
Re: Right, but do all those businesses...
Either that, or exerting more pressure and tightening the grip on your "most tender zone". Or both.
10507 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015
I always figured amber alerts were MOSTLY divorced dads late on returning the kid to the wacky X he divorced because she was wacky, but the courts "saw fit" to give HER custody for political reasons, and therefore he's constantly being subjected to excess scrutiny...
(at least they do not go over the emergency alert system any more, like they did at first)
icon, for snarky reasons
actually when I hear the lead-in and two tones I'm using profanities because "I was trying to listen" and it's always something irritating like a monthly test or 'yet another storm//flash-flood warning' when you have been hearing them all day and it has been raining all day.
I recall at one time AMBER ALERTS were going over this system (think missing kid except probably just some divorced parent late on returning the kid from "visitation" and wacky X waiting for an opportunity to "GET HIM" but I digress). This practice QUICKLY stopped.
if there were an actual nuclear war, I live within a few miles of several important Navy and Marine bases. I would never hear it. *BOOM*
Dear Apache Foundation:
I'm at least 1/8 American Indian, and though I do not believe I have affiliation with the Apache tribe (the one tribe I am sure of is Taos, many others exist) I am OFFICIALLY giving MY permission, being enough "Native American" to do so (way more than Lizzie Warden, that's for sure) to NAME AN EXCELLENT SET OF SOFTWARE PROGRAMS and the foundation that supports them after a NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBE.
Just like the Apache helicopter.
"Get Woke Go Broke" - DO NOT LISTEN to FOOLS who are "Woke": and thereby end up BECOMING THEM.
Think what happened to Disney, Bed Bath and Beyond, and OTHERS who made a SIMILAR mistake,.
The SHRILL WHINY MINORITY must STOP IT, and CODDLING THEM and BENDING TO THEIR WHIMS is *ENABLING* *THEM* *TO* *CONTINUE*.*THEIR* *IRRITATING* *DISRUPTIVE* *FOLLY* !!!
So here is what you do - how about a web page (prominently referenced on your web site) dedicated to the HISTORY of the APACHE PEOPLE to educate and show positive image kinds of things about the Apache tribe! Factual of course, no tirades or ridiculous activism.
pretty much what I was thinking.
When the wacky-enviro-alarmists start legislating you out of business over their pseudo-science fanaticism of doom and gloom (based entirely on fear and ignorance, leading to a kind of economic suicide), it is time to view these places ONLY through the rear view mirrors of escaping vehicles, while you still have enough cash on hand to do it.
I hear Texas, Florida, and other 'red states' SERIOUSLY want businesses to prosper in THEIR states! You know, jobs, prosperity, thriving and healthy economy, and so on.
I've written hyper-efficient XML processors before. As long as you do not do anything exotic with it, the code is pretty simple, infinitely hierarchical, etc. Similar for 'INI' style. I am pretty sure I posted the source online on github, too. Written in C, with C++-like thinking.
(I use a similar github handle as I use here if you want to look for it)
The original reason for writing this is I do NOT like 3rd party bloatware libs for doing simple things. And this code is efficient enough to put into a kernel module, which was being discussed at the time I first came up with the original (and it morphed from there).
We need to look at why this is so.
I have some ideas
* object-oriented to the point that objects do WAY too much 'just in case'
An object that represents the name of a file does NOT have to open and read the file and figure out what it is UNLESS you need to display an icon or a preview (and then it should be done in background on demand).
Mate and Gnome standard 'open file' dialog box is guilty of this, as are common dialog boxen on Windows
* Just because you can, does not mean you should
Unnecessary UI "eye candy", typical for websites that use bloatware javascript libs
Using a web-browser based UI for something that really needs a native interface.
allowing applications to eat RAM for cache and do garbage collection whenever they FEEL like it, thereby causing OTHER applications to run slowly or swap too much. That would be YOU, Chrome, Firefox.
