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User: bluefoxlucid

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  1. Hydrogen. on Future of Cars: Hydrogen Fuel Cells, Or Electric? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So many advantages to hydrogen. It automatically increases the fuel tax by leaking, and further by requiring active cooling to keep hydrogen contained. It's expensive to produce and transport, so it doesn't threaten oil companies with lower fuel costs. It's plentiful, so you can use tons of other fuels to separate water into hydrogen.

  2. Re:The bigger picture on A Look at Smart Gun Technology · · Score: 1

    You're abusing statistics.

    Liberalized concealed carry seems to reduce crime rates. That's fine; but it has nothing to do with the rate of the specific subset of (people_carrying U people_attacked U people_trained) versus (people_carrying U people_attacked U people_untrained). In effect, it's like I claimed the US hospital system is more dangerous because we perform Cesarian sections too god damn much, and you cited that fewer mothers die in US hospitals thanks to our lower birth rates: that's great, but it says nothing about the relevant sample.

    Since individual freedom is and should be the default, if you want to argue for restricting freedom

    This is an emotional appeal. Similar argument:

    Since individual freedom is and should be the default, if you want to argue for restricting freedom by disallowing parents to teach their children sexual behavior from a young age, you have to demonstrate--with objective facts, not modal behavior confounded with other verbal and physical abuse--that sexual behavior is actually harmful to children.

    The above argument is interesting because it not only follows the same lines and gets the same reactions, but also predicates on an ideal that sexual behavior is harmful to persons of ages about 13--whereas in the 1800s we still knocked up 12 and 13 year old girls all the time, and celebrated the event. (That argument's more of a societal argument: such behavior is legitimately harmful to persons being raised in our society, because it sets them apart in a certain way which is harmful growing up due to abrasion with their social environment. In Japan, it's more accepted--they keep it more on ice now due to trade pressures from the US.)

    You can't demonstrate that, because it's not true.

    This is an unbacked assertion, and also not true. It's made as a conclusion to a logically flawed argument in which you dilute the issue to hide it.

    I say there are 1 million people, 100 of whom have guns, 10 of whom has training. I say that each of the 90 untrained with guns will have a greater chance, in the common modes of confrontation, of stray bullets, self-injury, or losing their firearm than each of the 10 trained.

    You say if we just hand out 90 million or so more guns, there will be fewer attacks, and so go on to argue that this means the above assertions are false.

    That's dilution.

  3. Re:What this means on 7.1 Billion People, 7.1 Billion Mobile Phone Accounts Activated · · Score: 1

    Logistics sounds like a function of project management. Pricing, brand, market strategy, these seem like marketing.

    The whole of the public face is one big umbrella; but calling a PR guy a Marketing guy seems ridiculous. PR people are not the same as the Marketing people trying to sell you shit. There's always been a firm divide.

    I guess we have marketing the products and marketing the company, so it's about the same.

  4. Re:What this means on 7.1 Billion People, 7.1 Billion Mobile Phone Accounts Activated · · Score: 5, Informative

    Public Relations is not marketing. Marketing deals with products; public relations deals with relation to customers and the public at large.

    Marketing revolves around how to dress up Tide, how to convince the consumer they want Tide, what markets Tide aims at, what the advertising strategy is for Tide, and so on. These center around products, demographics, and how demographics connect to products.

    Public relations instead revolves around Tide Co, how to convince the customer that Tide Co isn't an evil asshole company dumping sludge onto farmland in India, how much transparency Tide Co should have to keep customer trust, when Tide Co's ethics committee has come off its nut and is trying to create a PR nightmare by doing something that will reflect extremely negatively on Tide Co, etc. These center around the company, demographics, and the public at large.

    The difference is subtle, but simple. Marketing tries to sell products. Public relations tries to make sure the company both actively creates rapport with the public (customers or not) and avoids offending the public. Good PR is about ethics and transparency; good marketing is about selling shit.

    As an example: Apple has good PR. Their company is environmentally responsible, they're aware of their business operations, they communicate to the world at large through exciting and entertaining public appearances, and so on. Their marketing is less successful: more people bought Motorola, Samsung, and LG phones with Google software; who in the hell gets excited over Google and Samsung?

