That would indeed be very helpful. But if all the other usages keep draining the supply, it will only help extend artificial reserves.

Stuff only becomes valuable when it’s mostly gone…

A Fairphone 4. Got it at launch and it’s a terribly buggy mess.

Describing all the issues would make a huge wall of text.

The sad part is that the hardware is ok. But they don’t seem to have any software QA at all.

My goal was to carry it until 2027, when replacable batteries will become standard, but since I can’t even use the phone for calling, I am trying to at least carry it until the Galaxy S55 launches.

I got the 6 million from this link: https://www.chemanalyst.com/industry-report/helium-gas-market-578

The issue is not how much can be produced right now, but the rate at which we are depleting it.

I found different estimates on how long earth’s helium supply will last, and most of them are between 10 and 100 years. That’s not a long time, considering that it means we will lose access to a whole element.

But not nearly the required amounts. We currently use about 6 million metric tons of helium per year.

If fusion plants ever become a commercially viable thing (and that’s a big if), they will never be able to supply anything close to that.

There’s quite a large amount of the usage which could be labelled “for fun”.

But we are consuming about 6 million tons per year (https://www.chemanalyst.com/industry-report/helium-gas-market-578).

The 3000 tons are just a drop in the water and it’s pretty much impossible to get to all that.

Not in a way that could be scaled up to even cover the childrens birthday parties of a medium sized city.

One relevant part that I couldn’t really find in the article is that helium is so light that it escapes Earth’s atmosphere when released into the air.

So any helium that is released to the air is permanently gone.

There is also no known way to synthesize helium, and it also doesn’t renew itself at all on Earth.

It’s also the only substance we have to cool stuff really far down. That’s why e.g. MRIs depend on it.

And we put this precious, finite and often life saving substance into kids’ balloons to make them bobble nicely through the air.

A squadron of military planes is a bit hard to come by as a private person.

But I wonder if people would also be that fascinated after 25+ years if I flew some DJI drones at 1-2km height in the night with bright LEDs on their bottom and dropped some pyrotechnics from them.

This has been confirmed independently multiple times as two groups of A-10 military aircraft dropping flares with parachutes for training purposes.

And still you see videos titled “Still no answers 26 years after the lights appeared over the valley”. Well, no answer that these guys want to hear.

And what it looked like is quite easy to check, since there are tons of photographs of that incident.

Sadly (or luckily, depending on how you look at it), GTP is much much worse at writing code than media would make you think.

It’s about at the level of a young teenager who knows nothing about coding except how to copy code they found on google.

If the amount of money you save that way is larger than what you’d earn in the time it takes you to create new accounts and the time you spend for refueling at 3-4 gas stations than it would if you’d only hit one, then go for it.

And don’t forget the fuel it takes you to get to the next station.

For me it wouldn’t be worth it, but if you have more time than money, go for it.

If you have the time to do that, it would probably work at first until the staff recognizes you and either doesn’t let you repeat that move or even outright bans you from purchasing there.

No further trouble expected, but don’t expect this to work for long for you.

That’s the problem with native lingua franca speakers. They don’t have a foreign language that they really have to learn.

If you don’t speak English people are mostly limited to their own country. German is worthless in France. So we all need to learn English, while you don’t have a lot of benefit of actually learning other languages.

To show my point: My team at work is spread over most of Europe. We don’t have an English native speaker in the team and there are maybe a small handful of them in the whole company. Still, we all speak English at work, because it’s the only language everyone knows.

Robber: “Why does it take so long to stuff money in the bag?” Bank employee: “Oh, that’s what I was supposed to do.”

You have to consider the square cube law.

Weight scales far quicker than bone strength.

And also kids are 24/7 running around and doing something for their fitness if they are allowed to.

Most adults don’t do that.

I do see what you mean, but I wouldn’t give people an incentive to murder artists ;)

Just imagine Disney hitmen who are killing the copyright owners for prospective Disney movies.

For heritage in general, I do agree with you.

99pi. I started from the beginning two years ago, and now I am just 40 or so episodes behind.

Why not both?

My toilet.