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User: Maury+Markowitz

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  1. In Canada... on 86.2 Million Phone Scam Calls Delivered Each Month In the US · · Score: 1

    > What's been your experience with fraudulent robocalls?

    Didn't get too many until very recently, the last two months. They were originally from a fake number in one of the nearby area codes, but now they've started coming in using my own number. I wish there was a switch so you could reject calls from your own number.

    Invariably they are of the "your recent reservation" variety. First was a string that lasted about a month for Marriot hotels, but the most recent I got was for Air Canada.

    Interestingly, they all come in around 5 to 7PM.

  2. Unnecessary, except... on Philae's Lost Seven Months Were Completely Unnecessary · · Score: 1

    They couldn't buy an RTG, didn't have the tech themselves, and so how exactly is this unnecessary?

    It's totally unnecessary for you to walk to school, you should drive there. Except you're 5 years old and it's illegal.

    Stupid article.

  3. Re:Ending soon on Solar Power Capacity Installs Surpass Wind and Coal For Second Year · · Score: 4, Interesting

    > We'll see how well solar competes when it gets (almost) the same tax treatment as other power sources

    You mean when we dump billions of dollars of into a military side-project and let that flow downhill into the panel prices?

    Yes, I await that day.

  4. Re: Why bother with installed capacity? on Solar Power Capacity Installs Surpass Wind and Coal For Second Year · · Score: 1

    > or you are in a situation where you have to subside the baseload power plants

    Which is a problem why?

    We subsidized their construction, and the construction of the wires to bring that power to us, so why are we complaining about subsidizing the power output - which we already do anyway?

    Is the real problem here that you don't like subsidies going to big companies, or the other way around?

  5. Re:Why bother with installed capacity? on Solar Power Capacity Installs Surpass Wind and Coal For Second Year · · Score: 1

    As opposed to the trillions received by all the other energy sources over the years?

  6. Re:Why bother with installed capacity? on Solar Power Capacity Installs Surpass Wind and Coal For Second Year · · Score: 1

    > scale embedded generation (i.e. rooftop solar) has an additional problem which is that of grid failure detection and anti-islanding

    Really? Every grid-tie inverter, ever, has this built in.

    > The problem is that grid instability is not easily discriminated from grid islanding

    Yeah, this has been tested to death and it's not a problem. In one case they randomly failed an actual island, just to be safe.

    Pointer to the UK issue you're referring to?

  7. Re:Why bother with installed capacity? on Solar Power Capacity Installs Surpass Wind and Coal For Second Year · · Score: 1

    > It also means that you need 3-5 times as much installed capacity to get near the power delivered figures for baseload power sources.

    Which is perfectly fine, when you consider it costs 3 to 5 times less to build.

    http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf

    Wind is the cheapest form of power. Period. Solar isn't, but unlike wind it can be installed on the residential side, where it's at parity.

  8. Re:Isn't that the point of inspections? on Inspectors Warn Faulty Valves In New-Generation EPR Nuclear Reactor Pose Meltdown Risk · · Score: 2

    > All projects have issues

    Of course! But at some point the issues cost more than the project. And then you're supposed to *give up on the project*.

    Surely you've worked on a project at some point in your life that you just stop working on because it's no longer worth it?

    How many problems does EPR have to have before you reach that point? It's always WAY over budget, and at this point there is no way it could ever pay for itself. It appears highly unlikely Hinkley will use one, if anything ever gets built there, and everyone else is backed away. It's CANDU all over again. At some point you have to realize that no amount of extra money thrown at it will suddenly make it profitable.

  9. Re:Isn't that the point of inspections? on Inspectors Warn Faulty Valves In New-Generation EPR Nuclear Reactor Pose Meltdown Risk · · Score: 1

    > What was ignored? The processes in place to find such problems found the problem

    We're ignoring the total unmitigated financial disaster that is the EPR. It's not that EPR had *this* problem, its that its had *all* the problems, and they just keep coming. Everyone just waves their hands and says "we fixed that!" while the money keeps piling up.

  10. Re:Isn't that the point of inspections? on Inspectors Warn Faulty Valves In New-Generation EPR Nuclear Reactor Pose Meltdown Risk · · Score: 1, Insightful

    > it's good that the problem is identified and fixed.

    With the project already billions over budget and years behind schedule, events like this hardly inspire confidence that there aren't more of these gotchas in the pipeline.

    You probably wouldn't get on a plane these guys designed, but a nuclear reactor, that's just something to ignore with the wave of a hand?

    Examine your assumptions.

  11. > An EMP has very real potential for crippling much of our electrical grid instantaneously

    A *nuclear* one, sure. But that would require someone to explode a nuclear bomb over the US.

    Non-nuclear EMPs are a joke, and not getting better.

  12. You know its a bad year when... on 2014 Nebula Award Winners Announced · · Score: 1

    Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation: Guardians of the Galaxy, directed by James Gunn

    One guy wants something for some poorly explained reason. His boss yells at him. Fight a lot, do stupid things to fight back. Power of friendship wins. The end.

    Seriously, this was a Littlest Pony episode with bad in-jokes and worse acting. There wasn't a single other movie or TV show they could choose over this?

    Remind me to not read the various winners.

  13. Re:"Intellectual property" in section 230 on Bell Media President Says Canadians Are 'Stealing' US Netflix Content · · Score: 1

    > But if copyrights, patents, and trademarks are not property

    Uhhh, correct me if I'm misinterpreting, but I don't believe that it was it means. I believe it means the ISPs do not have legal ownership over the property, so you can't sue them if someone uses an ISP to move stolen property. In the same fashion, the US Postal Service does not have legal ownership of the things you put in envelopes, so you can't sue them for putting drugs in them. In both cases you have to sue the person responsible for the actual illegal action, or sue for negligence or similar.

