ChairmanMeow
@ChairmanMeow@programming.dev
- Comment on xkcd #2929: Good and Bad Ideas 1 week ago:
That’s a misnamed quiche.
- Comment on May 13, 1985 1 week ago:
I hope so, yes.
- Comment on rollin' coal 1 week ago:
Merkel and Schroeder gambled on Russian gas imports as a holdover to transition from the aging nuclear plants and coal plants towards renewables. They did so because according to Merkel “it made sense at the time” and she did not really see the larger geopolitical picture. When Russian gas suddenly dried up due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they had to delay the closure of several coal plants to keep the power on.
So they’re trying to replace nuclear and coal with gas.
- Comment on May 13, 1985 1 week ago:
Bombing a house in the middle of a residential area seems “reasonable”?
A judge and jury found the police department used unnecessary excessive violence and violated constitutional protections against unlawful searches.
- Comment on rollin' coal 1 week ago:
The nuclear plants in Germany were too old and too expensive to maintain. At some point a reactor is just end-of-life. They get operational issues causing semi-frequent shutdowns. The reliability issues become a problem that skyrockets the costs further.
Closing a nuclear plant like that puts enough money back in the budget to afford a faster transition to renewables, which ultimately closes down the coal plants faster too. It’s about the big picture, it’s not as simple as simply saying “we’ll do less coal” or “we’ll do less nuclear”.
- Comment on rollin' coal 1 week ago:
If you close a nuclear power plant before closing a coal one, you are effectively replacing the nuclear with coal.
That’s not how words work.
And coal use has been going up in Germany. So I don’t know where you are getting these ideas from.
Your data source is outdated. You’re looking at data up to 2022, whilst his data shows 2023-2024, which is more recent.
2022 also saw problems like the Ukraine war frustrating gas supply, forcing the use of more coal. And there was covid throwing a wrench into things as well.
Nuclear powerplants in Germany were beyond their lifespan and fixing and modernizing them was not economically feasible. Just too expensive compared to other forms of energy.
Germany certainly hasn’t been “replacing nuclear with coal”.
- Comment on GOP official argues in favor of child marriage: Girls are ‘ripe’ and ‘fertile’ 2 weeks ago:
What the fuck are these pedophiles up to?
- Comment on Helldivers 2 now delisted in 177 countries 2 weeks ago:
XD is Dubai (separate from the United Arab Emirates).
- Comment on How RCS on iPhone Will Make Texting Better for Everyone 2 weeks ago:
Ah, that may be true indeed.
- Comment on How RCS on iPhone Will Make Texting Better for Everyone 2 weeks ago:
Signal recently updated to allow usernames instead of phone numbers.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
A strong bias against genocide and in favour of peace is not a very disagreeable one.
- Comment on nuclear fear-mongering is a ploy by Big oil 2 weeks ago:
Nobody is pushing nuclear? Strange, I wonder why in my country numerous parties have been pushing for nuclear then (mostly right-wing pro-corporation parties with fossil fuel donors).
Here’s an article if you don’t believe me: dutchnews.nl/…/let-the-state-build-new-nuclear-po…
There’s plenty of parties pushing nuclear. The fact that it’s hard to actually build doesn’t mean that there’s no lobbying effort being made. And even then, a lobbying effort now will only really result in a net nuclear gain in 10-20 years time when the reactors actually finish.
And for the record, “big oil” , does invest in nuclear. Chevron, Duke Energy, Eni, Shell and BP all investments in some nuclear research or nuclear company. The reason they don’t really invest much more is simple: it’s barely profitable, if at all. And renewables threaten the financial picture even more.
- Comment on nuclear fear-mongering is a ploy by Big oil 2 weeks ago:
Money spent building nuclear is money not spent on renewables. I didn’t say you said to stop building solar, but deciding to build nuclear does mean building less solar, simple allocation of resources.
Solar energy particularly has been becoming increasingly efficient and cheap. In fact, it’s ahead of even the most optimistic expectations price-wise.