* use of OS memory allocator rather than sub-allocation for tiny little chunks of RAM.
Kinda self-describes
* Use of C++ objects that use 'new' with pointer members, rather than the actual stored type, for non-arrays
Lest we forget, the constructor will get called if you declare a member as a class rather than a class pointer, and you will skip an extra 'malloc' and instead do one for the entire class and all of its members, all at once
* Excess reliance on exception handling and unwinding of things
What it says on the tin. Kernel code often has a 'goto error_exit' where the 'error_exit' label has a cleanup section for managing all of the unwinding and freeing up resources. Better, and more efficient. 'goto' may have 4 letters, but it is NOT a '4 letter word',.
* Use of garbage collection where reference counts would make a LOT more sense.
Objects that clean themselves up when the ref count goes to zero can persist as long as they need to, even across threads [if you design them properly]. Remember OLE 2.0 ? It is based on other things found in the UNIX/Linux world (CORBA was one as I recall) and the ref count is the smartest part of it.
* BLOATWARE "Rapid Development" systems (think UWP)
They add layers and are not always very efficient
* Anything involving '.NOT' or NodeJS
'Nuff said I think
* Trying to use Python as if it were C or C++
Python is a useful wrapper but performs poorly in a loop. I recently used Python to display an animated wallpaper until you touch the screen, then it exits but tells the main application you did it so that it changes its behavior with blinky lights. Maybe 20 lines of Python, the rest managed by GTK and standard utilities
NOT all inclusive, but a good start I'd say...
A few years ago I did a lot of engineering work in that area (LiPo battery management chip etc.). In short LiPo has a high enough energy density to act like a oyrotechnic under the right conditions. If you can manage NOT to damage the thing, they work fine. But they are easily damaged even during the assembly process (right Samsung?) so you have to have not only a reliable case on the device, but a reliable power control chip, circuit board design, and the battery itself.
Last I looked there were a zillion LiPo battery makers in China, with widely varying levels of quality and charge/discharge rates. Undervolt on battery makes it swell up like a balloon. Some batteries come with protection chips built into them, and others do not. Short out one of the ones without a protection chip and you could end up with a fire in (single digit) seconds.
Basically, going with "the cheapest battery/solution" in hardware design may in fact be a recipe for flame-broiled luggage.
was thinking something like that, but rireproof safes already exist, so maybe put one or two in the baggage area, and just check your potentially flamable devices like luggage
My idea was to require that such devices be contained within flame-proof bags inside your luggage, or inside special luggage. They are not that expensive and are often sold to people who like building model cars and aircraft with LiPo batteries (for storing the batteries safely).
Something like THIS maybe?
The early rumor was "a corrupted database file".
Made me think it might have been a '.mdb' file, heh heh heh
But as it's gummint, probably an 'Oracle solution', The articles you mention seem to be about a proposed system and/or data analysis, unless I missed something.
(The longer link did mention Oracle once, also Sybase)
Some possible phrases within that "Who, Me?" article
* What version of Micros~ Access was this written for? I need to re-install it
* Windows 10 was updating? AGAIN???
* What do you mean, "no daily backup"?
* 'Please insert disk in drive A: and press OK'
* That is most certainly a BSOD
* 'mailbox full'
* Can anyone find me a working IDE drive?
* CPU fan was clogged
Did anyone definitively state why the ozone hole appeared and then disappeared?
I think the best explanation would be volcanic activity in places where normal wind patterns carry the volcanic gasses [which are major ozone depleters, including a huge amount of CFCs] towards Australia where the hole was [as I recall], particularly any volcanic activity close to the South Pole, like THIS one. (The ozone layer is weakest near the poles)
In any case, more science would be nice. I would imagine other satellites have taken up the slack.
