Bryan Elliott

Coder dude.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • The fun part about that: you can burn hydrogen with fluorine because fluorine is the best oxidizer; it’s then deadly (and caustic) because hydrogen is not the best reducer - it’s both an oxidizer and a reducer and, as a result, it’s basically middle-of-the-road for both properties. Specifically, most metals are better. So the HF will happily drop its hydrogen for many metals to oxidize (fluoridate) them instead. Lead, iron, zinc, aluminum, magnesium, and lithium will each make a way more stable fluoride than does hydrogen.

    In solution (say, if you inhale HF, it’ll dissolve into the moisture in your lungs), it breaks apart into H⁺ and F⁻ ions - both of which are just straight-up electrochemically promiscuous. The pair’ll run through your lungs breaking up organic bonds like couples at an orgy.

    Even so, HF doesn’t hold a candle in terms of danger (and oxidation potential) compared to fluorine peroxide / dioxygen difluoride / FOOF.














  • I’m of the mind that the whole “AI could be an existential threat” mindset is some deeply “one simple trick” thinking mixed with “fear of the unknown” thinking. That is, there’s some convoluted path towards the unattainable that superhuman AI could suss out and would have the resources to execute, that individual humans or groups thereof could not - and that path necessarily leads to destruction. I’m not well convinced by it.