First, Lego sets were never "generic". They were exactly what they were, be it a truck, a house, a castle, a space ship, or a dog.

No they weren't. There were sets that were just a collection of various types of bricks. They'd often have instructions for making a variety of things with the included bricks, but all the bricks were generic and not tailored for one thing. None of the things with instructions to build would use all the bricks. These sets used to be very common, but Lego reduced their prominence over the decades. They still make them, though. My sons have one of those sets purchased post-2010 - I think it came in a plastic bucket rather than a cardboard box.

You wait for the "pre-fill data" to arrive, log in to myGov, everything's pre-populated with income earned, tax withheld, etc. You just fill in the expenses you're claiming, offsets, additional income (e.g. foreign income), and whatever else, then click submit. For the last few years, the only things my wife and I have really had to enter manually is spouse's taxable income (she copies the pre-filled number from mine, I copy the pre-filled number from hers) and how we want to claim the Medicare levy reduction for having private health insurance. Takes less than twenty minutes, doesn't cost anything (besides Internet access, but we're paying for that anyway).

In the bad old days before they integrated it into the myGov web site, you used to have to download a Windows application that required Java and fill in all the numbers manually, then either submit online or you could print out a paper form and post it. But it was still free, and just required a PC with Windows, Java and an Internet connection. It sanity checked the numbers you entered, calculated expected refund/liability, etc.

Unless you're doing something fairly complex, you don't need an accountant or commercial software.

MASTER BLASTER rules UNDERTOWN!

There are at least some situations where this could be valid medically. However, they would generally involve cases of organ failure requiring some form of dialysis like kidney failure or liver failure so the point would be to remove blood products from the patient containing the toxins that the liver or kidneys would normally remove from the blood and replacing them with clean versions. In that case, you're basically using other human beings as a dialysis machine, just in installments. Of course, for it to be useful, you would need to have a lot of donors who donate very frequently and you would need to do a very large number of exchanges. Otherwise, you could use a single donor in something like a traditional dialysis setting and pump blood out of the patient and the donor, run them through separate filtration and centrifuge processes, producing different sets of blood components, then put some of them, like red and white blood cells, back into the person they originally came from after mixing with other products, like plasma coming from the other person. That way you could use the kidney and/or liver from another human being as a replacement for a non-functional organ in another human being. In some ways, I expect it would work better than traditional dialysis machines in some ways because natural organs are self-regulating and require less guesswork and estimation than dialysis machines to achieve homeostasis and also because they remove more things and do it better. Of course, they still could not replace functions like producing bile (since it would not travel to the patient through blood), or regulating blood cell production as the kidneys do since the kidneys regulate that based on how many red blood cells there are so hormone production would be based on the high levels in the donor's blood rather than the low levels in the patient. Of course, I suppose there still would be more red cell generating hormones in the donor's blood anyway, so that should cross over and stimulate red cell production a little in the patient. Also, you could reduce the red blood cells returned to the donor during the session to match the patient and, over a long enough session, the donor kidneys would produce more hormones... In other ways of course, replacing it would probably represent an unacceptable risk of immune reactions in both patient and donor, even with separating the blood into components and only transferring some of them.

So, there is a situation where you could use another human (preferably a young, healthy one) as essentially a piece of medical equipment, but it would probably mostly be better just to use the actual piece of technology if available since the pros come with some potentially serious cons. As far as rejuvenation goes... There have been studies in mice that do show an effect from blood from younger mice into older mice. Of course, though I don't recall all the specifics, chances are that those mice were very closely genetically related (as in the product of multiple generations of mice born to cousin-siblings) if not outright clones. Plus, of course, they are mice which, among other things, have very short lifespans as well as not necessarily having analogues in humans to their biological reactions. Ultimately, there may be health benefits (along with some risks), but any effect is likely small. There is definitely no vampiric fountain of youth here.

The whole thing is about perception, it wont really stop people who planned to shop-lift but the number of spur of the moment shop-lifters will drop like a rock because of the perceived risk of getting caught will be much higher. It's a cheap solution with a measurable positive economical effect for the store.

That reminds of something... I can't remember what it was actually from, but it was something sci-fi themed, maybe an online comic. In any case it has one character from an advanced alien civilization who has a device that employs switches and buttons and another character who is almost angry that the advanced alien technology just uses interface elements like that instead of voice control, neural interfaces, isn't embedded internally, etc. The alien replies that their civilization is technologically hundreds of times older and has gone through all of that stuff but, in the end, buttons and so forth simply work. Of course, later, the tactile controls on that same device are not actually available, and the alien just talks to it instead to operate it. It turns out that it does actually have voice control and probably other interface options as well.
Anyway, to me that seems like maybe the right way to go. Make other possibilities options, but don't just jump ahead and say everything must be this new fad interface now instead of the old way and that the old world must burn to make way for the new! That, unfortunately, seems to be the way this society driven by fads and marketing seems to operate.

