>"but really HSR should be focused on interstates. "

Exactly. That is about all we can expect would be workable/affordable. Otherwise it requires extremely expensive elevated tracks. The problem with many Interstates is that some of them now are nearly "full", having expanded multiple times for more lanes. There isn't an usable center area and sides are pinned in.

A typical Briton will only see lower energy bills when wholesale prices stay low, grid congestion costs stop wiping out those gains, and OFGEM ensures those savings actually reach the meter. While these record wind outputs are absolutely real and frequently drive wholesale generation costs down to near zero, the price Brits pay is currently dominated by the archaic rules of the UK energy market and the physical cost of moving power from Dogger Bank to London.

The primary culprit is the sad fact that dead dinosaurs are still setting the marginal price. Under the current "pay-as-clear" market structure, the price of electricity is set by the most expensive generator needed to meet demand at that specific moment. Even if wind is providing 55% of the power for pennies, if the grid needs a single gas peaker plant to turn on to meet the last megawatt of demand, every generator gets paid that high gas price. Until market reform decouples renewables from fossil fuels, gas prices will largely dictate a typical Brit's electric bill regardless of how hard the wind blows -- this is the only thing that keeps gas peakers economically viable. As soon as renewables are decoupled from dead dinosaurs in OFGEM's repricing algorithm, fossil fuel generation will stop being a guaranteed profit maker, and start becoming a guaranteed loss. The fossil fuel industry knows this, and will do everything in its power to keep that decoupling from happening.

This is compounded by a massive hidden tax caused by grid congestion. As the Times mentions, Britain has spent nearly £1.3 billion this year paying wind farms to turn off because the cabling network physically cannot carry that much power south. Brits then have to pay gas plants closer to London to fire up to replace them. Realistically, consumers won't feel the full financial benefit of Dogger Bank, Hornsea, and Beatrice until the transmission upgrades catch up to the generation capacity. Brits are likely looking at 2026 for the first bottlenecks to clear, but true structural price drops won't arrive until the late 2020s when new transmission lines come online and the "gas-setting-the-price" mechanic is finally reformed. Wind is doing its job; the grid and the regulators just haven't caught up yet.

The burned out hard drives and power supplies will replace themselves?

Yeah I remember the convenience of my dad handing over his credit card in the early 90s and having the clerk run it through those embosser/carbon paper things.

And I'm sure everyone over 50 who used to have a summer job at the amusement park remembers the fun of dealing with all those paper slips and only actually getting paid after the physical paperwork got reconciled.

Agree about the meaning of "hallucinate" in this context, but...

You can't be sure your brain is deterministic. It may well have features that operate at the quantum level, with the implied genuine uncertainty. Transistors are normally scaled to avoid that problem. This isn't exactly "free will" in any normal sense, but it *is* non-deterministic behavior, at least as far as we can tell. (Yeah, superdeterminism is a valid interpretation of quantum theory, and so is the multi-world interpretation and a few others that take the entire universe as context. So in some sense it's still deterministic, but it's a really weird sense. And as far as the Copenhagen interpretation [i.e. "shut up and calculate"] goes even in that sense it's non-deterministic.)

I hired a plumber a few years back to change out some valves and pipes that he could do with the stock out of his truck in 90 minutes that would have taken me two days of home depot runs.

After the job, he took out his tablet, typed in all the parts he used, logged his time, and had me tap my credit card. I get an email receipt, he gets paid for the job his apprentice gets his hours logged, and neither he, his boss, nor I have to think about it anymore.

This is in contrast to the guy who blows out my sprinklers for the winter. He comes with the big compressor. Does his thing for 15 minutes and leaves. Then a week later I get a bill in the mail and am expected to mail a paper check.

Trades are as affected as they want to be.

About 10 or 15 years ago, one of my employer's suppliers of electrical and hvac stuff was still an old timer who sent around paper catalogs and did ordering by phone.

