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User: CrimsonAvenger

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  1. Re: Huzzah on US Congress Passes Bill To Help Advanced Nuclear Power (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How many people have died from solar and wind power vs nuclear?

    Zero. If Joe Blow iron worker slips and falls to his death while working on a wind turbine, that's an industrial accident. Not a failure of wind power. Same as if Joe Blow is replacing an aircraft warning light on the side of a nuclear cooling tower and falls to his death, that's an industrial accident, not a failure of nuclear power.

    Hmm, as of 2008, rooftop solar has caused 0.44 deaths per TWh produced. Nuclear is at 0.04 deaths per TWh.

    Now, Fukushima has happened since then, so we should probably add the one (1) extra death (NOT per TWh) that happened as a result of Fukushima recently (saw it in the news last week or so). So, ~4500 TWh nuclear, one death, increases nuclear deathrate to 0.0402 per TWh.

    Hmm, So, rooftop solar causes 11 times as many deaths as nuclear, even if you include TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.

    Well, we all know that nuclear is by far the most deadly form of power ever invented, so obviously, these numbers are fabrications....

    Oh, and note for the "but, but, radioactive waste for BILLIONS of years!!!", it should be noted that the short half-life stuff that makes nuclear waste, well, seriously radioactive is pretty much gone a week after shutdown of the plant.

    Medium half-life stuff will be useful for a few centuries (yes, useful - it's actually possible to extract usable power from that crap).

    And the long half-life stuff? Not nearly so dangerous as airplane flight. When I was in the Navy, I got more dosage flying back and forth between the USA and Holy Loch than I got from spending a couple months in the engineering spaces of a nuke boat between flights....

  2. Hundred Days on Slashdot Asks: What Book(s) Are You Reading This Month? · · Score: 2

    We're coming up on the centennial of the end of World War One in two months. So a book about the last 100 days of that war seemed appropriate.

    And Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, just because I find that part of the Leyte Gulf battles in WW2 endlessly interesting.

  3. I wonder how many contributors to this thread are aware that, until the 19th century, China and India were far and away the world's dominant economic powers?

    My guess is...two.

  4. Inevitable, really on China Now the Most Prolific Contributor To Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Math (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are four Chinese for every American, five for every two Europeans. All other things being equal, they're going to become the dominant country in everything.

    The only country that's going to be close is India (again, all other things being equal).

    Lacking a major war, or internal political factors, the Chinese and Indians are going to dominate the world over the next couple centuries, and the USA is going to go the way of the UK - a nation that dominated "back then"....

    Note, for the record, that I don't think "all other things being equal" actually applies. I don't think either China or India can liberalize enough to allow their inherent advantages to really take hold. But you never can tell....

  5. Re:Making money is not a "moral requirement" on Citing 'Moral Requirement To Make Money', Pharma CEO Jacks Drug Price 400% (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    No, I got an MBA and they didn't teach that either.

    They did teach selling a product at a fare market value,

    Now I remember the problem with MBA's! They can't spell.

    and not to short sell your product and putting yourself in a race to the bottom.

    And their grammar isn't so hot. "Putting" as opposed to "put"...

    They also taught that it is difficult to raise a price of a product too much without the customers getting pissed and switch to alternatives.

    Another example might be the word "switch", as opposed to "switching"...

    Hmm, blood sugar is obviously low. Time to find a snack....

  6. Re:Another, But It Will Work This time, scenario? on Swiss Village Votes for Free Money. Now It Just Needs the Cash (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    How you can fund this "Utopia" without taking workers income or owning the corporations to milk them, seems impossible.

    It should be noted that the USA (hardly a socialist bastion) has, at the Federal level, about $2.8T per year in social programs (Welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, that sort of thing). The States total north of $500B in social programs.

    Take that big pile of money, and divide it up among the 330M people as a UBI, and you get more than $10K per person per year.

    A family of four would get ~$40K. With no tax increases (though you'd probably want to fiddle with who pays how much in taxes) at all. A 50% income tax increase across the board would allow you to pay the program, plus bureaucracy, plus other odds'n'ends without putting an excessive burden on anyone (you get your UBI, plus your regular income less taxes, but the "taxes" part is half again as big as it used to be).

    Yeah, the "rich" can leave if they'd like. But most everywhere charges more income taxes than the USA, so not sure what the point would be. And since the overwhelming chunk of income taxes are paid by the middle class, not the "rich", it would hardly affect the Treasury....

    IOW, some back of the envelope calculations make it look reasonable, enough so that it would probably be doable, even here. So what's the big deal?

    When countries are increasing the retirement age

    Alas, retirement age, most places, was originally designed so that it was "median age of death" (iow, half of everyone would never collect). And retirement age hasn't kept up with the considerably longer lifespan we have now (when SS was invented here, retirement was lower 60's. Nowadays, lifespan, barring accident or the increasingly survivable fatal diseases of the elderly, is more like upper 80's)....