Charity through local organizations, religious or otherwise is a problematic proposition. There are a number of issues, but most of them involve inconsistent coverage. For example, the city near you may have excellent support from a Christian rescue mission. However, even if they don't exclude anyone, or have rules or other factors that lead to some people falling through the cracks and not getting help, can you say that every locality has an organization like that available? Consider for example, the problem of structural unemployment. Let's say there is a factory in town that employs a third of the people in town. It goes out of business or just moves and suddenly, not only do all of those employees not have jobs, but many of the businesses that need the financial support of those employees to earn enough to stay in business are suddenly out of luck. Suddenly, you have a lot of needy people. The local religious charity, which is used to supporting maybe half a percent of the town's population, suddenly has to worry about tens of percentage points of the population. At the same time, local donations to the religious organization drop through the floor.

Basically, though there are a lot of aspects of charity that can work well at the local level (obviously, local volunteers are needed in many cases), there tends to be much better coverage with a widespread system that uses society-wide resources to deal with trouble spots. Kind of like how it works out better if businesses rely on the fire department rather than each business hiring one firefighter part time for two hours three days a week.

In other words, risk-pooling, like the insurance industry.

Aren't you making the assumption that the AC you are replying to does not donate or volunteer for charity though? It's not like they said either way, or asked. They just implied that the religious charities are using the charity to proselytize. Whether that is true or not depends, of course. Some religious charities definitely do, requiring prayer and other religious devotions or even joining their congregation, going through religious ceremonies like baptism, etc. in order to receive charity. Others just give out charity to anyone and everyone without discriminating. The argument from some is of course that spiritual salvation is far more important than even staying alive (not really mathematically valid reasoning of course since if you keep someone who does not believe in your religion alive longer when they would die otherwise, even if they refuse to convert, etc. that gives them more time to choose to convert to your religion, so, statistically it's the better choice even when conversion is your goal). Anyway, it's a spectrum and Christians (as well as other religions) do fairly frequently have at least some coercive intent when doing charity. It's a spectrum.

Well, I have to say for Gattaca, it was very, very, very heavily stylized in a way that it's pretty certain the world will never look like that. I mean, a number of futuristic movies have used a retro 40's/50's style like Gattaca, but it took it more than a couple of steps further with astronauts launching wearing business suits, etc. The reason was that it was a stylized exercise in examining obsession with status and appearance: financial success, genetics, athleticism, good looks, etc.

The "good" should be just like that, in quotes. I frequently hear the argument from some religious people that, if it were not for rules from a higher power, everyone would be killing, stealing, raping, etc. Whenever I hear that from someone, I have to wonder if, in their minds, they are just holding themselves up as an exception, or if they genuinely would be killing, stealing, raping, etc. if they did not have those rules. Various religious scholars have grappled with that, of course. Some, like Paul and Jesus, depending on interpretation, saying that the ten commandments were actually built into the hearts of humans by God. Conveniently explaining away the fact that heathens still seemed to have some of the same basic moral rules, but sort of invalidating the point of Moses spending all that time chiseling on a mountain.

Anyway, the point there is that the "good" people referenced are "good" according to the moral beliefs of whichever mode of their particular religious sect they operate under. In other words, if god commands that you shall not suffer a witch to live, then "good" people can burn their neighbors at the stake for having a black cat and a wart and not only remain "good", but actually be extra "good" unlike those morally suspect people, who said that maybe they shouldn't burn a harmless old lady alive because some people claimed to have had magical dreams where the accused performed magic (I've always found it really weird how much of the "evidence" in those cases came from sources that seem a heck of a lot like witchcraft from my perspective).

So, from my point of view anyway, that quote was about structural evil, where social norms can make people do things that are pretty evil from a rational perspective, because they are caught up in a distorting moral framework. Of course, I disagree with the quote that only religion can do that. Although I might buy at least a bit into the argument that if some framework does that, maybe you can call it a religion even if it is technically secular. For example, other posters have brought up massacres committed under ostensibly communist regimes. It is worth noting however that there is incontrovertible evidence (as in, direct statements by the architects) that the powers that be in those regimes were fully aware of the ability of religion to redefine moral values and explicitly sought to emulate religion as a form of social control.