"The advantage of running XP and Windows 7 is that you know the internet is risky so the hacking level ends up being lower with very old operating systems."
this only applies to tech savvy "refuseniks" that would rather slide dwn a razor blade bannister into a tub of alcohol than use Win-10-nic or Win II that never browse the internet nor receive e-mail (though using T-bird, NOT viewing e-mail as HTML nor previewing attachments, and practicing "safe surfing" in general, is a big help).
windshield wipers in space!
flying squeegee helicopters!
yeah, maybe not...
compressed air jets may be the best solution. Build up pressure in a tank, then spray the panel every few days. You can pump atmosphere at Mars pressure, and it should not take that long. A small multi-stage compressor should do it. Probably could he made out of light materials, maybe even plastic.
I was just gonna say "Space is Hard"
and of course you said better things
Is it time yet (in the world) for space tech patents and scientific discoveries to (in general) be made PUBLIC if they are not already?
Patent licensing of course must still apply, but be made available for legit non-military purposes like Mars rovers.
Just a thought, world politics and CCP notwithstanding.
"Who, Me?" for THIS one, for sure.
"Post-accident calculations, as well as examination of scratches on Rod 9, estimate that it had actually been withdrawn approximately twenty inches" (instead of 4 inches).
/me imagines tech yanking upwards on the thing "This... F'ing... thing... is... STU[@#$%^&^]" because with that final YANK, the rod was blown out of the core in a tremendous steam explosion inside the reactor vessel [and rumors have it that the tech was pinned to the ceiling with part of a control rod through his abdomen after being nearly cooked by highly radioactive steam...].
on-site placement gives you the opportunity to use waste heat like a co-generation plant.
Hot water can create chilled water with an absorption chiller [LiBr type for example].
Waste heat can also create hot water to heat buildings in winter, and [pre-]heat hot water for various uses [like bathrooms and mop closets]
Waste heat is probably 80% of the thermal output of the reactor, with about 20% becoming electricity. If you can just use the waste heat effectively it can offset a LOT of electricity and/or carbon-based fuel usage, potentially saving TONS of money.
after a nuclear reactor shuts down, the initial decay heat can be as high as 10% of whatever the operating power just was. Over an hour or two, it drops to about 1-2% which will slowly drop over several days until it becomes a low enough level that is easily managed.
This initial decay heat at shutdown has to be removed to ensure safety. So a cooling system would have to be present that can reliably remove high levels of decay heat following an emergency shutdown, and then operate without electricity if need be.
I have seen such designs in U.S. Navy vessels, for emergency cooling. All you would need is some 100% reliable way of sinking the heat, even if it is just a standby tank of water.
But ideally it can be managed with a proper design. I like the idea of bringing in a nuclear power plant on a railroad car. You could literally leave it on the train car (inside of a shielded containment building of course) and just "plug it in" like someone suggested. OK, the cables for 50MW of electricity do not just "plug in" _THAT_ easily, though it COULD be just a scale up from shore power cabling on a nuclear ship. Typical shore power hookup was an hour or two as I recall.
As for waste, the tech to reprocess that stuff WILL need to be developed. Otherwise it becomes both wasteful AND dangerous to just store it. No more NIMBY attitudes blocking it, either. Make it SAFE. CAN be done.
And the co-generation idea of using waste heat from the SMRs to "do things" is also pretty cool. [absorption chillers for air conditioning immediately come to mind]. If half of your data center buildings' heating and A/C came from waste heat, imagine the economic benefits of THAT.
Design PRIMARILY for safety IS more expensive but I think in the longer term it will cost less.
[To the best of my knowledge, nobody has yet properly categorized the decomissioning cost of wind farm equipment and spent solar panels, not to mention potential accidents from old embrittled blades and towers that could potentially come crashing down]
All humor aside, perhaps a couple of ideas...
* some kind of universal one-size-fits-all space suit for our Cosmonaut crew members, even if it looks like an oversized balloon with shoelaces (tied to fit like a shoe), plus hoses and wires;
* send up an empty 'human passenger' dragon instead of the 'cargo' dragon for the next supply run and fly back on THAT one
OK what's the time window now, 2-3 months? "Hop to it, Elon!"
