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Comment Re: An endless supply of nuclear waste. (Score 1) 120

That's a novel solution

No "novelty" to it, the US Navy has been building and operating high quality reactors non stop for 70 years. Their reactors can quickly spool up or down. Their reactors are designed to take abuse. Ever seen that explosion they set off near a new ship in sea trials? The infrastructure to build and deliver these is already in place. So is the training facility to operate and maintain them.

but I think most countries would be reluctant to allow the Navy to own and operate such critical infrastructure.

Not my place to push for proposals in another country. But it'll work here because we are already doing it.

The fuel isn't the only issue anyway.

The US Navy has taken 562 cores critical, built and operated 273 reactors, and has 99 on ships now. I've not heard any problems about fuel.

And as always, it comes back to "why bother?" We have a cheaper solution, available now, with no issues beyond the usual NIMBYism. Maybe if we get to 95% renewable and there is a real problem that nuclear could solve cost effectively, we could look at it again.

There is no combination of renewables that work 24/7 which means you need a MASSIVE storage system able to supply at least half the country for a week because bad weather happens. You would need extremely high power HVDC interconnects nation wide. My eyes cross trying to imagine the inverter setup able to deal with 5,000 terrawatt/hours in a year. And all of this needs some redundancy because shit happens.

Add in all of the windmills and solar panels, did you say something about cost? lol

Comment Re: An endless supply of nuclear waste. (Score 1) 120

Nuclear is extremely slow to build

The US Navy has entered the chat... No, really, I saw a quote about that the other day and was a bit startled by it so I looked it up myself. Historically it's about 4 reactors per year and currently about half that. Their models are compact, low maintenance with a long service life between refueling, and can quickly spool up or down on demand. They are also operated and maintained by 20 year olds with two years of training.

Next up on how "the Navy is different". Yup, so maybe we should step out of the way and let them do it.

Comment Re:Wait... (Score 1) 99

According to Keynesian economists, if we were all much healthier the economy would be worse off.

0/10 -- low effort troll.

At least try to make something sound plausible to someone outside your right-wing ignorance bubble.

It's not quite 20%: NHE grew 7.5% to $4.9 trillion in 2023, or $14,570 per person, and accounted for 17.6% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

So if we were healthier a large chunk of that money wouldn't be getting spent on healthcare hence lower GDP so his statement on the face of it is correct. But he's also wrong because they'd damn sure find a way to spend it on something else which would in turn increase GDP albeit in a different area of the economy.

Comment Re:Just speculating. (Score 1) 265

One interesting suggestion I saw was to rent a spot at a campsite for RVs. There will almost certainly be a big 240 VAC 40 amp outlet to plug into.

50 amp NEMA 14-50 and unless they have upgraded the pedestal wiring for EV charging you'll get kicked out for using it that way if caught. RVs don't pull continuous full load power so they get away with a lighter (cheaper) feed.

Comment Re:This is a halting-problem variant, isn't it? (Score 1) 80

Do you know why guns have safety-mechanisms and relatively high required trigger pressure? Because otherwise it becomes far too easy to shoot yourself in the foot. The same principle applies here.

More like keep you from shooting yourself in the head actually. Trigger pressures have gone up so that they can pass drop testing. California in particular but the European and Canadian markets require it as well. They cock the pistol then drop it on it's butt vertically held from 3m. At this point it's the inertia from the trigger mass that sets it off. Many manufacturer's will use a hollow trigger so they can still have a lighter pull. Others (Colt and their gen 2 Pythons for instance) stay solid with a heavier pull and leave it to you to send in to a gunsmith to "tune it up".

My gen 1 Python if cocked is actually kind of scary. Just breath on that trigger. The double action pull is about the same though.

Comment Re: Lets be honest here (Score 1) 109

And yet gasoline-powered cars do it all the time. I guarantee you they are not doing it in 2 seconds. Many of those are SUVs even. Gasoline SUVs are not beating 7 seconds by much and 7 seconds is really fast.

Factory stock Suburban's with a 6.2L can do 0-60 in 6.1s and the 3.0L diesel does it in 8.4s. Those things ain't exactly what most people would call "fast".

