluminum.

We will have bigger problems before hitting this one.


That is true, but gallium is present in the aluminum and zinc ores only in minute quantities.

We will not remain without gallium, but it is impossible to scale up the gallium production to a higher level than provided by the current productions of aluminum and zinc.

So there is a maximum level of gallium that can be used per year and it would not be possible to increase the production of blue and white LEDs and of power transistors above that level.

Fortunately, the amount of gallium used per device is very small, so it is not likely that we will hit that level soon. A much more serious problem is the associated consumption of indium, for which the resources are much less.


Thanks for providing a real answer.

That’s still not running out. It’s still there, just more effort to get.

"At 10 parts per quadrillion, the Earth's oceans would hold 15,000 tonnes of gold", says the Wikipedia page on gold.

I'm inclined to think we've lost that gold.


Practically speaking, sure. It's obviously not cost-effective to extract it. But it's there if someone can get it. I don't expect anyone to be extracting gold from ocean water, but there are other source of other elements that may not be cost-effective now but could be in the future or may simply become necessary despite the cost.

Effort high enough to consider that material lost to any practical purpose like a tv.

Cost scales with refinement effort, so it just results in more expensive TVs. That said, pretty sure we'll have drowned the planet in landfilled TVs long before this becomes a serious issue

If prices of certain metals were high enough I bet people would stop throwing out TVs and dig up old ones from the dump.

> On the other hand, it is possible to run out of a metal when all of it is either somewhere in some device or scattered among landfills

The metal isn't going to disappear, but it won't be concentrated enough to be as easily retrievable.


Its concentrated in a place like a landfill that already has access for large vehicles.

[flagged]


From your earlier comment, your curiosity was more about what happens after we run out.

In your question you stated the running out as a given fact ("When" we run out, not "if").

If that was what you wanted to say I can't tell you, but that's definitely how it was received and thus you also got the harsh response. Since it reads a lot like doomsday thinking.

(Example: Does that mean when we run out of oxygen there are no more humans?

Why would we run out?)


?Why would we run out?)

Of oxygen, because of rising temperatures interacting with rock weathering binding all the oxygen.

Now, that's more of something to worry about at geological time scales, but Earth in fact, is not infinite.


I love that you countered pedantry with pedantry. <3

Yes, my curiosity was about when we run out, because I didn’t know if we would run out. That was the whole point of the question. Have some leniency, we’re not all experts about everything.

> my curiosity was about when we run out, because I didn’t know if we would run out

You still seem to be missing the point.

If you talk about "when we run out", you are presenting yourself as an expert stating "we will run out" and asking about the aftermath.

It would be appropriate, and better received with more leniency, for you to ask whether we would run out.


That’s not rational. Why would I be asking such a simple question if I were an expert?

Exactly, that self-contradiction is part of why you were downvoted so heavily. Because you presented yourself to the world as irrational.

I am boggled by the number of people who see "I really don't want to X" and then reply with "Here's how to easily do X!"

The only roles that nature put you into are carrying the baby and giving birth (and possibly breastfeeding). Everything else can be done by both parents.

(I'm a dad, who does do half of everything with the kids. It is possible, it's just a lot of stuff to do.)


I doubt OP would agree with your assessment nor your use of the word "only" but I appreciate you. ;)

And the accounts I have in many many places which use email address as a primary key?

You don't need to update all of them. Nobody is asking you to give up your Gmail. You can start with the 20 sites you use the most frequently which takes an hour. For the rest, either take time to migrate or leave them in Gmail, since you don't actually need to visit those sites or get updates often.

I saw no ads on that page.

For me with Firefox/uBlock: none. With chrome without blocker I had one at the top, one in the middle blocking scrolling, one at the bottom in a kinda static bar that can't be removed and one subscribe popup. Pretty nasty but not 7. I guess it depends on your location. But blockers are very effective on it.

Ps I mainly use local AI anyway especially when I put sensitive data in it. I use cloud AI mostly for deep research and there I'm just asking about things I don't know yet so it's not really privacy invasive.


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