    10 years ago, you needed an electronics communications strategy. It wasn't enough to market things on TV and in news papers; you needed to get customers on mailing lists, to tell them about what's happening in the company (not products, but exciting growth and customer outreach programs), and to give them exclusive insider deals or promotions or whatever. You couldn't just put "iPhone, SALE $299 REG $399" in the paper; you had to make the customer a part of your communications network, make them feel like you're talking specifically to them. Now it's mobile apps.

  5. Re:Sihg... Not valid. on Thorium: The Wonder Fuel That Wasn't · · Score: 1

    First off: Fukushima is an ecological disaster that requires trillions of dollars and decades of effort to contain and clean up. Fukushima is *not* a nuclear holocaust; it's completely under control. Despite being no big deal, it's very expensive and has just outweighed the entire benefit of Fukushima ever existing in the first place: it will cost more to clean this up than simply running a clean coal plant and scrubbing the air extra hard, and shipping the spent CO2 out on space flights (which is hell expensive).

    Second, it's less risky to operate a plant outside its lifespan than to build a new plant. Assume a nuclear power plant has a 50 year lifespan. In those 50 years, it has a 0.001% chance of catastrophic failure. At the end of 50 years, you tear the plant down: package up and transport spent/remaining/refined fuel, tear down radioactive nuclear plant components, etc. This also carries risk. Then you build a new plant which, if not built incorrectly, carries a 0.001% chance of catastrophic failure in 50 years.

    In the 50 year operation of a nuclear plant, you will perform required maintenance. You will clean, restore, and replace various parts of various systems in the plant. You may even wholesale replace some systems with upgraded ones for higher reliability and lower maintenance costs. At plant EOL, your plant may have a 0.001% chance of catastrophic failure in a further protracted 30 year operating lifetime.

    Given that a further 30 years of operation is exactly as risky as the initial 50 years, and less risky than tearing down and building a new plant, you can minimize your risk by extending the plant's operating lifetime by 30 years. Further, this prospect encourages plant manufacturers to seek guidance from the NRC for maintenance and upgrades which extend plant lifetime in order to increase plant profitability. In all, the extension of nuclear power plant operating lifetime is an important risk decision the NRC should make carefully, but should definitely examine in each case.

  6. Re:But the Antarctic is gaining ice! on Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans As Antarctic Ice Melts · · Score: 1

    Energy scarcity is the timeless economics problem. On Arrakis, water scarcity; on any sane planet, plants bring sunlight into the system and carbohydrates become the coin. Humans built fire with trees until wood scarcity; then oil, but only shallow drilling; then coal; then anthricite coal; then deep-drill oil; natural gas; radioactive ore; and now solar in its many systemic forms (wind, hydro, etc.). New energy, that's what we need.

    Large amounts of energy would let us build a Lofstrom loop to send things into space. We could use energy for asteroid mining, gather material. Extremely large amounts of energy let us fiss and fuse anything: commercial enterprise makes Molybdenum and Cesium today by nuclear fusion in a device you can build in your basement with a coat hanger and a glass jar.

    A completely enclosing dyson sphere at any distance experiences over 13,000 TRILLION times the energy consumption of the earth. The earth is less than a billionth of a dyson sphere; it's 1/13,000,000,000,000,000 of a dyson sphere. Building a dyson sphere--even a partial one--requires space mining; a dyson sphere provides the energy for space mining. Terrestrial energy sources can't manage it.

  7. Re:lucid ain't that hard. on Electric Stimulation Could Help You Control Your Dreams · · Score: 1

    Eh, she's cute. Personality remains to be seen, but we know her stage presence isn't exactly a prize.

  8. Re:The bigger picture on A Look at Smart Gun Technology · · Score: 1

    The risks of using a firearm are lower than the risks in use of a firearm.

    That is to say: it's largely a fantasy that you'll ever pull out your gun. It does happen--HIV happens, but if most of us got HIV then the epidemic would spiral out of control into societal collapse by 100% HIV infection in under a decade. Just like the risk of contracting HIV, the risk of using a gun is legitimate; it is, fortunately, still primarily a fantasy.

