IMO, what's needed is a process to use this stuff after it's no longer suitable for use in the original reactor.
Fuel reprocessing is a filthy and very expensive process. It is much cheaper to just use a "once through" fuel cycle, even if it appears to be inefficient to people that are bad at economics.
I'm pretty sure there are other reactor designs that would allow building smaller scale power generators that run on this waste material
Thorium salt reactors. You can basically use them as garbage disposals, and dump in uranium reactor waste and byproducts, and the ThSR will burn them up. The US and Europe are doing much with thorium salt reactors, but China and India are pursuing them.
Arbitration is not evil. It reduces costs and overhead for both parties. It means less money for the lawyers, and more to fund a settlement. Arbitration is much more accessible for the little guy than the normal courts. The only exception is small claims courts, which Google allows.
Many, many companies include arbitration clauses. When I am offered a work contract, if it doesn't include an arbitration clause, I ask for one. It is better for both parties.
The situation is likely to get better for pot merchants after the election in November. He won't win, but Bernie supports legalization. Hillary, as always, waffles and says we should "wait and see", but it is unlikely she will toughen policy especially if the political winds are blowing the other way. Donald has expressed support for full legalization of ALL drugs, but that was a while ago, so who knows what he supports this week. But he is unlikely to roll back state level legalization efforts. All the drug authoritarians (Cruz, Christie, etc.), that want to go back to full retard on the drug war, got wiped out in the primaries. Good riddance.
Why do people think targeted advertising means "things you are interested in"?
Because I see plenty of ads that are very specifically targeted. They are not always for something I am interested in, but I understand why I was targeted. I recently bought a microwave oven, and now I see ads for microwave ovens. That is very targeted, even though I won't be buying another for a decade or more (my old one lasted 20 years).
It means, "Advertisers who are interested in your demographic."
No. The whole point of what Facebook and others are doing is to track your specific interests and connections. If they were only interesting in demographics, then none of this tracking would be happening.
Coursera appropriated that content and is denying access to it
Hogwash. Coursera didn't "appropriate" anything. They just made it available, for free. Then they stopped. Most of this content was, and is, available through other channels. TFA mentions Geoffrey Hinton's Neural Net course. I have taken that course, and I didn't even know that Coursera offered it: I watched it on Youtube (great course, btw).
Is there even a single course that will no longer be available elsewhere? If the original creator failed to keep a backup, that is not Coursera's fault.
There's a lot of middle-class radicalization and social justice warrior stuff going on in this summary.
Indeed. Coursera is a for-profit company, so no one should be surprised that they engage in "greedy commercialism". That is what enables them to grow as a business and pay people salaries. They are not a charity, and should not be expected to behave as one. MOOCs are far from dead, and much of this same content can be accessed on Youtube, along with hundreds of other courses.
Disclaimer: I have competed several MOOCs, mostly free courses from MIT. I have never taken a course from Coursera.
It's laughable that any advertiser on a website thinks those ads are driving sales in brick and mortar shops.
They don't think it. They know it. Their ads almost always contain coupons or specific ad codes so they can track sales to specific ads. I have gone to local shops and restaurants because of deals I saw online, and many other people have as well. They wouldn't continue to run the ads if they weren't working. Very few companies run untracked ads anymore.
most people do not want to be tracked by GPS by a company which exists to sell information about them to advertisers.
It depends on how you phrase the question. If you ask people "Do you want corporations to track your location?" most people will say "no". If you ask if people if they prefer ads and discounts to be for things they are actually interested in, they most people will say "yes".
It is better to ignore what people say they want, and instead look at their revealed preferences. Most people are willing to give up some degree of privacy for more connectedness and to save money. Personally, I don't care much if I am tracked, as long as I am informed and have the option to enable/disable at will. If I am going to see ads anyway, I prefer ads that match my interests (metal lathes rather than tampons, Rogaine rather than shampoo).
Not at all. If you can guarantee enough intermittent renewable for 90% of the year and only need that extra supply for a predictable 10%, you can keep that plant offline most of the time.
The problem is that no one has any financial incentive to build that 90% idle plant. The power company can't just raise rates to pay for it. The PUC (which answers to voters) won't tolerate that, and the shareholders won't support it. Consumers don't want higher prices. Taxpayers are unwilling to subsidize it. If grid prices go up, more people switch to rooftop solar, leaving the grid with stranded assets, but yet increasing the need for idle capacity (e.g. on very cloudy days).
