Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Nuclear Facility in WA (Score 2) 39

Hanford announced last week that their spent fuel vitrification plant is officially in operation, converting nuclear waste into glass ingots that can be safely stored for millenia. If they keep going for about a century they might be able to vitrify the spent fuel we already have. But we still have no place to store the ingots.

All these small modular reactors have the same deficits. They require high assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) produced only in Russia. They're a proliferation risk. They require a substantial footprint with passive and active defenses, 24/7 armed security, security clearances for all the highly paid professionals involved. They're slow to approve, finance, build. They're more costly even than classic nuclear reactors to build and operate, and those are the slowest building and most costly form of energy which means high energy costs when (if) they are finally built. Traditional nuclear reactor projects have a 95% failure rate from proposal to generation so 19 times of 20 they never deliver a single watt hour. Those times the money is just spent and lost. The one time in 20 that the generation comes online to produce the world's most costly power doesn't even include those costs.

At Hanford cold war nuclear waste continues to seep gradually toward the mighty Columbia river. Inch by inch.

Somewhere in America just now a homeowner just plugged his DIY solar panels into the inverter and battery he bought on Amazon for the first time. It will give power 24/7 for 30 years at no additional cost. It was quick and cheap. He didn't even need permission. It won't kill his family, nor yours, nor mine. There is no chance that his solar panels will result in radioactive salmon or other seafood.

Comment Atomic packaging systems suck (Score 3, Insightful) 74

With atomic packaging systems, I feel like computing is in a weird place where it has taken on all of the bad characteristics that are both a step backwards towards the days of DLL hell and a step forwards to today where there is almost no tweaking and debloat attempted by devs because powerful hardware and memory make it unnecessary in their eyes.

I don't WANT 53 copies of the same library on my system. I don't want slow startup because applications to have to be unpacked before they can be used. I don't want applications that make it difficult or impossible to share data between applications. I don't want applications that don't theme properly. I don't want applications that weaponize themselves against the owner of the machine and try to dictate how the app is used like Windows apps do.

I simply do not want atomic packaging systems. I want traditionally installed apps that only put one copy of the library on my system and I want to be able to share data between apps easily and efficiently without having to install additional apps from the same package manager to be able to use them... for example for gaming, If you want to use Lutris and choose the version that comes from an atomic package manager, you also have to install a SECOND version of all your 3d libraries for your video card that are available to the atomic Lutris. Fuck that, fuck the entire idea of that type of system.

Comment Re:Everything will be good until (Score 1) 68

For most bands the exact same sound from recorded is impossible because there are usually fewer musicians involved in the live act. Less or no backup singers. Recorded music frequently has overdubs of the lead singer basically singing their own backup. Patently impossible for live music. I don't go to see them play, I listen to the music. I couldn't care less about the visual aspect of a band.

Comment Re:Everything will be good until (Score 1) 68

Ah... so Van Halen, Manchester Orchestra and others are shitty bands... I just hate live music because it will never sound as good as the recorded music. I listen to music for the sound, not the show. Bands travel with fewer musicians that are typically on the recorded tracks. Many bands even overdub their own lead singer multiple times, completely impossible in a live environment and I hate the music when it doesn't sound EXACTLY like the music I fall in love with. That is not due to a bad band.

Comment Re:Everything will be good until (Score 1) 68

Just because it is AI doesn't mean that it is slop. Currently almost all of it is, but if the content is good, what does it matter if the voice or person on screen is not real? Judge content for the content, not for how it is created. Same for recorded music vs live music. I hate live music, especially when it is a band I am intimately familiar with and love to the degree that I know every little riff and sound from the drum kit, even breathing and intonation from the singer matter and when it differs from what I know, it FEELS like a cheap cover band playing my fave songs, or maybe even AI doing it. It is about the content and the finished product. Yes, in the current state AI is horrible, but it doesn't have to be and it isnt the fault of AI itself. It is the people controlling it that put out the slop.

Comment Should all be in the name (Score 0) 111

I am not against lab grown meat in the sense that I would refuse to eat it, what I am against is calling it meat. The definition of meat is the flesh of an animal. If it is grown in a lab, it is protein approximating meat, but is NOT meat. They should not be allowed to call it that. In the same vein, frozen dinners and restaurant food should not be able to call beef, chicken or fish or any other thing those things unless the things are 100% those minus spices. If there are any substitutes or fillers or meat glues, they should be forced to call it something different. In reality it is pressed and formed meat like substance that started with the real thing as a base.

Comment Re:Better yet, don't use buzzwords. (Score 1) 147

I don't think it is even that. I think it is just company Kool-aid that is soul crushing. I have always been a self motivator and have excelled in my career, but when company Kool-aid stuff starts happening it makes me want to run for the hills. If people don't want to work without this stupid shit, FIRE THEM, but don't make the rest of us who are working and doing well without that crap have to partake in it. It is demeaning and insulting.

Comment Understanding Graft, and why it's bad (Score 4, Interesting) 125

Graft, at least in the US parlance, is when a government official provides government funding to enhance the viability of a private enterprise, while simultaneously investing in that enterprise themselves, and making a killing on the return from that investment, through leveraging the stability and exclusivity of the government's financial contributions to the success of that enterprise.

Why it is bad:

Investing in companies in this manner creates necessary exclusivities which gives unfair market advantages to the recipient of the graft's financial capital. It also creates a quid pro quo relationship between the government official that created the deal, and the enterprise that accepted it, which can be exploited in any number of truly devious and heinous ways.

Now--

If the government wants to support struggling American chip foundries, they can universally invest across the board, while simultaneously imposing a hard rule against *ANY AND ALL* public servants privately investing at the same time.

This, at least in theory, removes the majority of the reasons why the dealmaking is *BAD*. (not all, just most).

Since our legislators balk at the idea of ANY AND ALL forms of *restriction* to their investment activities while in office, and since Pres Trump seems *incapable* of understanding that Quid Pro Quo is *BAD*, I have to come out very much against the government *INVESTING* in companies in this manner.

Slashdot Top Deals

The trouble with the rat-race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. -- Lily Tomlin

Working...