    On top of that, many confrontation where a firearm is brandished require no such thing. People become loud and visibly threatening all the time, with no force behind the threat; some people learn to counter this by brandishing weapons, while others wait out the situation. Fortunately, again, many people who raise a firearm, while not making a choice of absolute necessity, are making a decision to control a situation before it potentially gets out of hand. These situations end with no shots fired.

    This leaves situations where a firearm is warranted and direct combat necessary. In these situations, many people lacking training. A brief gun safety course doesn't cover hand-to-hand combat grappling with a firearm, or prepare you to stalk through your house during a home invasion. Firing ranges prepare you for range targets... but what about close targets charging you?

    We are not military men. We are unfit, we are unprepared. I feel we should arm our citizens better: training in hand-to-hand combat, psychology relevant to mediation of tense situations, and a martial arts sense of awareness would empower people more than the firearm we'd allow them only with these skills. You're either carrying a gun and jumped (you are now grappling for the weapon in *any* case), caught in a situation about to become aggressive (talk it down if possible), or in a situation where you may encounter aggressors (be aware of your surroundings). I feel it's critically important to have skills related to these situations before we slap a gun in your hand; it's not four decades on the top of the mountain.

  9. Re:But the Antarctic is gaining ice! on Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans As Antarctic Ice Melts · · Score: 2

    So global temperature is stable because the heat is going into ice melt?

    I can't solve these problems without a dyson sphere; and only a society with a dyson sphere can sustain the economic weight of building a dyson sphere.

  10. Re:Sihg... Not valid. on Thorium: The Wonder Fuel That Wasn't · · Score: 1

    Knowing that an implementation was done poorly, we can then ask: what was poorly done? Then, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can refuse fuel to implementations making similar mistakes.

    Highly-regulated industries face one major advantage: you cannot fuck up in any way related to a prior fuck-up. If your coolant system fucked up because of an improper valve design, your entire coolant system will now require strict testing and engineering standards--meaning other, substantially dissimilar designs that also would fuck up will fail inspection. You may still be able to fuck it up; you'll have to find a new, creative way to fuck up that bypasses all current regulatory guidelines and evades current inspection processes.

    Low-risk industries--power transmission, gas transmission, chemical fuel transmission, mass communications, retail, food--only require low levels of regulation. A gas pipe explosion can hurt a few dozen to a few hundred people at worst; chemical fuel spills may cause small environmental and physical hazards; food problems usually make hundreds ill. High-risk industries get more regulation; a nuclear reactor meltdown has large implications, as does theft of fissile material.

    Fukushima is not a big deal, but it's not something to be shrugged off: while non-apocalyptic, it does require decades and billions of dollars of effort. It's under control, mostly harmless, but will only stay harmless with constant, high effort. That's the risk in nuclear, hence strict regulation.

  11. Re:questionable presentation on Thorium: The Wonder Fuel That Wasn't · · Score: 1

    The material is harder to acquire than other suitable material, hence its existence is less of a threat.

  12. Re:Death sentence on Melbourne Uber Drivers Slapped With $1700 Fines; Service Shuts Down · · Score: 1

    Don't forget Gateway by Fredrick Pohl. The audiobook reading by Oliver Wyman is excellent; his performance adds to the telling, rather than simply the convenience.

  13. Re:The bigger picture on A Look at Smart Gun Technology · · Score: 1

    They should train you to use a helmet as a fucking helmet. I recall when 10 pound helmets came out, and active military whined... the helmet is so heavy! It should be hard, but light! Yes, hard and light... momentum deals with mass: a light helmet prevents skull fracture, a heavy one prevents concussion.

    People do not appreciate the dangers of blades. In close combat, a firearm is weak: you must point the barrel at a vital spot, so you've either won already or you're trying to hold a mostly-useless metal brick while grappling. A knife... you can rotate the wrist, change position in the hand, use the point or blade. A firearm at ten feet and ready? Sure. At ten inches? Fear the dagger.