Let me explain how "baseload" can go away: Demand pricing and electric cars. Currently, generators try to fit the supply of electricity to the demand. Instead, we should flip that around, and fit the demand to the supply. When the sun is shining, and the wind is blowing, you cut the price. When electricity is scarce, you raise the price. I already have a switch installed on my AC that allows PG&E to shut off my compressor during periods of high demand. In return, they give me a discount on my power. I also have an electric car, pre-programmed to charge at 2 AM when power is cheapest. The charger isn't smart enough to actually check the price, but that capability would not be hard to implement.
In the future, electric cars may account for more than half of all electric energy consumed. They can charge when power is cheapest, and they can charge intermittently to smooth out peak and troughs in supply or demand. They could even be programmed to feed power back into the grid if the price surges, earning money for the car owner. Old assumptions about "baseload" requirements will not be valid.
By far the best solution is to give the coalminers financial incentives to pack up and move somewhere with jobs. In the long run, that will be much cheaper than putting them on welfare, or trying to move manufacturing or service jobs into these remote areas. As miners move away, the secondary economy will also contract, and the number of pro-coal voters will decline.
He wants to re-establish coal, and leave the Paris deal.
He is just saying whatever will win him votes, and this is a great issue for him to go anti-establishment. Coal is big in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. He can't get to 270 without Ohio. Republicans haven't won Pennsylvania since 1988, but anything could happen this year. As James Carville once said: "Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between."
If a video comes with a transcript, I just read the transcript, skip watching the video, and I am done in less than half the time. Although my friends/family rarely post videos on Facebook, it is always something inane and not worth watching, and I can tell it is inane just by reading the comments. No need to actually watch the video. If there is a real trend toward "more videos, less text", I have not seen it.
This is still lots better than what NASA is doing. Stressing the technology. Doing new things.
NASA's funding depends on pleasing politicians. So they need to be overly cautious and avoid pushing tech till it breaks, even if we would learn more that way. SpaceX's investors have a longer attention span than voters. In may seem that caution is prudent, but excessive caution can be very expensive in terms of lost opportunities. So far, SpaceX has spent less than 2% of NASA's annual budget.
What I need is a phone that makes calls and MAYBE, the odd SMS. And you almost cannot buy that anymore
Yes you can. There are many, many dumb phones available. You can buy one from Amazon for less than $20, including shipping. You can buy one off the shelf at Walmart.
Am I alone?
No, many people whine about non-existent problems. You are not alone.
And the rest largely only manufacture domestically and/or produce junk phones.
Your attitude is both complacent and wrong. I have a Xiaomi phone, and the build quality is superb. These companies have a huge domestic market, but they are also selling well in SE Asia, Africa, and India. That is most of the world's population, and where most future growth will be.
It includes all the bribes you have to pay for dumping of toxic waste into streams and rivers which is created during the manufacturing process.
Manufacturing smartphones creates a negligible amount of toxic waste. Even the solder is lead free.
One of the biggest benefits of manufacturing in China is the supply chain. If you run run low on #000 screws, instead of stopping the assembly line, you just tell Qiang to hop on his bicycle and pedal over to the screw factory. He will be back in 30 minutes.
Seriously, nobody ever actually checks that you signed your name. Just write 'I don't agree' somewhat legibly.
If you want to game the system, there are much better ways than that: 1. Sign NCA. 2. Start your own business on the side 3. Work on your own business while at your day job 4. Get fired for slacking off and not getting anything done 5. Work on your own business full time, using the 50% salary to live on
I live in California, so I can not do this myself. But from personal experience, most NCAs are pointless because 99% of businesses don't have any ideas worth stealing.
Here's a great American president who didn't spend $60k on a bad weave:
That was before TV. There is no way a baldie like Ike would get elected today. Since TV became mainstream, the only bald president was Gerald Ford, and he was appointed, not elected.
There are some big cultural differences about nudity between America and China. The Edison Chen Photo Scandal destroyed the careers of several Chinese and Hong Kong actresses. In America it is the opposite: nude photos/videos generate publicity and boost careers. Paris Hilton became famous and made millions after her sex tape went public. Vanessa Hudgens was stuck in teenybopper roles until her nude selfies made her seem ready for mature roles.
Slashdot Mirror
IMO, what's needed is a process to use this stuff after it's no longer suitable for use in the original reactor.
Fuel reprocessing is a filthy and very expensive process. It is much cheaper to just use a "once through" fuel cycle, even if it appears to be inefficient to people that are bad at economics.
I'm pretty sure there are other reactor designs that would allow building smaller scale power generators that run on this waste material
Thorium salt reactors. You can basically use them as garbage disposals, and dump in uranium reactor waste and byproducts, and the ThSR will burn them up. The US and Europe are doing much with thorium salt reactors, but China and India are pursuing them.