  7. That's all well and good.

    Alas, the fact that the amount of renewable energy has increased in the past in no way obligates anyone to make it happen in the future. And this law does NOTHING to further progress in that regard. It require nothing of anyone.

    Someday, we'll (well, those of us still alive in 2045 (which probably won't include me, what with me pushing retirement age)) find out whether the people who are spending the money will continue to do so just because Sacramento 2018 asked them nicely to do so by 2045.

    Myself, I believe that laws like this are completely unnecessary - if renewables are cheaper (as is more or less constantly asserted here), then the utilities will switch to them to make more money. If they're not actually cheaper (as the price supports for windpower might suggest (60% of the price is government price supports)), then they won't.

    In either case, this law won't do anything beyond the current election cycle....

  8. With such cynical thought, nobody need to try to do any long term planning because it is automagically "glory grabbing bills".

    Not necessarily, but probably.

    If the Bill required that something specific be done NOW, as well as into the next three decades, then it would (or at least could) be fine.

    That said, a new law automagically supersedes an older law. So, a Bill NOW that requires nothing be done for ten years is a Bill that has ten chances of being erased before anything in the Bill affects anything other than the CA's legislature....

    Note that the Bill in question is more the latter than the former. It doesn't seem to require that anyone in CA do ANYTHING for a long time. Which means it's just grandstanding to look good come the next election....

  9. Re:Territorial vs. educational on How Facebook's WhatsApp Destroyed A Village (buzzfeednews.com) · · Score: 1

    A good education can including training to be a tiny bit more gulibility-proof.

    Sadly, the person who typed the above probably thinks he/she/it has a good education....

  10. Re:Wow, they are taking their time on Sony To Source All Its Energy From Renewables By 2040 (nikkei.com) · · Score: 1

    Gradually indeed! Taking 12 years to get from 7% to 30%? This is not an aggressive plan, to say the least.

    I dunno. Perhaps they're REALLY planning on making the shift (actually buying generation capacity), rather than pretending to do so by buying power off the grid and calling it "renewable" since SOME of the power supplied to the grid is renewable....

  11. Re:Price wtf? on World's Largest Offshore Wind Farm Opens Off Northwest England (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    So why are we paying so much?

    Hmm, about 60% of the income for this windfarm is government price supports for the next 15 years...

    Not sure why it needs price supports, if, as is frequently stated here, it's one of the most economical forms of energy, and far cheaper then coal or nuclear....

  12. Re:Help me avoid floods, rather than managing them on The Tech Industry Has Contributed To an 'Attention Crisis', Google Researchers Say (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    You know what I'd really like to see? I'd like to see a way for my computing systems to realize that a mailing list I'm on is useless, that I never engage with it, or that I engage with it in only negative ways - and then suggest that I unsubscribe from it, or skip it past my inbox to a folder for later.

    Personally, I'm perfectly capable of figuring out that I'm looking at a useless mailing list. What I want is for my computing systems to stop giving me impertinent suggestions as to how to spend my life....

    And no, I do not feel ANY obligation to read an email, just because it appeared in my inbox....

  13. Do you think the police should just be looking for, "some guy"?

    Hey!! That's sooo Sexist! How can you possibly suggest that the police would be so sexist as to be looking only among that male population?

  14. Re:there will be more on Japan Confirms First Radiation-Linked Death Out of Fukushima (bbc.co.uk) · · Score: 2, Interesting

    However, this was the worst accident and it required ppl to go in due to screw-ups. So, yeah, there will be more.

    Yep. So, after SEVEN YEARS, we've had one (1) death as a result of a massive tsunami hitting a nuclear power plant. That's almost as many deaths as occurred commuting to work today where I live...

    If everyday life were only a hundred times deadlier than nuclear power has shown itself over the decades, we'd be living in paradise!

    Alas, that word "nuclear" continues to magnify the death toll to an unsustainable level!

  15. Re:Socialist agendas don't work the way you want t on EU To Move Ahead With Cultural Quotas For Streaming Services (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 2

    Why are you assuming that they don't want to watch local content?

    Because if everyone wanted to watch local content, they wouldn't have to force Netflix to carry it at gunpoint.

    If there's enough demand for something, Netflix will carry it, just to make money doing so. You'll only have to force them if what you're requiring is that they show something that will lose money....

  16. Hmm, a quick google for amazon median wage shows that the median Amazon employee was making $28K (as of the beginning of May this year).

    So, it looks like OP's "average" WAS "median"....

  17. Re:A ten meter tether is not a space elevator on Japan To Test Mini 'Space Elevator' (phys.org) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They're not testing the tether, they're testing the wee little elevator cabin.