Don't know if he's still around but I'm pretty sure he or whoever is running his outfit isn't doing it that way anymore and I'm also sure that the sprinkler guy isn't going to be doing it that way for my longer either.

yes, actually yes. I would do it differently though, I would use sodium and burn it in water to create the particulate matter, this would accomplish more than one goal, it would block a percentage point of the Solar energy and would percipitate into the ocean water deacidifying it. If done xorrectly, maybe as NaK alloy it can also be used to generate power while burning in water.

no, the goal is keeping power and gaining glory by restoring the old ussr back and then some. The fact that it is done by using the criminal element as well as the regular army just shows how unprepared the dictator is.

>"The majority of the people you show it you will download it and do a full nuke-and-pave"

Doubtful. Although it might be a significant minority.

>"then wonder why this new 'Windows' can't run their favorite programs".

Like a browser? Because for a huge chunk of home users, that is all they really use now.

Last night, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station fulfilled the five-year plan for energy production in 46 microseconds!

It ain't the amount of energy or the peak power that matters. It's having it available when needed. Sometimes the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine, but molecules always oxidize and uranium atoms always split.

>"Even if all 1 million downloads turn into real OS installs, it's a drop in the bucket compared to Windows installs."

True. But if even if a small number of those people then show someone else and that other person switches, and on, and on, awareness keeps spreading. That is a great thing.

Generally, I don't care what OS people use (as long as I don't have to support it), but I do care if they are unhappy. Having Linux as an option is really great and works fantastically for a large number of people willing to really try it. The fact that it is free, fast/efficient, has no licensing mess, is more secure, more privacy-oriented, more controllable, more customizable, more open, easier and faster to update, and without forced cloud crud, no AI creep, no ads or nagware, and very little fake/forced hardware "obsolescence" all make it a very compelling option for lots of use cases. Not all use cases, but a surprisingly large number.

>"However, after Microsoft's recent announcement their own updates have broken their own system [slashdot.org] combined with no longer supporting W10, this can only lead to good things."

Microsoft obviously has its own agenda that doesn't mesh at all with what many (perhaps even most) users want now. And it shows. As MS-Windows has gotten significantly worse and more hostile over the decades, Linux/distros have gotten significantly better. Even people who haven't tried it in 5 years are often pleasantly surprised.

I tend to point people to Mint, but Zorin might be just fine, as well (I just have no experience with it).

the Germans occupied Ukraine, actually occupied the house of one of my grandfather. What is your stupid point?

>"I need an OS that I can plug a sound card into, start up my machine and it installs the driver and starts working"

Generally, that is Linux. I have installed various Linuxes over decades on hundreds of various machines. For the most part, modern Linux detects all the typical hardware and just configures and uses it. There is no need to "install drivers".

>"I want GUIs for all common tasks and I want it intuitive enough the I'm not spending hours looking up"

Again, that is generally the case with modern Linux. All the good distros can be completely managed through a GUI.

Could you end up with trying to install a not-so-great distro on a machine that has some unusual hardware? And have to take a dive into stuff? Sure. But that is the exception, not the rule, at least not in 2025.

You're pretending there's a good option on the table. There isn't one.

Option 1 is make lots of noise about defending democracy while half assesly egging along an overt proxy war with a nuclear armed adversary, being prosecuted by a country just as crooked as that adversary (sharing centuries of cultural ties with it), just more broke.

Option 2 is accepting that that aforementioned nuclear armed adversary actually achieved military conquest over some territory already (11 years ago) and exercises de facto control of some more, thereby acknowledging that the taboo on military conquest that the west has pretended to espouse over the last 80 years, has for the past decade plus been more pretense than something we will die for. Thereby removing some disincentive for other potential aggressors elsewhere to attack our nominal allies.

Option 3 is to pretend that no such tradeoff between bad options exists and look like a fucking fool to anyone out there without qualms about sending their boys into the meat grinder pro patria mori. And those people and places exist and they are watching. See downsides of option 2 above.

No, he chose war in Europe, this is the next step for putin. You didn't really think the ruzzian murderers that make up their armed forces will be allowed to return back to the motherland alive, did you? The next target is Estonia or Latvia, then Poland and the rest will follow. Regardless what anyone thinks, ruzzia has learned to fight the next type of war and nobody is ready for this except for one nation, that is holding the orcs - Ukraine.