Yes, that problem is rather distant - but it exists; while the lake would be above the water flood levels, its bottom may above the river drough levels. And for it to drop to minimal levels all it needs is one of the berms damaged (e.g. by floodwater of the river, or even lack of maintenance combined with water animals - beavers, copyus etc.) The water escaping from the lake will be plenty enough to create a breach that will drain the lake to outer water levels, and then a couple of weeks of drough is enough to remove the rest of water.

Still, that's an unlikely disaster scenario of criminal negligence. As long as people are aware of the risk, the berms are maintained and the pumps refill the lake, this is all non-issue. Don't let that happen and it won't happen, just another point on the lengthy checklist. If the power plant is shut down, the lake will likely overgrow with water plants and eventually the radioactive layer will be permanently sealed under a layer of peat. May take a couple decades until the problem ceases to require "maintenance", but until then, just that basic maintenance is what is needed to keep it in check.

I didn't move goalposts, it was you who assumed "bountiful wildlife; rampart rabies" means just risk of contracting rabies.

This isn't Siberia with 10 months of extremely harsh winter, where larger populations of wild animals couldn't support themselves - this is the same latitude as London, France, Germany - the continental climate asserts itself with harsh winters but the summer, spring and autumn are bountiful, and wildlife is exceptionally abundant, especially with human hunters being scarce in the restricted zone. I've seen photos of a rabid wolf literally keeping scientists in a lab in Chernobyl in check, scratching at the lab door until a patrol of police arrived to shoot it. They really aren't nearly as scarce as you picture them, and your experiences from Siberia are not representative of the Chernobyl zone of exclusion.

I skipped the problems of locals like the police or the thugs, since I'm assuming settlement of the terrain would be done by Ukrainians. Sure the problems do exist, but - oh let's say they are hardly worse for the locals than a trip through Harlem for an American.

More news (seems this story is unfolding right now) - apparently the driver did NOT have a prior conviction for rape at all, but in fact had only been arrested due to an accusation. So it seems that the first possibility was the correct one, and there's really nothing that could have been done here (unless you believe anyone should be able to ban anyone else from being a taxi driver for life with nothing more than an accusation).

W.R.T background checks, someone on Twitter has found a photo of a notarised police certificate stating the guy has no criminal record. So either whoever reported he has one is lying, or the police verification process in India is as unreliable as people say it is.

Regardless, I expect it will make little difference in the court of public opinion.

If that is the case, and the guy came up clean but yet still went on to do X, how is Uber any more culpable than a taxi company hiring a cabbie with no record, who subsequently goes out and does X, or a tour company hiring a bus driver with a spotless background, who nonetheless does X?

They aren't. But it seems like there's a new trend in town - when a foreign tech company could potentially have guessed that someone using their service might potentially have done something bad, they're automatically at fault. See: Facebook and Lee Rigby in the UK.

In this case, the logic seems fairly simple - the guy apparently had a prior conviction for rape, thus, should not be allowed to be a taxi driver. If Uber had checked then the rape wouldn't have happened (assuming it did). The problem is the guy's prior conviction was also for raping someone in a taxi cab, so obviously this isn't a solution to all such problems because there's always a first time. Another problem is that I've read India doesn't actually have a national conviction database system, indeed they barely have a coherent national identity scheme at all (I remember reading about programmes to try and introduce biometric identity nationwide to fix this but it's a huge job). Apparently the way you do a background check is walking in to the local police district office and asking. If the crime happened elsewhere, tough luck. For anyone who knows the real situation in India, I'd be interested to know if this is true.

Anyway, even with reliable background checks, you can quickly end up in a situation like the USA where former felons cannot get jobs anywhere (see recent /. story about this problem), and then you get rules like in Europe where former convictions get wiped from the record after a few years to stop that happening, so there are no solutions that make everyone happy.

You are talking of the Kiyv Reservoir, which is a lake created by damming off the river, for water retention, flood prevention and hydroelectric(I think) purposes. It lies right in the flow of the Pripyat river, and so its bottom follows the river.

