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Comment Re:BeOS was actually pretty decent (Score 1) 13

Yes. Essentially, Jobs was more of a problem than an asset.

Absent his RDF, yes, he would have been. But he was an effective marketing tool. He was also intelligent enough to see that the Newton was overwrought as a portable device and demand something simpler. The market was moving in that direction anyway, and he charged out in front of it successfully.

Comment Re:You know people get lung cancer (Score 1) 13

First off it's not unsolvable, "particulates" aren't necessarily dangerous.

Yes in fact they are, or at least, any persistent particulates are dangerous. That's what makes automobiles so bad, and why DPFs actually make diesels worse. We've discussed here on Slashdot before that gassers actually make just as much soot as diesels, it's just far finer so it's much harder to detect, which is why this fact went unknown for decades. The reason it's hard to detect is that the particulate sizes are very small. When they get very small (PM2.5 and below in particular) cilia have a hard time removing them from the lungs and they tend to persist. The soot particles are very stable since they are made out of carbon. All persistent irritants are potential carcinogens.

What's certain is that tire particles aren't a guarantor of cancer .. it could at best bias the probability.. but not by much.

Some of the additives in tires are very carcinogenic.

it's likely not infeasible to make non-toxic tires.

It's both infeasible and impractical. Even the carbon black and silicates in tires can cause cancer for the reasons explained in the first paragraph. At best you can mitigate risk, you'll never make them non-carcinogenic. It would be better to also reduce the number of vehicles and also make tire compounds harder to reduce wear. This does reduce safe effective speed around corners and such, but most vehicles have a lot of excess in that department these days, and the ones that don't usually aren't going very fast. I like hard cornering, it's where the fun is in my opinion, but I do consider it to be more important to improve health.

Comment Re:Oh look the grifters are back (Score 1) 96

Switching facilities are expensive, but you can design grids such that they are able to break into smaller grids, and that does get continually cheaper. Restarting and synchronizing grids can be difficult, but the more battery storage you've got, the easier that gets. So what we'll more likely wind up with is a grid with more compartmentalization, with a lot of people left in weird and unreliable sectors of the network with unreliable power because nobody will force the providers to actually provide them with power reliably.

Comment Re:Out of control demand for power (Score 2) 96

Solar uses space

There's a lot of space available because it doesn't need it all to itself. There's a lot of desert nobody is using, a lot of canals and reservoirs we could cover, a lot of nice safe flat commercial roofs, a lot of commercial glass, a lot of car parks. So since that's not a real problem, can we just legislate it and move on?

Wind is going to be seen as a loser in so many ways

Because so many lies are being told about it, yes.

Comment Re:Remotely downloaded code (Score 1) 19

Are the benefits of using tools like composer worth these risks? Why is that still the norm, rather than the exception?

Because 1) handling exceptions is hard and 2) keeping everything updated from the myriad of sources is hard too.

Whether the benefits are worth the risks is surely complicated, but if it means updates get done that otherwise wouldn't (and it does) then there's at least a reasonable chance that it's a net positive overall.

Comment Re:Life Expectancy Study. (Score 1) 108

I'm down with practically anything, or at least just about anything practical, over NCM. It just has issues on every level from political to technical.

I've got my fingers crossed for sodium, but sure, nickel-iron would seem to make sense for stationary applications. I'm hoping though that they can come up with a sodium battery that wouldn't be toxic even if you blew it up.

Comment Re:Remotely downloaded code (Score 4, Informative) 19

What, exactly, is the point or purpose of including code in your program that is downloaded from a third-party website every time you execute the program?

No, npm is literally the opposite of that.

If you want to include a function or subroutine or library in your program, why wouldn't you just download it and use that?

I run Drupal and it uses composer, which does basically the same thing. But then I want some javascript libraries that you can't get through composer repos itself, you need to get them from npm. So every time there's one of these npm exploit stories I say oh shit, some more shit I need to read. Luckily I'm only pulling in literally two packages from there. But I don't need to do this, I only do it specifically for the purpose of not having my site refer to some other site for those javascript libraries. That way, someone else changing their library doesn't automatically screw up my site, or more plausibly since I am not running any javascript on the server side, start back dooring other people who visit there. So npm is exactly the kind of thing you think people should be using, except with less oversight which is why we keep hearing about loads of compromised packages.

Comment Re:still bummed about SG-U (Score 1) 96

Disagree on this. That's like saying only shows that trek through the stars should be called Star Trek - and yet the best Star Trek series ever made was Deep Space Nine.

Yeah, they had B5 to crib from.

The Stargate is just part of the premise of the followup shows, not a required defining characteristic of them

If you're putting it in the title, yes it is.

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