Posts by firefly 76 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Mar 2010
Europe's energy woes owe a lot to a series of EU directives beginning in 1996 that demanded that energy markets be 'liberalised', ostensibly to increase competition and benefit consumers. This worked for a while but at the same time sapped investment and now we're paying the price.
The UK government have sunk £250M into Rolls' SMR project so you'd think they are a shoo-in for any contract. The only issue I see is that their 470MWe design is huge for an SMR and I'm unaware of the reasoning behind it. Surely they should have started smaller and scaled it up later?
Crypto enthusiasts are some of the biggest morons I've ever encountered. They have little clue how finance, economics, technology or life in general works.
I've noticed that they have all been celebrating the recent pump of Bitcoin back over $20k, even though there's clear evidence this was initiated by Binance using fake BUSD printed out of thin air. But point that out and they will dismiss it as FUD.
It's not just Tether in on the stablecoin fraud. USDC prints have gone parabolic in recent months, but neither they or Tether are audited so no one knows where this money is coming from. The only possible conclusion is that it's all imaginary funny money.
The whole cryptocurrency space is rotten to the core. Scams, rug pulls, market manipulation, wash trading and exchanges that collude and actively conspire against their own customers. On the bright side, there are headwinds looming for crypto. Increasing scrutiny from authorities, rising interest rates and feds turning off the cheap money taps are going to come to bear on the biggest pyramid scheme in history.
If there were indeed headlines saying that it was probably media hype and nothing to do with the government or nuclear industry.
The 'too cheap to meter' phrase was coined by an American government suit in the 1950s. He wasn't taken seriously then so I've no idea why people misrepresent it today.
Bitcoin is a scam in that it's the world's greatest pyramid scheme, manipulated by a handful of whales and propped up by stablecoin fraud. And because it's negative-sum, it means there is far more losers than winners.
You got in early on the ponzi and made money. Congratulations, you must be an investment genius.
Agreed re the kindness and civility of Chinese people but ultimately they are part of the problem. Unlike in the West many Chinese see an attack on their government as an attack on both them and their country. The old adage that 'people get the government that they deserve' still rings true.
I would argue that it is zero sum. When you invest in a company, you do so in the expectation that it will provide earnings by selling it's products and services, will experience growth and pay dividends.
Bitcoin and other cryptos make no products, provides no services and pays no dividends. Every dollar that someone 'makes' from crypto has come straight from someone else's pocket. That's what makes it zero-sum, and you could even argue it's negative sum if the huge electricity costs are taken into account.
I had a Mk1 ('84) Orion Ghia and it was a nice car, like an armchair on wheels, the CVH engine was ok for the time and it had decent styling. Then the Mk2 came out, the soft plastics gave way to cheap hard plastics, the styling was blander, it actually had less equipment than the Mk1 and the CVH engines were being showed up by Vx's OHC engine and others. Then we had the complete and utter train wreck of the 1990 model Escort/Orions. It seems only Ford could turn out progressively worse cars with each new generation.
I actually have a Focus now and it's a decent car but I'm surprised Ford are still in business today considering some of the crap they turned out from the mid 80's up to the late 90's.
Microsoft seems to have forgotten that lax use of VL keys, and dare I say piracy have helped get them get where they are.
If they had KMS and MAK activation back in the 1990s, we'd all be running Linux on our desktops today.
I used to have a TechNet subscription but they just shitcanned that and are forcing everyone to get an MSDN sub for ten times the cost. Sometimes I wonder if they want us to use their products at all.
True, however while alpha particles can be stopped by the skin they cause immense damage if inhaled or ingested, as Alexander Litvinenko found to his cost.
Beta emitting radioactive iodines have a habit of accumulating in the thyroid gland, which is why potassium iodide tablets are issued to people after a nuclear incident to 'fill up' the thyroid, preventing the takeup of the radioactive iodines.
Thyroid cancer is the most common cancer associated with nuclear accidents, but it's one of the most treatable cancers known, with well over 90% of people surviving.
According to the BBC's own article Fukushima leak is a Level 1 incident, the lowest you can get and classed as a mere anomoly. So ask yourself why they the hell they even wrote a piece on it, let alone publish it on the front page.
People should also ask why there has been little reporting on how the Japanese people are trying to rebuild their lives after a disaster that claimed over 20,000 people, yet an incident that has cost no lives gets all the column inches.
And also the same Daily Mail that campaigned relentlessly for justice in the Stephen Lawrence case whilst no one else seemingly gave a shit.
I don't quite get the hate for the Daily Mail. Yes it's a rag with a right-wing slant but it seems that Guardianistas and their ilk love to berate it.
If you really want to pour scorn on a mainstream newspaper look no further than the Daily Express. Most of the crap they print varies from being plain wrong to downright disturbing.
I liked the UT games, but there's a reason why they never took off in pro-gaming.
The problem with the UT series was both the movement and netcode was inferior to Quake. UT had to resort to double jumps, dodging and adrenaline combos to achieve what could be easily done in Quake with normal movement. The prediction engine was also a little suspect, I recall many times the thing registering a miss when I was certain I had the shot.
Quite easily, flip the craft 180 degrees and your thruster becomes a brake. This is has been proposed as a means of moving humans through deep space, you accelerate the craft at around 1G until you achieve half-light speed then flip the craft around and decelerate at 1G, the advantage being that a similar gravity to the Earth is maintained throughout the vogage the avoiding muscle atrophy of the occupants.
Km/h for air or sea travel is indeed an abomination but not for the reason you stated. A knot is one nautical mile per hour, and a nautical mile is one minute of an degree of latitude. A pilot will know that for every 60 knots of groundspeed they travel east (or west), they will travel 1 degree of longitude every hour.
It's one of the few 'old' measurements that makes better sense than metric, and quite frankly any change towards km/h should be resisted.
I don't see how the casino lost anything. In poker you're playing against your fellow players around the table and not against the house. The house makes its money by taking a small percentage of each pot, known as the rake, or in tournament play they will take 10-15% of the buy-in.
The only possibility is that the casino, so not to piss off some valued customers, voluntarily compensated the players who were scammed.
Linux, because...
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