Now the Pripyat Lake is significantly different. It's not created by damming the river. It's not a lake in the flow of the river - it's an artificial reservoir built from scratch next to the river. Tall embankments were created, assuring even extreme flooding of the river wouldn't affect the reservoir. A huge terrain north-northeast from the NPP has been designated for a detention basin had this been insufficient.

I don't know how deep it is, and how its bottom is shaped, but it's been artificially created in order to provide coolant reservoir for the NPP so I'd find it hard to believe that the reservoir both contained by tall artificial embankments on the sides, and split in half lengthwise by embankment through the middle, to extend the distance between outlets and inlets - had its bottom left "unmanaged" and not levelled and cleared of obstructions that could clog up the NPP filters. Now I don't know how far that bottom is relative to the river bed, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was elevated, and even if not - it doesn't have to dry up all the way; even just a moderate water level drop would expose the banks of the lake.

"On the other hand, the vaccine (plus treatment) is pretty much as effective against bite wounds as non-puncture wounds such as sprayed saliva."

I thought the vaccine doesn't stop the bleeding from torn arteries?

Catching rabies is really the least of your problems when surrounded by a pack of rabid wolves...

Oh, and addressing the first part - yes, the vaccinations will prevent death from rabies. It will not help the least bit against bite wounds though, and animals with advanced rabies are both quite aggressive and lacking preservation instincts like natural fear of humans.Yet again, an adult man, especially armed, is quite safe. A kid on his/her way to school though?

It's an artificial lake - coolant reservoir for the power plant, and its water mirror is quite a bit above the river level (105m above sea level vs 101m) - it depends on the pumping station for filling, and would need quite a bit of a channel (about 40km, most of it over Belarus terrains) to provide water at current level without need of pumping. Meanwhile, natural drainage and evaporation can quite efficiently cause water level to drop if the influx stops. So - the pumps need to keep running.

Also, where did you find any large lake upstream the Pripyat River from it? Or did you confuse it with the Kiyv Reservoir?

People like you can't tell a noisy obnoxious scammer apart from a person who actually contributes to the good of humanity, and your respect is more often than not woefully misplaced.

As result, nobody of any actual significance cares about your respect - only your companions from your echo chamber, blinded to any real world issues, do.

Such minimal corrections are a clutter that makes actual, important changes get lost in the noise. It's not that the change was wrong. It was that the usefulness of the change didn't justify creating the clutter it added on maintenance level.

Also:

  * 1. Read errors are reported only if nsent==0, otherwise we return nsent.
  * The user needs to know that some data has already been sent, to stop
  * him from sending it twice.

Is this comment sexist?

Is this something worthy of firing a talented expert (as the company blog suggests) over the above?

Do you have your priorities shoved so deep up your ass you really believe using correct gender pronouns in comments of your software is more important than having the code written well?

Your philosophy is to waste time, effort and resources for an army of experts and spit on their work, so that in the extremely unlikely case someone who is bothered by gendered pronouns happens to read the obscure comment at obscure comment of an obscure part of some code?

By the way, show your face, don't post as AC.

What are the specific grievances?
I mean, they wouldn't want the fork if the corporation handled the management right. Even if through just one person, but one *competent* person.

The point of transmission is not only "displacement" of rotary movement but also exchange of rotation speed for momentum. So, if (as the article says) the gear ratio is 1:20, it means the load on an axis two such transmissions away will be 400 times that of a motor.

And while, yes, the design makes the system safe against damage due to too high load, the load it can provide is still far away from load which could damage the mechanics; if the slippage was to occur at loads ten times as high, it would still be outside the self-damage zone.

Yeah, so could you give me an estimate on the massive force of solar wind pressure against solar panels of a space probe?

Oh, wait, the linked article has it. At 1AU, typically in the range of 1–6 nanonewtons per square meter.

Yeah, massive indeed. The bearings stand no chance.