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Comment Re:Flywheel storage buffer (Score 1) 104

The reason I thought of flywheels was because I was thinking of something that could take over the more than 5,000 megawatts of load, then slowly decrease it. Batteries would normally be fully charged and unable to absorb the gigawatt load of the servers shutting down. Chemical batteries, pumped hydro, or thermal batteries might help during the re-startup but be unable to absorb the massive load of shutting down all the servers quickly.

Comment Flywheel storage buffer (Score 1) 104

Perhaps exceptionally large power users that can quickly drop their demand should be required to have a flywheel energy storage unit on-site to smooth their cut off and start up demand.

When they see the need to shut off their servers, they transition their power requirements to spinning up a flywheel storage system, then gradually reduce their power requirements. When they are ready to start up their servers again, they can tap into the flywheel's energy and slowly transition back to grid power.

Using a flywheel storage as a huge capacitor to smooth out the draw on the grid. Spreading the sharp decrease and increase over a 5 minute interval should help stabilize the grid.

Comment Re: Seriously? (Score 2) 74

She was 89 years old, confined to a wheelchair, living in an assisted living home, but in fine mental condition.

Just six months before her death, she attended a tribute for her work where she signed autographs, posed for photos and attended an early birthday celebration, where she briefly but joyfully kicked up her heels and danced. https://people.com/tv/nichelle...

Assuming because she was old and needed assistance she is fit to let die is just SO wrong.

Comment cull the weak (Score 1) 110

A five-fold increase in course failures, mostly attributed to cheating, would not be lessened by requiring a minimum ACT or SAT score before entering the program.

Filing a lawsuit that says "The school didn't check if I was smart enough to pass the two-digit entry-level classes so I felt justified in cheating" probably won't get far.

Comment Re:Out of control demand for power (Score 2, Interesting) 107

A lax regulatory environment and a technology that is outclassed by wind and solar in virtually every single metric except space usage in a country with nothing but space?

The output of a SMR is heat. That heat can be used to power a steam turbine or it could be used to generate heat directly where heat is needed like industrial or chemical plants. Imagine a SMR that could produce electricity, heat, and desalination in high latitude locations like Alaska. Or a small version could be used at McMurdo Station in the Antarctic during their 24-hour nights. If they could be built into the same form as a 40-foot shipping container, ten of these could be prepositioned around the country to generate power after natural disasters.

Comment Re:How Do They Make Money? (Score 2) 207

I agree there is a market for a mid-power tractor like this. As long as it has hydraulics for the front-end attachments, a decent 3 point control for the back, and a reliable PTO shaft for powered devices, I think many small farms would welcome something like this.

The closest a typical homeowner would get to these would be a riding lawn mower. If the brake pedal breaks, do you want to call Troy-bilt, wait a week for a custom brake assembly, then wait for the technician to come calibrate the brake pressure and unlock the software so you can finish mowing your lawn? This is similar to what John Deere is expecting farmers to do with their tractors.

Comment Re:way to miss the point (Score 1) 123

but AT&T isn't even required to provide copper service to new customers

In California they ARE required to offer and provide copper service for new customers. AT&T wants to stop offering POTS to new customers, then quietly discontinue POTS for existing customers.

From Page 12 of their filing:
Grandfathering does not affect existing POTS customers, all of whom
will continue to receive their existing services for now.[2] Grandfathering simply
allows AT&T to restrict POTS to its existing customers. New customers can then
select from the available service offerings throughout AT&T’s territory.
---
[2] AT&T has initiated separate proceedings with the FCC to seek permission to
discontinue POTS service following at least a one-year notice period.

AT&T soon wants to discontinue POTS service to existing customers without offering them a viable alternative. They suggest VOIP is a suitable alternative without acknowledging that removing the copper wires will leave some customers with no access to VOIP without satellite service. They want to remove an unprofitable service without providing a replacement.

Comment Re:If it's free, you are the product (Score 2) 99

Thunderbird gives you a few options to manage your email storage. Assume an email with both HUGE inline photos and a 20MB attachment.