Geographical distribution of wind, an interconnected grid, and storage can be used to overcome intermittency. Storage can be hydro where practical (with definitely a decent amount of capacity in Germany) and battery.

No, I am not. Have you even bothered to read the paper you linked to? Don't just link to things and expect me to read them for you. For starters, let's look at the measures that paper uses. It employs LUIE which is hectares/TWh/year... So, in other words, hectares/TJ*hour/second/year or, in other words hectares/TJ*3600 seconds/second/31,556,926 seconds. I mean, seriously, just cancel all the unnecessary terms and numbers and you get hectares/114,079.55 Watts or, in other words 1 hectare per/114.07955 MW. I mean, seriously, it's just reinventing the concept of units of area/per Watt with pointless extra terms and a pointless multiplier. I mean, I have come to accept that the power sector measures quantity by taking Watts, which are just a rate of 1 Joule per second, then multiplying by an hour, where the time terms are really in seconds, just that an hour is 3600 seconds, so they should cancel to Joules and a multiplier. I complain about it, but I accept that those units are there. But then adding yet another time term, this time years, which is also just seconds and a multiplier!? I have a hard time accepting the intelligence and rationality of anyone who blithely use such a term. I will use it if I have to, but only under protest. In any case, in this system, they give nuclear a score of 7.1 (using the median figure), meaning that, 1 GWe actual would be the average production of a 62.24 Hectare nuclear plant, or 0.6224 K. In other words, adjusting for a 93% capacity factor, it would be 0.5788 square kilometers for a 1 GWe nameplate nuclear plant. That is obviously a load of crap since it is so far off commonly reported figures and real-world observations.

As far as wind goes, their figure is 130. So that would be 11.40 square km for actual production of 1 GWe from wind. With a 34% capacity factor, that means a nameplate 1 GWe farm would be 3.88 square km. If we look at the 11.4 square km figure, with 5 MWe nameplate wind towers (producing 1.7 MWe actual), it would take 588 to produce 1 GWe actual. So, that would be 19,388 square meters per wind tower. In other words 1.94 hectares. Or, in other words, converted to a circle, a diameter of 157 meters. The blades of a 5 MW nameplate wind turbine are only about 130 meters. That is obviously wrong. Put in other terms, it's about 5 American football fields. Clearly wrong. It also ignores the fact that, for a wind turbine, you can use the land pretty much right up to the steel of the tower itself for farming and other uses.

Looking at the paper and how they got their figures, for nuclear they claim to have used land use for uranium mining in their figures. Considering that their area per GW comes out as far lower than standard claims that do not even take mining into consideration and that the mining for a nuclear plant over its lifespan takes up considerably more space than the plant itself, that reduces the credibility of their methodology and/or data quite a lot. They are also pretty vague about certain aspects of the data collection and they don't really show much actual detail about how they came up with their numbers in the paper itself. Also, just reading that section, there's some language that makes them seem like apologists for nuclear power that you don't see in the other power sources. For Wind, among other things they mention including the area of access roads and a perimeter. This by itself is invalidating. In dual use scenarios, such as farming, access is necessary even if there is no wind farm there, so that is pretty invalidating by itself. They also mention that "For spacing area, we traced the perimeter of the entire wind farm, including all the space in between turbines.". I could basically replicate all of their work to draw more conclusions and form a very detailed rebuttal, but that would be a huge waste of time. It's clear just from these details that their study is basically invalid.

Of course, I did look into the background and affiliations of the authors a bit (though, once again, not going to spend weeks on it) and there are lots of red flags regarding the authors impartiality. I would say that I tried to outline the tree of affiliated organizations and sponsors, but it is less of a tree and more of a connected graph. The Breakthrough Institute pops up various times, there are nuclear engineering organizations, etc. Notably, Bill Gates, the subject of TFA comes up as being one entity behind this. Basically, there is a ton of evidence that this is a paper written to favor a predetermined conclusion.

If you want to argue that, you can make points from the paper and go back to the primary data, but don't just spit out numbers from the paper. Their statistics seem to be just fine, but the methods they used to generate the numbers to plug into the statistics are seriously suspect.

My conclusion is that my analysis of the land area actually consumed by wind towers is rough, but correct. Also that the area consumed by wind farms is less than the area consumed by nuclear plant in terms of actual output.

The wikipedia entry for Palo Verde reads like ad copy: "It is a critical asset to the Southwest...", etc. Aside from that, it is not a good example, because it uses water for cooling. The water is treated sewerage mostly from Phoenix, which gets its water by unsustainably draining the Colorado, Salt, and Verde rivers. In other words, it uses a "massive source of fresh water" (the water could be used for crops instead). So no, this is actually an example of a power plant using a large fresh water source. Also, it generates 3.64 GW actual, and takes up 16.5 square km, so it is 4.54 km per GW actual in terms of land usage. So this is not a good example of low land usage or of the ability of nuclear plants to operate without large water sources. It uses 65 million gallons of water per day.