Perhaps using AI to write papers is a byproduct of NOT teaching proper critical thinking, or having "outside the box" thinking CONSTANTLY getting punished in some fashion, so what is a student to do about it?
End result, use the AI to generate something that will (hopefully) not get you into some kind of trouble.
(Either that or pure laziness)
from the artcle: Teachers need to work harder to get students to write and think for themselves
The good professors will want their students to think for themselves.
Sadly there seem to be too many tenured profs that want to INDOCTRINATE instead of EDUCATE.
'Wokeness' is evidence of that. Intolerance of TRUE free speech and free thought on a typical college campus (at least in the USA) is STIFLING free thinking. Anything that steps out of lockstep with "The Woke" gets "intimidated away" by loud woke activists, with both students AND staff on BOTH sides (i.e. giving AND receiving). And the target of "what is acceptable" moves continuously. And in SOME cases, "wrong thinking" might even get you EXPELLED.
How is THAT any kind of environment to "get students to write and think for themselves" ??
(might wanna start fixing it from THERE, yeah)
standard FBI 'RICO' tactic - nail lower level people on something that frightens them into cooperating. I think the girl is looking at 110 years...
Sometimes it is the only tactic that works, with major organized crime and [alleged] scams like FTX, junk bonds, Ponzi schemes, etc. etc.
(IMBO: if she cooperates with the FBI, Ellison may get out of prison before she hits menopause)
but of course what would SICKEN me is if their cooperation is NOT enough to put Sammy Brain-Fried in the iron bar hotel PERMANENTLY. He literally (allegedly) created a 'run on a bank' by (allegedly) deliberately putting assets at risk in a HEDGE FUND, where basically EVERYTHING is "at risk" and the chances of LOSING are greater than the chances of WINNING, when you dollarize it. So if they predict wrong, ALL money is lost and possibly a debt remains for paying off of short/long sales that still remain (as one example)
The model I am thinking of: you agree to sell stock on a short sale at a value of x, but you do not buy the stock. If the stock value goes up, you have to buy it at 'x + y' and sell it for 'x' according to the contract. If it goes up MORE than your hedge fund can manage, you lose it all AND still have a debt for all of that stock loss. Get it wrong, you can lose REALLY BIG, for only a small potential gain if you are RIGHT.
[this is why I do not like hedge funds nor those who make their money with them - it implies, In My Bombastic Opinion, market manipulation, insider trading, and a zero-sum gain of the worst kind - making others LOSE so you can "WIN")
Never underestimate the ability of a high paid schlickmeister attorney to get Sammy Brain-Fried acquitted.
News update: Brain-Fried is out on $250 million in bail. Apparently his parents put up equity in their Palo Alto home ($17mil I think) as a security for the bail bond. So where the HELL did this family of Stanford college professors get enough money to OWN a home like that? Or, did Brain-Fried recently pay CASH for that [in which case it should go to the bankruptcy court to cover FTX losses, In My Bombastic Opinion].
Short conclusion, Brain-Fried has more than the $100k he claims he was left with after the aftermath. Right. Apparently there is enough money squirreled away in various places, and it's probably paying the lawyers. AND there are the millions in "gifts" for "charity" to various politicians, from very liberal Democrats to RINO Republicans (apparently Brain-Fried was trying to affect outcomes of Republican primaries this year).
This kind of "throwing money about" and then - miraculously - NOT knowing where it all went, suggests there was a LOT more planning on HIS end than people want to see (or admit to).
Meanwhile, Sammy Brain-Fried is home for Christmas - with an ankle bracelet, living with mommy and daddy like a good basement dweller. It's only a short step down from living in a multi-million dollar hippy commune in the Bahamas, but hey, Sammy Brain-Fried is just having a bad month...
(if they do not put this guy in prison for LIFE, he WILL BE BACK - guarantee it!)
Damn, I am old.
