I've been running Linux as my primary desktop for about 8 years now. 20 years ago I wouldn't have used it. Far too many rough edges for dealing with every day (YMMV).

I have found the last 2 years to have seen a big improvement in gaming support for linux. And I hold valve 100% responsible for that. Now I can spend about 50% of my gaming time natively in linux (the types of games I play helps) and using the streaming option means my main machine no longer dual boots.

So in the last 2 years I have gone from dual boot as a necessity to not having it. You cannot change something as ingrained as windows as the dominant OS overnight. But now a lot more people at least know there is such a thing as linux.

I try to be. I just love their food. A love things like the venison and the boar. Their Schnitzels and sausages and their heavy heavy breads.

It just sits well with me.

Perhaps as well a big factor is that my experiences in Germany have always been positive. I have always got on well with the people and the place. My experiences in Italy have left a lot to be desired. To the point that on one of our trips through Italy we decided after a week we had had enough and drove to Austria for a break.

Lol. I guess it comes down to taste. I'm not obese, at least not last time I checked any way. I just prefer the food types. Italian food as a genre has lots and lots of options and pizza is a top ranked contender for favourite food. But I love the richness of German foods. And my experiences of eating in both countries has always been more pleasurable in Germany.

It's the part of having to close down things that I would like to leave running. eg chrome or gedit.

As I said I don't really tend to play the twitch reflex games anymore (eg. gnomoria has eaten a chunk of my life recently) so there is no harm in tabbing out to do something else. So I often have terminals running or conversations running in the background independent of the game. Having to reboot breaks all the other things I am doing.

The boot time is not really an issue, as I run an ssd.

Times must have changed then. I lived in the UK in the early 2000s and I never managed to get on with the beers there.

I have always liked the pale German beers. I was back there in 2012 as part of a multi-country trip and I loved the food.

Truth be told though I am not the biggest beer drinker so it is lost on me. I prefer my wine.

Absolutely! Go Germany every day of the week!

I have been to both countries multiple times and the germans win on food and beer every single time. They lose horribly on the wine though.

I still can't do the consoles. I bought one from every generation except the latest xbone / ps4 iteration. I just can't do it. I find the controllers bad for anything except fighting games and I generally like more complex games. Games that lend themselves to planning over days and often tabbing to a browser for insights.

I hate however having to boot to windows to play games. It drives me nuts. So I have a couple of linux native games I play but I mainly stream them from a windows machine via the steam client. It "just works", so my everyday machine is a dell latitude in a docking station running linux mint and I have an over the top gaming rig running windows in the garage. WOL and autostart steam. then a shutdown script. done.

No the three servers aren't - but on our electricity bill our house is marked as average for a 5 person household.

I live in Brisbane, so summers are 30c+ that means a lot of people use aircon. My house is fully insulated so I have the costs down there but it still eats it. We only tend to run the AC on the really hot days.

But nothing you are saying there contradicts what I was saying. That getting some spiked fuel into the onsite generator and cutting the grid tie would cause the reactor to melt down.

From what I understand the reactors do not meltdown the second the pumps are offline. In fact that even with the system offline and now pumping occurring the convection currents alone will keep the reactor in a safe zone for quite some time. More than enough time to bring new pumps / generators or power supply to site.

What happened at Fukashima was unfortunate. But the situation was made bad first by a large earthquake and second by a highly damaging tsumani. The argument that you can cause a nuclear meltdown of an otherwise perfectly happy plant, in the middle of a highly developed country, just by taking out the generator and grid tie is I think a bit far fetched. You would have either the grid tie fixed, or a new generator in place well within safety margins.

Also as I understand is BWR-3s, BWR-4s and BWR-5s were 2nd generation systems. Fukushima had 1 three, 4 fours and a 5 with mk II containment.

I have LED lighting throughout. Aircon does push it up a bit I will admin that.

My electricity cost is 24c / kwh and my main problem is I have 3 servers which run constantly (work from home). These essentially eat about 33c per hour... Immediately that is over $700 just for them.

Anyone who has a bill of under $500 per quarter here has a low bill. I have seen bills of over $2500 for people who have full ducted aircon in the hot summer months.

According to my electricity monitor, I am currently pulling 1.5kw. It adds up quick.

The reasons are:
Observation 1 - 7 power plants - in geographically disparate area. This removes the likelihood of casual thrill seeker wanting to buzz something there weren't meant to. This also points to an individual or group with a particular interest in nuclear facilities. There has been no comment on other powerstations being flown over.

Reasoning: Who would have an interest in doing this? Assuming a group, the obvious thoughts are: someone representing a risk (terrorist, separatists, militia, or foreign military) of those only a terrorist organisation holds any real possibility in France. Someone with an agenda (Environmentalists, pro-nukes, anti-nukes, any others I haven't thought of). Pro-nukes are unlikely to fly over as the facilities are already in place, people only tend to act when they want to change - anti-nukes or environmentalists remain possibles.

From this simple thought process I am left with environmentalists / anti-nuke and terrorists. Nuclear facilities can only be described as a hard target for a terrorist. Much easier to hit a shopping centre and have a major impact. Ergo, while not impossible the risk is lower. Anti-nuke - unlikely to take actions which could damage a structure but have history of using drones for observation purposes. Ergo this now sits as the most likely.

Now to ascribe a reason to do this. I will leave that part up to you, I went for pushing fear mongering propaganda. You may come to a different conclusion at any step in my thought process so of course YMMV.

No it is absolutely workable. Water would be a pain but you would just pipe it in. We have done it may times for "traditional" power structures. I mean we just finished a Dampier to Bunbury dual pipeline which runs 1800km without too much problem.

The issue is fear. We have no nuclear power plants (bar a small research one in Sydney) and a lot of misinformation about the risks. It is frustrating because we have some truly awful power plants that are spewing nasty pollution (see latrobe valley power) in massive quantities. One large, modern nuclear plant would take them all off line and instantly cause Australia to hit its Carbon reduction targets.

Essentially we are completely geologically stable, have vast areas of crap land, the largest uranium reserve in the world, high security and an educated technical population. But I doubt I will see nuclear power here in my lifetime.

See Vale's bulk carrier ships and their issues with docking in China to see a very simple case of where location does matter. Vale built huge ships to offset the locational advantage Australia had in the floating iron ore market. These ships have been blocked entry to China to date.

During the commodities boom, between 2002 and 2008, the freight differential between Brazil–China and Australia–China rates increased to around US$60 per tonne for 150,000–160,000 deadweight tonne (dwt) ships. Given Iron Ore is currently trading at c $80/tonne I think any argument shipping costs are irrelevant is ill-informed.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-solar at all. But the feed in tariffs were very high (note they are not that high now). And taking your numbers I would suggest that even a rate of 30c, some 25% higher than the retail rate DOES seem out of line. Start adding zeros to those numbers as the schemes scale and it gets painful. Don't forget that this rate is without cost (outside of a relatively low capital cost). There is no fuel, salaries and limited maintenance (a good thing about solar). But it also means that you shouldn't except a rate comparable to the retail rate, which does have all those things.

As I said I am not anti-solar by any means. I was commenting on the fact that solar in Australia exploded as a result of significant government subsidies. If the subsidies had not been the take up would have been lower. This is not a judgement on whether this would have been a net positive or negative. Those subsidies are no longer in place and as a result I would expect take up rates to slow significantly.

There are a couple of thermal solar plants under construction in Queensland already. Origin's plant is the largest currently. There is also a plan for a very large one not far from Townsville.