Comment Re:Yes! Make cars expensive again! (Score 1) 491
Comment Re:What could possibly go right? (Score 1) 70
Did you say nuclear wessel?
My hovercraft is full of eels.
Comment Re:If you are made about (Score 1) 70
amazing how things get done in a dictatorship: no sacrifice to great
They will be happy to sell reactors to democracies as well.
Comment Re:MS, More bugs than features. (Score 1) 37
Having LLMs check the code for vulnerabilities seems to be helping all around.
I don't know why this is being treated as a bad thing. I mean, it's bad that attackers can do the same, but that's a Red Queen's Race anyhow.
I did not say it is a bad thing, just that this is hardly unique to MS. My Ubuntu 24.04 server for instance had ~70 patches two weeks ago and 100 more last week, and it does not even have a GUI. I fully expect similar numbers this week, and this has been going on for a while. But yes, hopefully even the most obscure bugs in all the popular existing code will eventually be found and then the pace of discovery will slow down and we will all get to enjoy exceptionally secure software going forward. Cough.
Comment Re:MS, More bugs than features. (Score 1) 37
How many recent bugs is this now 3000?
Don't know, but I use to make jokes about how often Windows needed a reboot. If I apply every Linux kernel patch when it comes out now it makes MS look good.
Comment Re:If you are made about (Score 1) 70
My goto example is the Barakah plant over in the UAE.
My goto example is China, which has built more reactors in the last 15 years than the rest of the world combined.
Comment Re:Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score 1) 70
Also NIMBYs. The plan already exists do they can't object to it, but solar and wind farms, and battery storage arrays would all be new.
It's funny seeing the same tactics used against solar and wind that has been used against nuclear for so many decades. Different era, same kind of people.
Comment Re:What could possibly go right? (Score 4, Informative) 70
But that's the big issue: no one can build a new reactor today. And no, not because of NRC regulations. America literally has no steel plants large enough to create a nuclear pressure vessel. These things are massive, and historically had to be transported by river or have specialized roads put in to move them. The last steel plant that could make these closed decades ago.
"For very large 'Generation III+' reactors, production of the pressure vessel requires, or is best undertaken by, forging presses of about 140-150 MN (14-15,000 tonnes) capacity which accept hot steel ingots of 500-600 tonnes. These are not common, and individual large presses do not have high throughput – about four pressure vessels per year appears to be common at present, fitted in with other work, though the potential is greater than this.
Reactor vendors prefer large forgings to be integral, as single products, but for large units split forgings are welded together. These welds then need checking through the life of the plant, and the fewer that are required in fabrication the better. Also, whereas Generation II reactors might have required some 2000 tonnes of forgings, the largest modern designs require about twice this amount. For example, Westinghouse has said that the minimum requirement for making the largest AP1000 components is a 15,000 tonne press taking 350 tonne ingots.
The very heavy forging capacity in operation today is in Japan (Japan Steel Works), China (China First Heavy Industries, China Erzhong, Shanghai Electric), South Korea (Doosan, Taewoong), France (Le Creusot), and Russia (OMZ Izhora, Atommash, Petrozavodskmash, ZiO-Podolsk).
New capacity is being built by these and other companies in Japan, China, South Korea, Czech Republic and Russia.
New capacity is planned in India (Larsen & Toubro, Bharat Heavy Electricals, Bharat Forge Ltd). In China the Harbin Boiler Co. and SEC subsidiary SENPE are increasing capacity.
Nothing in North America currently approaches these enterprises.* The changed position of the USA is remarkable. In the 1940s it manufactured over 2700 Liberty ships, each 10,800 tonne DWT – possibly pioneering modular construction at that scale (average construction time was 42 days in the shipyard). In the 1970s it had a substantial heavy infrastructure, but today China, Japan, South Korea, India, Europe and Russia are all well ahead of it. Steelmaker ArcelorMittal, based in Luxembourg, now owns the US company which built most US reactor pressure vessels in the 1970s-1980s.
*In the 1970s, requirements were more modest: both US Steel and Bethlehem Steel had 8000 tonne presses and could handle 300 tonne ingots. US forging capacity has not been significantly upgraded since, partly due to lack of integration with steel mills and melt shops to supply the hot steel as 600-tonne ingots."
https://world-nuclear.org/info...
The smaller reactors people are talking about are totally non-viable. Nuclear works because of the scale.
OPG has run the numbers and disagrees. On the bright side their SMR construction continues along on time so you will have some real examples to learn from soon.
https://www.opg.com/projects-s...
Comment Re:Do we need to infect the children of the 1% (Score 1) 115
Comment Re:Do we need to infect the children of the 1% (Score 1) 115
I'd tell them, "I'm wearing this to protect myself. The rest of you can get f-ked."
The whole point of masks is to protect others, so they probably just think you are dumb.
Comment Re:Asking for empathy when on is given (Score 1) 115
I don't even understand cheering for his suffering, but why can't you cheer for his support of medical treatments?
Half hearted support because he is doing it because he is forced to, not because he wants too. As if he would give a shit if his daughter was not sick. LOL. Same with all the rest of the billionaires researching longevity. They are absolutely not doing it out of magnanimity for the human race, they are doing it for 101% selfish reasons. Do you really think they want the poors to live longer? They think they are special, and IMO it's not necessarily bad if they fail, because they are not. Medical research is great, but we really, really don't want or need the world they envision.
Comment Re:Asking for empathy when on is given (Score 1) 115
Someone else would have to trudge into work the next day because their job offers no bereavement time. Someone else would be facing mountains of medical debt. Someone else would not be able to private jet the rest of their family to a tropical resort for an entire month to try and meditate around their loss.
Having suffered loss myself those things would add to the pain but still pale next to the loss. I suppose a case could be made that sitting in your private jet grieving over the loss of a loved one is better than doing the same in your mud hut, but at least it brings them closer. Granted, if you offered me a billion dollars or my loved one back I'd take the latter every time. I'm not sure your typical psychopathic billionaire would do the same.
Just pointing out the obvious fact that death is a great equalizer means little when the living are anything but close to equal.
Oh life is far from fair for sure, but any equalizers are better than none at all. Gotta take what you can get.
If Bill comes out of this and has publicly changed his tune about his beliefs and his politics and what he should be using his fortune for then maybe, but not until then.
As if.
Comment Re:Asking for empathy when on is given (Score 1) 115
Is what this story is about or trying to do. Good people should still feel empathy for this woman who suffered something of no fault of her own and was able to find relief, we are all supposed to be emphatic about that right?
Of course a little difficult when the man funding that has a an almost psychological lack of empathy to where he supports with his time, thoughts and dollars a man, his people and a government that has the least amount of empathy in modern American history. One that routinely mocks the very idea of empathy for your fellow man, one that espouses the idea that some humans are undeserving of empathy itself, that they deserve torture and punishment and derision.
Anyway fuck Bill Ackman, a man who through his actions supports the idea that anybody poor shouldn't have access to medical care. Only his podcast cronies really deserve it.
Sad for his daughter, would have been better if it was Bill himself, but at least these stories illustrate the one way in which those douchebag billionaires are the same as everyone else. To the rest of the human race his daughter's life is worth exactly the same as a starving child in Sudan. I'm sure he and his friends think otherwise, but none of the rest of the world does. In any case there are some things all the money in the world can't fix, and that occasionally brings these people down to the same level as the rest of us. They still suffer and grieve like everyone else, and that is a good thing.
Comment Re:Missing some context (Score 5, Interesting) 89
Did alcohol consumption increase to match the increased cancer rates? I thought that in general, alcohol consumption was down.