Once again, nonsense. You are using a cherry-picked definition of "anywhere" with your own chosen granularity. I can tell because I know you will backtrack and claim that you meant "country" specifically if I pointed out individual homes or towns, etc. that get all of their power from renewables. The simple fact is that, as time goes on, the only way you will be able to support your position will be through increasing levels of contortion of the facts. It seems like, if you want to make a geographic argument, you will just end up gerrymandering your definition and pointing to regions with arbitrary boundaries that have not decarbonized their electricity generation to your arbitrary standards yet. I am not, of course, defending how long it is taking nations to decarbonize, but your claims that they have "failed" because they are en route to the goal but not there yet reek of desperation.

I am sure that electricitymaps is a worthwhile project, but it is not up to me to join their project because they don't have up to date information. I have enough other projects I am already involved in. As for a citation, here:

-- World nuclear Association: Nuclear Power in France
In case you need me to. That's 17.7 TWh from natural gas equating to 3%, then biofuels/waste, oil, and coal adding up to 21.2, which is about another 3%. 3% plus 3% adds up to 6%. Burned fuels produce around 450 grams or higher of CO2 per kwh, so 6% of that is at least 27 grams of CO2 per kWh, as I wrote.

Once again, can you at least make an attempt to show that you understand why there might be problems with using "a rolling estimate of yearly output? One that includes last month days after the month ended"? I mean, aside from questions about the reliability of the information on the site, you have to see the problem with that, right?

Well, I can't seem to find it. Perhaps you can help me out? All I can find is that the data is aggregated from hourly results and that their methodology uses "raw production data from public, free, and official sources. They include official government and transmission system operators' data", but it doesn't actually list the sources, just notes that it runs it through its own algorithm which does not seem to be detailed under methodology.

You really like to repeat yourself don't you? The point is, with such radical changes, apparently just from shifting the rolling window by one month, it should be clear that your numbers are neither precise, nor accurate. You might want to state a degree of certainty along with these numbers. Note that I wouldn't be so strict if you weren't trying to, metaphorically speaking, cut things finely with a rolling pin.

There is definitely an approximate order of magnitude difference between the CO2 per kWh of France and Germany. That is not in doubt. The variability of the numbers you insist on, however, is obviously wide enough that your apparent confidence in the numbers appears foolish. For example, when asked, you cited a threshold of 50 g per kWh of CO2, but we can't even say for certain that France is actually within that threshold given your own methodology.

I knew a recruiters called Richard Long and Stella Ho. I always wondered if they lived up to their names, too. Better than my friends Rob Graves and Dick Leak, at least.

Won't happen, at least not with my books.

There is a reason writing the last one took two years. Many of its passages have very carefully considered wordings. Intentional ambiguities. Alliterations. Words chosen because the other term for the same thing is too similar to another thing that occurs in the same paragraph. Names picked with intention, by the sound of them (harsher or softer, for example).

I've used AI extensively in many fields. Including translations. It's pretty good for normal texts like newspaper articles or Wikipedia or something. But for a book, where the emotional impact of things matter, where you can't just substitute one words for a synonym and get the same effect - no, I don't think so.

This is one area where even I with a general positive attitude to AI want a human translator with whom I can discuss these things and where I can get a feeling of "did she understand this part of the book and why it's described this way?".

Has it been determined whether the IT situation was related to the theft that occurred?

Obviously it sounds like basically no bad option was left unchosen when it came to their IT config; but I'm curious whether this was a situation where the perps were actually sophisticated enough (or unsophisticated at traditional smash-and-grab/balaclava-when-on-camera techniques) to incorporate the bad IT into the heist; or whether the entry was more or less pure physical access control failure that happens to put the general state of the system in stark relief?

Obviously if it were a heist movie there'd be a hoodie kid using the power of fast typing to haxx0r the cameras and guide the operatives while using a precociously cobbled-together AI to selectively delete them from the surveillance footage; but if the overall physical security posture was bad, and the building is largely accessible to the public, it seems entirely plausible that someone just cased the joint and walked in much as they would have 50 years ago; though a different interested party is probably hosting a C2 server or some exploitation payloads on their DVR.

This is the part in the bad summer blockbuster where it turns out that there was some sort of alien organism involved in the collision; and now people are quietly scrambling to ensure it doesn't make it back to earth, right?