  14. Re:"stealing just like stealing anything else" on Bell Media President Says Canadians Are 'Stealing' US Netflix Content · · Score: 1

    > not a violation of any part of the Netflix agreement

    Go read it again, Article 6C and 6H specifically.

  15. Re:"stealing just like stealing anything else" on Bell Media President Says Canadians Are 'Stealing' US Netflix Content · · Score: 1

    > I fully agree they can sue me.

    I don't think they can. The copyright holder perhaps, but not Netflix. Netflix would simply cancel your service:

    108
    PRINT A A A
    Netflix is clamping down on users accessing the service through a VPN, with its updated terms of service threatening to "terminate or restrict your use of our service, without compensation or notice".

    Virtual private networks are used for a variety of reasons, but with regards to Netflix usually to combat limited download speeds and access content restricted to other territories.

    Here's the key clauses:

    Article 6C

    You may view a movie or TV show through the Netflix service primarily within the country in which you have established your account and only in geographic locations where we offer our service and have licensed such movie or TV show. The content that may be available to watch will vary by geographic location. Netflix will use technologies to verify your geographic location.

    Article 6H

    We may terminate or restrict your use of our service, without compensation or notice if you are, or if we suspect that you are (i) in violation of any of these Terms of Use or (ii) engaged in illegal or improper use of the service.

  16. Re: "stealing just like stealing anything else" on Bell Media President Says Canadians Are 'Stealing' US Netflix Content · · Score: 1

    Given the low bar that defines "protections", I guarantee there would be a lawsuit over if if there way any money in it.

    But seeing as Netflix is getting paid by these customers, there is no money in it.

  17. Re:This is a great example. on Mystery Company Blazes a Trail In Fusion Energy · · Score: 1

    > this breakthrough

    Improving from one level of uselessness to another level of uselessness is *not* a breakthrough.

    Consider NIF, for instance.

  18. Re:This is a great example. on Mystery Company Blazes a Trail In Fusion Energy · · Score: 1

    > Yet another thing governments are good for is pouring money down a sink hole for basically forever

    Yeah, because private companies *never* do that...

    Westinghouse
    RCA
    Kodak
    Xerox
    Sunbeam
    AMC
    Curtiss
    (list continues for another 5 million entries)

  19. Re:This is a great example. on Mystery Company Blazes a Trail In Fusion Energy · · Score: 1

    > More passive safety features

    Sure.

    > Easier to handle fuel

    Tritium (which this thread is assuming, not the p-B reaction TriAlpha works with) is pretty dangerous stuff. It replaces hydrogen when meeting water and turns into radioactive water/rain. A fire in a fusion plant where the lithium caught on fire would be a major, major, issue.

    > No weapons proliferation issues

    Not even remotely true. D-T reactions give off a 14 MeV neutron which can be used to enrich natural uranium to plutonium and then separated chemically. Because of the geometry of the reactors, you can easily hide this, and do small-scale continual extraction.

    This is precisely why the UK instantly classified all their fusion research in the 1950s after Klaus Fuchs was discovered passing information on the atomic program to the Soviets.

  20. Good luck with that on Mystery Company Blazes a Trail In Fusion Energy · · Score: 2

    "has shown a 10-fold improvement in its ability to contain the hot particles needed for fusion over earlier devices at U.S. universities and national labs"

    No, that is inaccurately broad.

    The correct statement is has shown a 10-fold improvement in its ability to contain the hot particles needed for fusion over earlier **FRC** devices at U.S. universities and national labs"

    Earlier FRCs sucked by about four or five orders of magnitude. This sucks by one less.

    This is not a breakthrough. T-8 was two orders of magnitude better than Stellarator C, but 45 years later it's still two orders too little to be useful.

  21. Total BS on How Tesla Batteries Will Force Home Wiring To Go Low Voltage · · Score: 1

    "To avoid the 20% to 40% power loss when converting from DC to AC"

    The original author, Self, has exactly zero idea what he is talking about.

    The power loss in a modern inverter like the one in the PowerWall is about 2%. On the panel side, efficiency of 95% is no longer considered competitive. The numbers he's quoting are decades out of date.

  22. Good news everyone! on Thanks To the Montreal Protocol, We Avoided Severe Ozone Depletion · · Score: 2

    Be glad the Koch brothers didn't own any companies making CFCs.

  23. Great headline on What AI Experts Think About the Existential Risk of AI · · Score: 1

    "and only a slight majority said it would be a net positive."

    So the proper headline is actually "Majority of actual AI researchers believe strong AI is good".

  24. Re:Also, Biomass Digestors? on Energy Dept. Wants Big Wind Energy Technology In All 50 US States · · Score: 1

    And how people on slashdot who soak up new tech are quick to proclaim the problems storing or distributing renewables can't possibly be solved.

    And they do that ON THE INTERNET.

  25. Re:Resistance on Energy Dept. Wants Big Wind Energy Technology In All 50 US States · · Score: 2

    > Otherwise most of it is lost.

    PFFT. The entire US electrical grid loses 7% of the energy fed into it. Most of those losses are in the last mile.

    HVDC lines lose about 2.5% per 800 km and 0.6% in the end-point stations.

    Read something before posting next time. Here:

    http://www.siemens.com/press/pool/de/events/2012/energy/2012-07-wismar/factsheet-hvdc-e.pdf