Arbitration is not evil. It reduces costs and overhead for both parties. It means less money for the lawyers, and more to fund a settlement. Arbitration is much more accessible for the little guy than the normal courts. The only exception is small claims courts, which Google allows.
Many, many companies include arbitration clauses. When I am offered a work contract, if it doesn't include an arbitration clause, I ask for one. It is better for both parties.
clearly it's not a solution it everyone starts getting an electric car.
Obvious solution: As more people drive electric cars, install more charging stations.
The situation is likely to get better for pot merchants after the election in November. He won't win, but Bernie supports legalization. Hillary, as always, waffles and says we should "wait and see", but it is unlikely she will toughen policy especially if the political winds are blowing the other way. Donald has expressed support for full legalization of ALL drugs, but that was a while ago, so who knows what he supports this week. But he is unlikely to roll back state level legalization efforts. All the drug authoritarians (Cruz, Christie, etc.), that want to go back to full retard on the drug war, got wiped out in the primaries. Good riddance.
They're talking up to two weeks of blackouts this summer due to the Aliso Canyon fiasco.
Obvious solution: Charge your car at night, when the ACs are mostly off, and there is plenty of cheap base load power.
I have an electric car, and it is preprogrammed to start charging at 2am.
They'll sneak little tiny diesel generators in all of them that pollute 10 times more than a regular diesel engine.
Diesels used as generators can generate less pollution, because they can run at an optimal constant speed.
Not all of us live in houses with garages. I live in an apartment complex with assigned parking.
Can you charge it at work? Many employers, at least in the SF Bay area, are putting chargers in the employee parking lots.
Why do people think targeted advertising means "things you are interested in"?
Because I see plenty of ads that are very specifically targeted. They are not always for something I am interested in, but I understand why I was targeted. I recently bought a microwave oven, and now I see ads for microwave ovens. That is very targeted, even though I won't be buying another for a decade or more (my old one lasted 20 years).
It means, "Advertisers who are interested in your demographic."
No. The whole point of what Facebook and others are doing is to track your specific interests and connections. If they were only interesting in demographics, then none of this tracking would be happening.
Coursera appropriated that content and is denying access to it
Hogwash. Coursera didn't "appropriate" anything. They just made it available, for free. Then they stopped. Most of this content was, and is, available through other channels. TFA mentions Geoffrey Hinton's Neural Net course. I have taken that course, and I didn't even know that Coursera offered it: I watched it on Youtube (great course, btw).
Is there even a single course that will no longer be available elsewhere? If the original creator failed to keep a backup, that is not Coursera's fault.
There's a lot of middle-class radicalization and social justice warrior stuff going on in this summary.
Indeed. Coursera is a for-profit company, so no one should be surprised that they engage in "greedy commercialism". That is what enables them to grow as a business and pay people salaries. They are not a charity, and should not be expected to behave as one. MOOCs are far from dead, and much of this same content can be accessed on Youtube, along with hundreds of other courses.
Disclaimer: I have competed several MOOCs, mostly free courses from MIT. I have never taken a course from Coursera.
It's laughable that any advertiser on a website thinks those ads are driving sales in brick and mortar shops.
They don't think it. They know it. Their ads almost always contain coupons or specific ad codes so they can track sales to specific ads. I have gone to local shops and restaurants because of deals I saw online, and many other people have as well. They wouldn't continue to run the ads if they weren't working. Very few companies run untracked ads anymore.
most people do not want to be tracked by GPS by a company which exists to sell information about them to advertisers.
It depends on how you phrase the question. If you ask people "Do you want corporations to track your location?" most people will say "no". If you ask if people if they prefer ads and discounts to be for things they are actually interested in, they most people will say "yes".
It is better to ignore what people say they want, and instead look at their revealed preferences. Most people are willing to give up some degree of privacy for more connectedness and to save money. Personally, I don't care much if I am tracked, as long as I am informed and have the option to enable/disable at will. If I am going to see ads anyway, I prefer ads that match my interests (metal lathes rather than tampons, Rogaine rather than shampoo).
Not at all. If you can guarantee enough intermittent renewable for 90% of the year and only need that extra supply for a predictable 10%, you can keep that plant offline most of the time.
The problem is that no one has any financial incentive to build that 90% idle plant. The power company can't just raise rates to pay for it. The PUC (which answers to voters) won't tolerate that, and the shareholders won't support it. Consumers don't want higher prices. Taxpayers are unwilling to subsidize it. If grid prices go up, more people switch to rooftop solar, leaving the grid with stranded assets, but yet increasing the need for idle capacity (e.g. on very cloudy days).