Comment Re:Not because it can't (Score 1) 42

Umm... Yeh, and cutting people open to perform surgey causes holes in bodies.

Snide remarks do not improve your argument.

If you build a machine which detects and treats cancer noninvasively, then if the machine causes cancer and treats it before it's a problem, I don't see the issue.

The reason you don't see an issue is because you don't understand the actual risks involved. When my wife had cancer, treatment of which did not require radiotherapy, she was warned about said risks from the multiple CT scans she would be getting for the next 5 years. Been a while so I don't remember exactly what the doctor said but here's Wiki's quote on it:

An abdominal or chest CT would be the equivalent to 2–3 years of background radiation to the whole body, or 4–5 years to the abdomen or chest, increasing the lifetime cancer risk between 1 per 1,000 to 1 per 10,000.[134] This is compared to the roughly 40% chance of a US citizen developing cancer during their lifetime.

Did you catch that last line? A _single_ body CT will give you about the same chance of getting cancer as the average American has over their lifetime...

It's basically a machine that can put the eggs back in their shells.

No, what you are proposing is a machine that will cause you to "grow eggs" inside you. And they'll be nasty little buggers that will consume you from within. You also brought up ultrasound. That's another one we've experience with. Having a ultrasound guided biopsy done is not a pleasant experience.

Comment Re:I bet... (Score 1) 119

It looks like nobody is going to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and those refugees are going to go seek asylum in other countries. Many will come to Europe, where Microsoft has subsidiaries. Some will go to the US, where Microsoft is based.

You would think that the surrounding countries would be the logical choice. Wonder why none of them will take in the Palestinians? Couldn't have anything to do with how they acted last few times that's been tried could it? You know, attacking Israel from their new homes, starting civil wars, assassination attempts, landing and blowing up civilian airliners with foreign nationals aboard to try to drag other countries into it?

Nah, couldn't be that. They should be welcome everywhere.

Comment Re:Not because it can't (Score 1) 42

Solution... Easily accessible transmission X-ray full body scanners in malls and workplaces would allow people to pass through once a month and let an AI look for anomalies that when detected would be passed to a reviewer and then signal the health app on people's phones.

That would cause cancers from the x-rays, because the radiation from it is cumulative. That's why we don't use them to pick your shoe size anymore. Yeah, we actually did that for years.

Comment Re:Green Energy (Score 1) 120

We know green energy works and we know the "baseload problem" is a conservative myth https://www.nrdc.org/bio/kevin...

Mr Steinberger is a policy advocate, which he specifically listed as half of his course load when he graduated from Stanford in 2014 with a masters in mechanical engineering. Power engineers are electrical and those are the guys you want to be talking to about this.

What he is trying to do with this article is draw attention away from renewables inherent unreliability without some sort of energy storage attached, at which point it _becomes_ part of the baseload. That's all well and good as long as the sun is shining or the wind is blowing or you have enough storage capacity to last until it resumes. It's when you have a prolonged weather event that the problem kicks in.

Comment Re:For those getting pitchforks ready (Score 1) 153

Correction, you don't NEEEEDDDD it , but its certainly a highly recommended item to have because it addresses smoke/fumes/odors/etc... But most homes do not have an externally venting hood..(there is no legal requirement to have one)

That must be a local/by state code because I can't think of any home I've ever been in that didn't have one. Even mobile homes have 'em here.

Comment Re:Maybe. So? (Score 1) 92

Did I write "physical SIM card" anywhere? No, I did not. Obviously "SIM card" comprises physical and logical cards.

You said "card" and that's a physical thing that you can easily identify. A eSIM looks like any other surface mount chip which makes it much more difficult to detect. The MMF2 from 2013 is 6x5mm, the MFF-XS from 2020 is 2.6x2.4mm, and the iSIM from 2021 is less than 1 sq/mm total.

The point being is that these can be present and you'd never know. Baseband processors are already pretty damn small, and you don't need the full feature set to receive a text message so it can be made even smaller. The antenna can be traces on the circuit board which would be invisible on a multilayer setup. Hiding a radio on loaded circuit board would be child's play these days.

I personally think there are better ways to do it than utilize the cellular network, which requires two way communication, but I'm not going to go there.

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