    Be interesting to see how long it can keep running up and down....

  18. Baffles will increase mass, weight and make loading and unloading of cargo much slower.

    And that is somehow worse than the loss of the ship and possibly the crew?

    hmmmm....

    So, if we reduce the cargo capacity (and at the same time, increase time required to unload the ship) by, say, 5%, we have a ship that makes ~90% as much as "normal". And costs, say, 5% more.

    So we have to charge ~15% more per ton moved to pay for the ship. Which makes us the last choice of anyone trying to move cargo, since they're having to pay that extra 15% for the privilege of using our ship.

    Given the number of bulk haulers in service and the number lost every year, there's a 1% chance of losing the ship and cargo every year, which'll translate into a (maximum) 1% increase in insurance cost for shipping something.

    So, you need to find a business that's willing to pay a 15% premium in order to avoid a 1% premium on insurance to make the "improved" ship pay for itself.

    Good luck with that....

  19. Re:Citizens argue that power of government... on Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance Argues 'Privacy is Not Absolute' in Push For Encryption Backdoors (itnews.com.au) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    (By all means, keep your Saturday Night Specials, shotguns, and 22 and 30-06 rifles. "We" don't have a problem with people having those, with proper background checks.)

    And we don't have problems with YOU having a "Right to Privacy". After an appropriate background check, of course. And at the discretion of local law enforcement wherever you happen to live. Or visit. Or just pass through....

    Ditto for Freedom of Speech/Press/etc. Once you've gotten the approval of local law enforcement in every location that can HEAR/READ what you want to say, then you should be allowed to say/print what you like. Until then, you can shut up and do as you're told....

    So, why do you think an appropriate background check is applicable to Rights you don't like, but totally uncalled for for Rights you like?

    As to flintlocks, it should be pointed out that the Second allowed everyone to own MILITARY-GRADE weapons (yeah, the flintlocks owned by the average citizen were pretty much the same as what the Army was using. Hell, since rifled guns were common among the citizenry, and only issued to special troops (most soldiers used smoothbores), it could be argued that the Second allowed better then military grade weapons to be freely owned.

    For that matter, does the word "privateer" mean anything to you? Yep, those privately owned warships were armed with perfectly legal cannon. At a time when cannon were the most powerful weapons known to man....

  20. Re:Must we read it on Twitter? on This is the Story of the 1970s Great Calculator Race (twitter.com) · · Score: 1

    and Trump would order congress or the executive branch to pay it.

    Or not. The Executive Branch doesn't actually have funds to do this sort of thing (or, at least, aren't supposed to), or anything, really. Congress is the only branch of the Federal Government with the power to spend money - they make the budget, and specify who can spend what on everything....

    At least, that's the design of the system. How we've distorted things since FDR are another question entirely....

  21. Re:Flagship phones are too darn expensive on Samsung Plans To Overhaul Its Smartphone Strategy at the Mid-range Price Point (cnbc.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Going over $1000 USD for a smartphone is just insane.

    Going anywhere near $1000 USD for a phone is just insane.

    For that matter, assuming that a new phone is needed every year is insane.

    From the PoV of a phone maker, it's probably safe to assume (right now - in ten years, prolly not) that everyone will be getting a new(er) phone every five or six years. So manufacturing for replacing 15-20% of the phones every year might make sense.

    Beyond that, assuming everyone will need a more powerful phone every replacement? Nope. Maybe every third replacement? Possibly.

    With exceptions for the fashionistas among us. There'll always be a (small) market for the people who buy a phone, not to do phone things, but to show how hip (fashionable, whatever) they are. Which should keep Apple in business, anyways....

  22. Re:well now ... on EU Backs Ending Daylight Saving Time (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Junker got voted into office, what is undemocratic in that?

    Though this will, no doubt, Godwin the thread, so did Hitler....

  23. Re:Eisenhower's Farewell Address on Boeing Wins Bid To Build the Navy's Carrier-Launched Tanker Drone (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 2

    I wonder how much healthcare could be provided with the taxpayers $13 Billion?

    Hmm, 330 megapeople, $13B....

    That works out to about $40 per person. So, maybe one doctor's visit per person, at best?

  24. Re:Ditch DST, no "permanent" DST on EU Backs Ending Daylight Saving Time (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    So, ditch the DST and let the countries decide what time zone they want to be in.

    So, this seems to say that if Germany wants to use HST, it would be okay with you?

    Germany using the same timezone as Hawaii seems wrong, somehow....

  25. There are simply too damn many people on earth.

    So, when had you planned on removing yourself from the Earth?

    Or is it "those people" that there are too many of? I suppose we could set up special camps for them, to make it easier to get rid of them....