Yet your intact memory has info that 'teh intarwehs' apparently does NOT have easy access to.
Robot overlords have a LONG way yet to go!
After reading the article and reference to'fuel pellet', looks like they are trying to use inertial confinement. I do not think that design has much to offer for a sustained power producing reaction as it is the equivalent of setting off a tiny nuclear bomb with lasers.
There is a BBC documentary, out there on ''teh intarwebs', about the pistol shrimp, which uses its claw to create an underwater shock wave to stun its prey. Slowed down it shows a large cavitation bubble collapsing, and also a brief but intense flash of light. i keep thinking that it may be briefly creating a small fusion reaction, which would greatly amplify the effect of the shock wave created by the shrimp's claw. Result in my head looks like a million pistol shrimp claws rapidly repeat-firing to boil water. Eh, just a thought.
These guys need to be in Jail, in addition to the fines.
A special placer in *HELL* also.
I remember getting MANY of those calls, several times a day even, AND complaining about them online (there's a web page for do not call list complaints). VERY irritating. Went on for most of the year, as I recall. The case reportedly focuses on 2 months, which involves enough evidence to warrant prosecution. But the sheer volume of calls for what I remember to be MOST of the year (with short breaks in between) is probably 2 to 3 times what they're being charged with.
I have to turn off the ringer on my phone because of irritating robocallers. Just the answering machine picks up. It has a speaker, so i can hear it if someone is leaving a message, but the 4 ring delay usually stops the robos from continuing. However, if the robo "talks" over the greeting I sometimes lose the info I need to complain about it properly.
other than saying that "your opinions are wrong on so many levels", I shall simply reply with this [short] video link (enjoy)
https://twitter.com/i/status/1549476106075619330
(sorry I do not know of any other link but you can view it without signing up so there ya go)
Oh yeah I should mention some things about Three Mile Island. The biggest problem here was a lack of communication, i.e operator error, combined with a stuck valve, improper valve position indication (it indicated shut), and the placement of indicators within the operations room that were too far apart (meaning you obsess over one panel without realizing the other is telling you a different story). So they manually overrode things they should NOT have, making the problem WORSE. When they finally realized it was too late,l the core had been uncovered and there was a steam bubble, followed by a Zr-water reaction that formed a large hydrogen bubble, which exposed the fuel, all helping to cause a meltdown that made everything go to hell really fast.
it was a lesson to the industry, but not to say "bad investment" - just "train more" and "design better". Nuke reactors are safe when designed and operated properly. Those last 2 bits are important.
(I could go into more detail but Wikipedia may already do that)
Some of what you have said reflects popular opinion but not necessarily science and engineering fact.
Example: US operators have an obsession with running their nukes 100% 24/7 as baseload
The fact is that most (if not all) large civilian reactors either have a zero or a positive "alpha-T" - i.e. the coefficient of the relationship between water temperature and 'reactrivity'. This means these reactors are inherently unstable, so in order to control them, you need to use methods that are reliable at maintaining a constant power level. Changes in power cause 'transient' conditions that work AGAINST the reactor's controllability. This is why you SLOOoooowly bring power up over several DAYS when starting up one of these things. Then they run that way for weeks at 100% until you shut them down for maintenance. This is safest AND most profitable at the same time.
The variations on the grid are normally handled by carbon-fuel plants and hydroelectric plants. Wind and Solar could do the same if there were not such an "obsession" for getting more [expensive] power from THOSE instead. It would be much easier to feather the props on a wind farm than it would be to lower a nuke plant's output power [unless they dump steam, but that's inefficient].
You are right in a lot of ways. We'd have TONS of competing reactor designs RIGHT NOW if only those with political (and possibly financial) interests AGAINST nuclear power had NOT been flinging endless vexatious sueballs at the nuclear industry since the 1960's... including NIMBYs that won't let us build nuclear waste treatment plants nor ship it through their area.
