VCs are throwing money at a literal perpetual motion machine.

[inthehands@hachyderm.io]

VCs are throwing money at a literal perpetual motion machine.

This is not even an exaggeration.

Casimir force co-opted to generate free energy, midichlorians not included

The vacuum giveth, the vacuum taketh, but the vacuum doesn’t let you taketh.

Ars Technica (arstechnica.com)

[perrin42@mastodon.social]

@inthehands

Look, I just want a ZPM. Don't confuse me with your "physics" or "reality" or any of those other made up words.

[inthehands@hachyderm.io]

Perpetual motion machines are the primary example high school physics teachers use for something you can know is an obvious hoax no matter what the details are.

[ferrix@mastodon.online]

@inthehands there hasn't been a recent high profile one of these since that infinite phone charging battery box and the em-drive. Honestly I'm just refreshed that there's any grifts left going on that aren't about AI or fascism

[kims@mas.to]

@inthehands
Ah, but isn't "discovering" perpetual motion (and realizing why they're wrong) an integral part of learning?

Didn't we all once think we were the first to discover the secret to knowing when the light will turn green?

[rk@mastodon.well.com]

@ferrix @inthehands

“Ramanujan summation of infinite series is predictive of the Casimir effect in quantum physics because the Universe is fucking weird, man.”

[michael_w_busch@mastodon.online]

@inthehands

I encountered someone today who was pretending to have disproven Carnot's theorem and trying to get people to give them money.

I could do without very old scams being resurrected.

[darthnull@infosec.exchange]

@kims @inthehands I remember being stoked when I noticed a pattern between successive points in a simple parabola. (My algebra teacher nudged me a little and a few days later it made more sense).

Though I *did* find the secret, at least in my county, for knowing when the light would turn green: 13 flashes of my lane’s Don’t Walk signal, plus about six seconds.

[avirr@sfba.social]

@inthehands it’s like Monty Python‘s flying sheep: “think of the commercial possibilities should they succeed”

[okohll@hachyderm.io]

@inthehands meanwhile, energy rains down on us from above (sunlight) and indeed below (heat)

[oldoldcojote@climatejustice.social]

@inthehands

I blame our growing antipathy towards education as a culture. We promote the basest idiots based on their epstein class connections.

[illuminatus@mstdn.social]

@inthehands People in VCs have tremendous incentives (bonuses while they operate, at least) not to see what is tremendously obvious.

[illuminatus@mstdn.social]

@inthehands I don't like to share links to substack, but fuck, was this a good post, and it captures the essence of the matter: the USA are trying to keep ahold of a future that's slipped from their hands already. "Nobody wants to go there, mate." https://ifloz.substack.com/p/nobody-wants-to-come-to-america-mate

[rev_null@infosec.exchange]

@inthehands VCs don't care if it can work. They just care about getting to the exit and leaving someone else holding the bag.