For the attachments:
1. If you need the email metadata (date, time, sender) of the email, but not the actual attachment, you can right-click on only the attachment and delete it.
2. If you need the email metadata but want to keep your email cache smaller, you can detach the attachment and store it outside Thunderbird. This lets you edit, modify, trim, or store it in a compressed folder. Thunderbird remembers where you stored the attachment and keeps a link to it instead.

Advanced manipulation for inline items:
For those items encoded into the email message as b64 blobs, you can save the email to your desktop as an .eml file, open it in a text editor, and modify the SMIME entries. In some I have selectively deleted overly large photos. In others I have downloaded the photo and downsampled it, created a temporary email to store the smaller photo as a draft, then copied the smaller b64 block into the original email source. Yeah, it is a pain but I edited a 25MB email down to 2MB. I then drag the email back to Thunderbird's inbox so all the metadata is preserved but with smaller photos instead. I can delete the 25MB version and keep the smaller version instead.

I have emails dating back to 1998 stored in different folders. I copy my profile each time I move to a new PC and periodically review the email folders to delete emails that aren't worth saving. Thunderbird gives me the ability to manage my email archive better than relying on cloud-only storage.

Comment Re:And just like that (Score 0) 108

New data center construction should be required to source at least 50% of the power requirements from new renewables. If they are building huge centers that require more energy than many small towns and huge amounts of cooling water, they can at least help mitigate their impact in the local area.

Huge data centers might put solar panels on their roofs and sunward walls, build closed-loop cooling systems, or hold cooling water long enough that it can be reused as agricultural irrigation water. If the data center has to build a new wind farm 20 miles from the data center to feed into the grid they are connected to, then this helps offset the impact they are creating.

New data center construction permits should be balanced with growth and impact with the local area.

Comment Re:Songbird Magnet (Score 3, Interesting) 23

What an ugly robot model with those huge yellow sacs on the front. Unfortunately, that is very close to what these strange birds actually look like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

There is a population of sage grouse near the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory that is slowly declining due to wild fires and natural changes to their habitat. Similar but not identical to what is happening near Grand Teton.
https://species.idaho.gov/wp-c...

Comment Re:Yes, and it's even worse than that... (Score 1) 96

And it's not that hard to determine that. In these days of pulling credit reports and asking for social media passwords, not much remains hidden.

If your social media accounts are filled with keg drinking headstands, funny drunken photos, and stupid decisions made on pub crawls, you need to sweep your accounts before job hunting. Or create a bland generic account and let it sleep until you start your next job hunt. Companies look for creation dates, not consistent activity.

Comment Re:NIST algorithms (Score 1) 68

No idea. But what we have in "post quantum" crypto is all laughably weak against conventional attacks and laughably unverified. We have had finalists of competitions broken with low effort (one laptop) and the like. Moving to these algorithms is an excessively bad idea.

There were several finalists for the post-quantum cryptographic submissions and one (SIKE) was found to have a mathematical flaw and was dropped from further consideration. One flawed approach does not make all of the others "laughably weak against conventional attacks and laughably unverified."

NIST would not be actively testing and then publishing finalized standards if the new algorithms could be broken by a laptop over a single weekend.

https://www.nist.gov/news-even...

Comment Re:Not surprised (Score 4, Interesting) 125

Luckily in 2024 we found another HUGE supply of Helium in Minnesota.

Thomas Abraham-James, CEO of Pulsar Helium, said the confirmed presence of helium could be one of the most significant such finds in the world. CBS News Minnesota toured the drill site soon after the drill rig first broke ground at the beginning of February [2024]. The discovery happened more than three weeks later at about 2 a.m. Thursday, as a drill reached its depth of 2,200 feet below the surface. According to Abraham-James, the helium concentration was measured at 12.4%, which is higher than forecasted and roughly 30 times the industry standard for commercial helium. "12.4% is just a dream. It's perfect," he said.

https://news.slashdot.org/stor...

Comment Re:Buy cheap shit... (Score 3, Interesting) 65

I was thinking something similar. Having 2048 bad ballots seems more like a encryption key issue than a hardware failure.

Three USB keys with the same key that are unable to decode the ballot makes me think the problem is in the encryption algorithm, perhaps if bit 11 is high, the algorithm encounters a divide by 0 error or similar.

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