Yeah, THERE's your problem...
yep, sounds nice and "sciency" to me, too. Nice perspective. I did not realize they were using alloy fuel though. I would be curious about delayed neutrons in a fast reactor, whether or not prompt neutrons are at a higher percentage than in thermal reactors. I suspect they are different since the fast fission product yield curve (Mae West curve) differs somewhat from thermal. I am not sure by how much.
In any case without enough delayed neutron precursors the reaction lifecycle will be too short to control it properly, and with fast neutrons you also lose at least SOME of the stabilizing factors of "negative alpha-T" and are stuck controlling it like a very large reactor that might have a 0 or even positive "alpha-T". These are some of the reasons that thermal fission is preferred over fast fission, other than a few physics details like buckling and macroscopic cross section for fission. But alternative designs are, well, "alternative" so I'm assuming they worked this all out.
that's an interesting analysis of using a CO2 coolant.
If it were my choice, i would just go with H2O, light water, because it is cheap and well established. You can control water chemistry with ammonia, use an ion exchanger to purify it, change out the resin once in a while as needed. The systems that already do this are basically the safest and most tested designs. Others, especially boiling water reactors, aren't very commonly used, nor are a few others I am aware of. Experimental, sure, but not so many operational. Liquid sodium does have high potential for being a practical alternative design and I believe that some subs and civilian power plants are using sodium. So it has its own problems but is effective and safe enough to work.
There is no loss of efficiency with something like pressurized water coolant. Heat is heat, and the most limiting factor is really on the secondary side, as in how much steam pressure can your secondary systems take and whether or not you need to superheat the steam. PWR pressure is less of an issue (you could go as high as 3000psi for example without too much trouble) but the mollier diagram for steam indicates that phase changes over ~1200 psi [around the maximum specific enthalpy point] can become problematic. I think you'd see heavy condensation in the piping which means a LOT of superheating to prevent it. Anyway... all of that is part of overall system design. Way too much math/engineeering outside of my field.
The SCRAM name is unfortunately a bit of folk etymology and not true
I have seen at least some evidence to suggest it was true, from a college prof who worked at Lawrence Livermore Labs when it mattered, back in the 1950's, early on in the industry. And, the U.S. Navy.
There were a number of terms I heard about in my radiation safety class, a number of nicnames and acronyms you do not often see elsewhere. For example one of the radiacs was referred to as a "cutie pie". It had a large cylinder extending from it (as I recall it was an alpha particle monitor). And of course I learned about SL-1 (the unclassified version), a nasty example of radiation poising for a welder in Argentina to tried to steal an unshielded radiation source for x-raying metal, and (no shit) how to clean up radioactive spills using maxi pads and comet cleanser. Things WERE a bit more innovative in those days, yeah.
So you can expect some odd naming conventions from that time period.. And my time in the U.S. Navy confirmed the SCRAM acronym, where (if I remember correctly, my Nuclear Power school time was in 1981) we had some nice hand-drawn diagrams of the system showing the guy with the axe and the rope, possibly even from classified sources. Then again Admiral Rickover was a bit of a prankster at times, so maybe HE was responsible for it?
[also noted was that they all stayed in the same room with the reactor running for an extended period of time, while radiation alarms were going off in the room warning them to get the hell out - it's who these guys were]
Also in the Navy I read the classified incident report on SL-1 which was required reading, as well as the official 3 Mile Island incident report, and also "Murphy's Law" (that's Admiral RIckover's sense of humor for ya). The classified SL-1 report basically confirmed some of the rumors that were hinted at when I learned about it in college. I guess some details were (literally) too gruesome not to be classified at the time. Of course there were other details that I remember that may be related to things like plant design which may still remain classified so I will not say any of that. And there was a movie that showed before, some maintenance practices, and the aftermath. Some of that has been declassified as I understand it (read the Wikipedia page, you'll see).
So anyway, the rumors around the term SCRAM may not be confirmed because they were classified and never released, or were never written down in the first place. Does not mean it is not true.