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Comment Re:I get JEJ suing, the union is a stretch (Score 1) 102

Looking at the PDF of the complaint linked in the statement on their website, it seems the problem is that Epic didn't go and look to employ a 'live' voiceover artist SAG member who could do the voice work, but instead went 'straight to the source' (see what I did there?).

SAG is suing because the game didn't hire a live SAG member to do interactive voiceover work in a MOBA, where the live voiceover artist has to respond in real time on a 24/7/365 basis to an unknown number of dialog streams... while the voice actors were on strike. When SAG can produce a voice actor who can, at any time day or night, with no rest at any time, produce intelligent voice response to whatever a player might say, and do this in, say, ten simultaneous dialogs, I'll concede the SAG has some truly amazing voice actors. And if SAG suggests that a group of voice actors be hired for this work, add the requirement that they all must be phonically indistinguishable from each other -- essentially, requiring their speech to be run through an AI voice transformer into JEJ's voice, and since you'd be paying for the voice transformation already anyway, require them to demonstrate how an indeterminately-large team of voice actors is more efficient than making the whole dialog process AI-driven from start to finish.

Comment Re:standard false summary by /. "editor" (Score 1) 137

What's really missing is any talk about comparable cycle life.

And, equally, not a word about how, say, 1.5x battery capacity will mean 1.5x charging time. If it's taking you 40 minutes to charge your car now, with the "new, improved!" battery, it will take you 60 minutes. Consider the effect on the wait at EV charging locations if each vehicle is taking half again the time before they free up their charge point.

Comment Re:Why replace concrete and steel? (Score 1) 99

Both require an awful lot of carbon to make them in the first place. To recycle it, steel needs to be recast, which uses a whole lot more carbon all over again. Concrete isn't really recyclable per-se, but it's re-usable as aggregate.

And the article waxes lyrical about the properties of this 'superwood', but doesn't say a word about how energy-intensive it is to make. It could require a bigger carbon cost than smelting steel. And if it's compressed by 4x (from the article), that would be, essentially, taking a 2x4 and making a 1x2 out of it, so the resulting volume is smaller, and until the laws are changed to recognize that this material is stronger and doesn't need as much volume for the same strength, building codes are going to require the same dimensions of lumber used in construction, so you're going to be using 4x the amount of wood in order to get the legally-mandated dimensions for the, say, framing timbers.

Comment Re:Oh no! (Score 2) 78

yeah, but they have the ability to jump ship, collect their golden parachute bonuses, and not have their names plastered all over failing companies.

And that's the information that's not being flapped -- TFA talks about three CEOs who got out and are now either retired or working in a 'less stressful' position, but it doesn't say how big a share of this increase in exits are taking the standard 'jump ship, collect golden parachute, roll over to a new CEO position for more money' exit route rather than the 'exit to less or no responsibility' route where they can duck the consequences of their bad decisions.

Comment Re: Probably not going to work for intercontinenta (Score 2) 74

They've demonstrated that battery-powered aircraft are technically feasible for short-distance flights, limited by the amount of energy stored in the batteries putting a hard upper limit on range. Making them economically feasible has yet to be shown, as the mass and volume of the batteries is still many times that of conventional fuel (putting a limit on the useful load of a battery-powered aircraft), the cost of batteries combined with their lifespan under the usage profile of a commercial aircraft makes them orders of magnitude more expensive than conventional fuel, and the problems with getting passengers out of a battery-powererd plane if the battery goes up is ameliorated only by the smaller passenger capacity of an aircraft with the majority of its theoretical payload taken up by the battery pack. Although the layout of airports does provide lots of empty space, so a battery-powered aircraft can easily be towed into an open area where it won't be a threat to people or other aircraft if/when it does catch fire.

Comment Re:RIP (Score 2) 181

Now, in the spirit of the scientific method, we'll have to wait until the Church elects a new Pope and then send JD Vance to meet with him, so we can determine experimentally whether Vance's presence is or is not toxic to popes.

Comment Re: Collective action problem/low probability even (Score 1) 70

The problem was that Heathrow, in a move to bolster its Net Zero compliance, had removed the diesel generators that had been providing backup services for the airport, replacing them with a biomass generator designed to supplement, not replace mains power, and which was inadequate to the needs of the airport when it lost its primary power. Putting adherence to an arbitrary CO2-emissions goal ahead of providing reliable service.

Comment Re:DRP, GENERATORS, AND INCOMPETENCE, Oh My. (Score 3, Insightful) 70

The "BACKUP" generators were inadequate to address the power needs ("demand") at the time. This means it was neither REDUNDANT nor CONTINGENT, and certainly not N or N+1 or even 2N. (Just google "backup generator redundancy" if you care about the details).

Which is not properly true; Heathrow did have backup generators sufficient to address their power needs -- unfortunately, 'did' in this case is used in the longer historical sense, not that had been available at the time of the fire. As part of a move to become more Net Zero compliant, Heathrow got rid of their diesel backup generators, replacing them with a biomass-powered generator that was intended to supplement -- not replace -- the mains power. The statement on GBnews by Richard Tice MP reveals this forward-thinking move by the Heathrow administration.

Comment Re: I'm trying to find the sympathy (Score 1) 47

The problem with getting world-wide patents is that they would have to publish the details of what they want to protect, which makes them vulnerable to agents of the countries with a track record of ignoring patent and intellectual-property protections, thereby causing the losses they're trying to defend against. That said, I find myself in complete agreement with the originator of the thread; companies putting in the work to develop these putative "$100 million" secrets, then turning to the government and saying "We have these high-value secrets, but we don't want to spend the money to protect them -- you need to do it for us" seems to be a blatant ducking of corporate responsibility.

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