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Comment Re:Unsurprising (Score 1) 33

Usually, you do. Our digestive tract has evolved to extract the energy from our food as good as possible, given the parameters. It's not easy to fool it into ignoring available energy, and the methods to do it aren't very healthy.

Comment Re:Cool (Score 3, Interesting) 40

Actually, no. Transporting 13 kT of explosives to Hiroshima by plane and dropping it there alone would have amounted to a lot of energy consumption compared to transporting a single 4 metric ton device. You would need 3000 planes instead of one. Imagine the energy required to build 3000 planes and fly them all at the same time to Hiroshima! And 13,000 metric tonnes of TNT aren't cheap either. The US did not even had to mine the uranium for the bomb. They got it from Germany in April 1945, when they raided a nuclear research facility in Central Germany.

Additionally, the nuclear energy content of U-235 has not to be put into the uranium. It sits there since the Uranium was created during that supernova, which created the space dust that formed our Solar system 4.6 billion years ago. For Antihydrogen, you have to actually provide any energy that is then confined in the antimatter. It is more or less an antimatter based battery which you have to charge first.

Comment The answer is easy. (Score 5, Insightful) 210

I can explain it very easily. I don't want to talk to a machine. I don't want my car to listen to my conversation with the people riding with me. I don't want smart home assistants listening to my TV program. I don't want my tools telling me what to do. I don't want YouTube to automatically translate video titles.

Just because something is impressive does not mean I want it around me. That we can build a nuclear fusion device is impressive. But I don't want a hydrogen bomb exploding in my backyard.

Comment Re:Makes sense (Score 2) 79

Your whole argument hinges on the idea that long distance trucking happens within an European country.

And that's plain wrong. Long distance trucking in Europe mainly means transporting goods from the large harbors in the Mediterranean (Genoa, Piraeus) and at the Northern Sea (Rotterdam, Hamburg) to the large industrial centers and back. Additionally, trucks are transporting raw materials, furniture and similar goods from Eastern Europe to the West and machines and machine parts to the East. This means crossing borders all the time.

Comment Re:Even more so. (Score 1) 79

They do have a massive canal network (portions of it dating back over 1000 years) [...]

Let's put it like this: The Han canal was completed in 489 BCE, more than 2500 years ago, and the complete Grand Canal of China, which extends the Han canal from Bejing to Hangzhou to over about 1100 miles, was completed 609 AD.

Comment Re:Makes sense (Score 1) 79

If China is anything like Germany when it comes to electric truck adoption, then it's long distance trucking which moves to electric. In Germany, there are truck operators which have moved completely to electric - trucks which barely ever touch a town center. Electric trucks typically are rated for about 250 miles of range, which is sufficient for about 4 to 5 hours of driving. And after 4:30 hours, a trucker has to rest for 45 mins mandated by law anyway, while the truck can recharge.

Comment Re:Oh, Such Greatness (Score 4, Insightful) 256

You know, where the second child died of Measles? Lubbock, TX is at about half the distance between Dallas, TX, and Albuquerque, NW, and nowhere near the border to Mexico. All of the infected were not vaccinated, and most of them are under 18 years old - children, whose parents were not very keen on having their children protected. For some reason, none of the measles cases reported were illegal immigrants.

Comment Re:Suspicious (Score 1) 88

And that's a problem exactly why? I don't claim it to be 100%, I just point out the error of assuming 100% uptime for any type of energy source. Any power source based on heat and mechanical components has a lot of wear and tear, and components have to be serviced and replaced all the time, be it coal, gas or nuclear.

Comment Re:Cooling? (Score 1) 90

It's a lot more complicated. Remember the solar panels to power the data center? They catch Sun light, so you need to add them to the surface of your data center. And to keep it at 300 K, you need twice the area to the other side to radiate off the heat. And those areas should not face each other, because they would then heat each other. It's a lot easier with convection, because then, the moving gas molecules transport away the heat.

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