The problem is not technology, but economics.
Let me explain how "baseload" can go away: Demand pricing and electric cars. Currently, generators try to fit the supply of electricity to the demand. Instead, we should flip that around, and fit the demand to the supply. When the sun is shining, and the wind is blowing, you cut the price. When electricity is scarce, you raise the price. I already have a switch installed on my AC that allows PG&E to shut off my compressor during periods of high demand. In return, they give me a discount on my power. I also have an electric car, pre-programmed to charge at 2 AM when power is cheapest. The charger isn't smart enough to actually check the price, but that capability would not be hard to implement.
In the future, electric cars may account for more than half of all electric energy consumed. They can charge when power is cheapest, and they can charge intermittently to smooth out peak and troughs in supply or demand. They could even be programmed to feed power back into the grid if the price surges, earning money for the car owner. Old assumptions about "baseload" requirements will not be valid.
Sure, but what is the solution then?
By far the best solution is to give the coalminers financial incentives to pack up and move somewhere with jobs. In the long run, that will be much cheaper than putting them on welfare, or trying to move manufacturing or service jobs into these remote areas. As miners move away, the secondary economy will also contract, and the number of pro-coal voters will decline.
He wants to re-establish coal, and leave the Paris deal.
He is just saying whatever will win him votes, and this is a great issue for him to go anti-establishment. Coal is big in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. He can't get to 270 without Ohio. Republicans haven't won Pennsylvania since 1988, but anything could happen this year. As James Carville once said: "Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between."
If a video comes with a transcript, I just read the transcript, skip watching the video, and I am done in less than half the time. Although my friends/family rarely post videos on Facebook, it is always something inane and not worth watching, and I can tell it is inane just by reading the comments. No need to actually watch the video. If there is a real trend toward "more videos, less text", I have not seen it.
This is still lots better than what NASA is doing. Stressing the technology. Doing new things.
NASA's funding depends on pleasing politicians. So they need to be overly cautious and avoid pushing tech till it breaks, even if we would learn more that way. SpaceX's investors have a longer attention span than voters. In may seem that caution is prudent, but excessive caution can be very expensive in terms of lost opportunities. So far, SpaceX has spent less than 2% of NASA's annual budget.
What I need is a phone that makes calls and MAYBE, the odd SMS. And you almost cannot buy that anymore
Yes you can. There are many, many dumb phones available. You can buy one from Amazon for less than $20, including shipping. You can buy one off the shelf at Walmart.
Am I alone?
No, many people whine about non-existent problems. You are not alone.
And the rest largely only manufacture domestically and/or produce junk phones.
Your attitude is both complacent and wrong. I have a Xiaomi phone, and the build quality is superb. These companies have a huge domestic market, but they are also selling well in SE Asia, Africa, and India. That is most of the world's population, and where most future growth will be.
It includes all the bribes you have to pay for dumping of toxic waste into streams and rivers which is created during the manufacturing process.
Manufacturing smartphones creates a negligible amount of toxic waste. Even the solder is lead free.
One of the biggest benefits of manufacturing in China is the supply chain. If you run run low on #000 screws, instead of stopping the assembly line, you just tell Qiang to hop on his bicycle and pedal over to the screw factory. He will be back in 30 minutes.
Seriously, nobody ever actually checks that you signed your name. Just write 'I don't agree' somewhat legibly.
If you want to game the system, there are much better ways than that:
1. Sign NCA.
2. Start your own business on the side
3. Work on your own business while at your day job
4. Get fired for slacking off and not getting anything done
5. Work on your own business full time, using the 50% salary to live on
I live in California, so I can not do this myself. But from personal experience, most NCAs are pointless because 99% of businesses don't have any ideas worth stealing.
it was nearly impossible to mine Bitcoins without specialized hardware.
It is not impossible, just inefficient. But if you are not paying the electricity bill, they why should you care about inefficiency?
Here's a great American president who didn't spend $60k on a bad weave:
That was before TV. There is no way a baldie like Ike would get elected today. Since TV became mainstream, the only bald president was Gerald Ford, and he was appointed, not elected.
There are some big cultural differences about nudity between America and China. The Edison Chen Photo Scandal destroyed the careers of several Chinese and Hong Kong actresses. In America it is the opposite: nude photos/videos generate publicity and boost careers. Paris Hilton became famous and made millions after her sex tape went public. Vanessa Hudgens was stuck in teenybopper roles until her nude selfies made her seem ready for mature roles.