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Comment Re:FORTRAN (Score 1) 106

But that does not mean that this code is still maintained, or that there are many people needed to maintain it or that new code has to be added. Maybe most of the legacy Fortran and Cobol code pieces have long been capsuled and are run as some kind of black box? Or they are replaced long ago by libraries of newer code in another language? Maybe, the last error message from them has been fixed a dozen years ago, and now, no one touches the code anymore, and extensions are written in separate containers?

Comment Re:Don't be overconfidence battery tech progressio (Score 1) 193

Actually, they do.

Within one year, from April 2023 to Jan 2024, market prices per kWh dropped 50%, from about $200/kWh to $95/kWh. And this is no fluke powered by one-time events. A lot of progress in the last few years was indeed technological and came not from new chemistry. The Cell-to-Pack and Cell-to-Blade processes, which allow very large but still stable cells made the LFP cell viable for automotive application and Sodium cells at least for stationary use. Doting the LFP with Maganese, creating LMFP cell types can add another 20% of capacity within the same technology. Anodefree cells (where the anode will form itself with the first charge) will allow for even cheaper production. Organic cathodes might boost the capacity of sodium cells up to 600 Wh per kg, but are currently very expensive compared to iron phosphate - but if the organic compounds are cheaper to made, they will become competitive.

You won't find many of the new ideas in your everyday cell. But that's not because the ideas are not viable. It's because the current cell types are progressing themselves so fast, that they are still the most marketable option. But whenever the development slows down too much on them, the other options are ready to shine.

Comment Re:Not enough (Score -1) 104

Your body contains about a kilogram of phosphorus. Your bones, teeth, and DNA are made of phosphorus.

And still, White Phosphorus is deadly in doses of less than 1 ppm. Enumerating elements is completely meaningless when talking about toxicity. What matters is the substance which contains the elements. And two chemically closely related substances can be harmless and absolutely toxic. Botulinum toxin, often called Botox for short, is deadly in doses above 2 ppt (or about 150 nanograms for a grown adult), and all it contains are the very same amino acids, which make up about 15% of your body weight.

Copper is necessary for human life.

Same silly argument.

Comment Re:Not enough (Score -1) 104

Phosphorus, especially in its modification called White Phosphorus, is one of the most toxic substances known to Man. Also, copper is pretty poisonous.

Luckily, posphorus is quite reactive (that's why it was used as an agent in matchsticks), oxidizes fast, and will form phosphoric acid when exposed to air, which indeed is not toxic. It is similar for copper, albeit some copper oxides are themselves toxic.

Comment Re:Weather report (Score 4, Informative) 198

Especially everyone supervising the operation of the Mystic summer camp should be made aware beforehand that they are in a flooding area, which would be under water even with less rain (but not catastrophically so), and be alert to the weather forecast for a possible evacuation. But people forget, and 20 years no flooding feels the same as totally impossible, and flooding itself is often seen as getting wet feet. The idea of being washed away by 45 feet of water was completely out of the minds of people.

Germany, which is known for being well organized, had a similar catastrophic flooding in 2021 (184 dead) in the Ahr Valley. Also here, the Weather Service had warned about heavy rainfall and possible catastrophic flooding, but it did not register with the people responsible for civil protection.

That's a real problem with once-in-a-century events. People just can't imagine the possible damage, and are completely unprepared or even consider preparations as wasteful and an obstacle to business, development or personal freedom.

Comment Re:Alternative Models (Score 2) 42

As I said: There are proposed paths, but they have even more work cut out for them. In fact, I called them more elusive.

And LIGO can't test the small Black Holes hypothesis. It measures gravitational waves in the wrong frequency band. The lowest mass it can detect is about the size of a neutron star binary (~ 3 solar masses). Advanced LIGO will be able to detect masses down to a single neutron star (1.4 solar masses), still too large for the hypothetic small primordial Black Holes.

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