  14. Re:This sounds technically easy, maybe fun! on Electric Stimulation Could Help You Control Your Dreams · · Score: 1

    Yeah. As I said: the EMS/NMES mode actually hurts. It's a big jolt. TV ads used to show body builders relaxing while getting shocked...

  15. Re:RFID Not a great idea on A Look at Smart Gun Technology · · Score: 1

    What if you're grappling for the gun, less than ten inches from your watch, in your attacker's hands? As soon as you swing at his head, your wrist comes close.

  16. Re:The bigger picture on A Look at Smart Gun Technology · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Marine corps are trained to handle firearms. The US is a scary place where you can get a half hour gun safety course and buy several Rugers.

    With your Marine Corps training, you probably think you could best me in a fist fight. You're probably pretty certain I won't just kick your ass, and then probably take your gun and shoot you. You've been trained for that situation, and I'm sure they actually kicked your ass a whole lot to make sure you were serious about trying to not get your ass kicked.

    The modal average civilian has a gun because he knows he can't kick my ass. He somehow believes I'll jump him and then get shot, somehow without noticing him reaching for his gun and then taking it from him. Considering most street criminals have more experience in gang fights than I, this reasons toward an even worse scenario.

    Besides, marines get swords.

  17. Re:Death sentence on Melbourne Uber Drivers Slapped With $1700 Fines; Service Shuts Down · · Score: 1

    It continues both. The story is a long and complex epic, like The Gap Cycle; it's more philosophical to a point, and focuses on individual struggles more than the forceful progression of the grand story. The greater story grows and shapes the characters by degrees.

  18. 556TWh is a cumulative unit. It's not an average output. If it's over an hour, that's 556TW; if it's over 1000 hours, that's 556GW.

  19. Re:Ban them all you want on UN to Debate Use of Fully Autonomous Weapons, New Report Released · · Score: 1

    That's okay. I'll just defeat the killbots by sending wave after wave of my own men into battle. Killbots have a preset kill maximum before they shut down.

  20. Re:This sounds technically easy, maybe fun! on Electric Stimulation Could Help You Control Your Dreams · · Score: 2

    NMES units are more fun. They really work: you can tone your existing muscles some, and provide a smooth cool-down and better strengthening when combined with typical exercise. Of course you need no more than a thin layer of fat over said muscles; and NMES delivers one hell of a jolt. Try not to cry.

    So much for getting fit the easy way.

  21. Re:Do people really dream? on Electric Stimulation Could Help You Control Your Dreams · · Score: 1

    Scientifically, lucid dreams aren't a thing. There's no proof.

  22. Re:70% dreamt they were Ted Bundy on Electric Stimulation Could Help You Control Your Dreams · · Score: 1

    When was Ted Bundy executed? Was that the end of the series?

  23. Re:lucid ain't that hard. on Electric Stimulation Could Help You Control Your Dreams · · Score: 1

    Look, I don't like her music, but I would let Miley suck my dick. She's cute. I'd guess a little vacant, but she may be a decent person if you got to know her. Or not. Only one way to find out.

  24. Re:Death sentence on Melbourne Uber Drivers Slapped With $1700 Fines; Service Shuts Down · · Score: 1

    I've re-read it. I really didn't care to re-read the first but I did; the second was way better on re-read.

    Have you read Age of Misrule? I opened up debate with the author about order of reading, and he immediately said some of the later books can be read out-of-order for more/different/better meaning. For example: you can skip to trilogy 3 book 1 right after the end of trilogy 1, and it continues trilogy 1 directly; trilogy 2 encounters some things that follow trilogy 3 book 1, but precede trilogy 3 book 2.

    He also flushed a tad when I found a character bleeding out of his mechanical hand. Forgot his hand was metal.

  25. Re:Death sentence on Melbourne Uber Drivers Slapped With $1700 Fines; Service Shuts Down · · Score: 1

    It wasn't a great book. It was okay; The Gap Cycle still holds top contender by a wide margin over anything else I've ever read. (Yes, The Real Story is terrible; yes, you need to read it--one of the characters is not believable until you've read TRS.)