There’s been plenty of studies showing that nuclear is not theoretically required to achieve 100% fossil-fuel free energy generation. And we’ve known this since 2009: frontiergroup.org/…/do-we-really-need-nuclear-pow….
Wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and energy storage solutions are perfectly capable of providing the full energy demand whenever we require it. The only issue is building sufficient amounts of it.
In fact, nuclear is particularly bad at providing base power. The reason is that renewables are so cheap (and becoming cheaper), that one of the main issues has turned into having too much power on the grid. Nuclear unfortunately doesn’t turn off and on very quickly. Many old reactors take a couple hours to do so, and even if it’s technically possible it’s financially impossible because the reactor would be running at too large a loss. When dealing with fluctuating power (mostly caused by the day/night cycle of solar, other effects mostly even out if the grid is large enough), you need a backup system that can also easily turn on and off. Energy storage and hydrogen can do this, nuclear can’t.
Then there’s the energy security argument. 40% of uranium imports come from Russia. Kazakhstan is an alternative, but even that is largely controlled by Rosatom.
Literal fucking oil shill.
Please stay civil. I’m happy to debate you but you can keep the insults to yourself. I’m very much against the oil industry. I’m not even necessarily against nuclear as a technology (I think it’s safe and don’t think the waste will be too big of an issue, also fusion is really cool science), but I have to conclude that it doesn’t make financial sense to go for nuclear, there’s practical problems integrating it with a renewable grid and we just have better alternatives.
- Comment on nuclear fear-mongering is a ploy by Big oil 3 weeks ago:
If you Google “is a nuclear baseload required” you’ll find plenty of articles clearly demonstrating why this isn’t true. Renewables + storage solutions can provide the base load just fine. The biggest issues have been worked out already, it just needs to be built (which is expensive, but so would nuclear be).
- Comment on nuclear fear-mongering is a ploy by Big oil 3 weeks ago:
It’s rather the opposite. Big oil pushes nuclear because nuclear directly competes with renewables, and because nuclear is a centralised power generation solution that they can fully own, in contrast with stuff like rooftop solar or onshore wind. Shell has a share in General Atomics, BP is eyeing investments into nuclear energy.
Nuclear fusion might truly be an answer, but there is nothing that nuclear does that renewables can also do, but cheaper and faster.
- Comment on How do I use uBlock to hide threads with certain urls? 3 weeks ago:
Definitely do! uBlock Origin is the best one around, and it’s completely free. Even without configuring anything the defaults block 99% of annoying ads.
- Comment on CEO Alarmed to Discover That Laying Off 1,500 Workers Had Consequences 3 weeks ago:
Techwise it probably doesn’t, but then there’s marketeers, sales, accountants, legal, etc…
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
There are a lot of people who are in favour of sending aid to Israel as well. Biden can’t afford to piss off either group too much. But he does know that if Trump gets elected, one of those groups gets the opposite of what they want. So he’s naturally banking on that group of people still picking him over the alternative.
- Comment on Apple keeps flogging 8GB of RAM for its Mac computers but it's still a dead horse 4 weeks ago:
Well, more RAM will always help. An iPhone with more RAM will allow it to perform better than one with less RAM. Similarly, too little RAM will hamper performance regardless of the device.
- Comment on Apple keeps flogging 8GB of RAM for its Mac computers but it's still a dead horse 4 weeks ago:
Android has a garbage collector, meaning it requires an additional 2GB of RAM of overhead to keep things smooth. iPhones run significantly hotter than Androids, and consume more energy to achieve their performance gains.
It’s not true to simply state “one is better than the other”. There’s various metrics in which either one may be better.
- Comment on Or we could do metric time 4 weeks ago:
The 24h cycle with subdivisions in 60 is easy for dividing them up though. 60 divides by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30.
- Comment on NSA ’just days from taking over the internet’ warns Edward Snowden 4 weeks ago:
Because the Kremlin would protect him and help him broadcast his message. It harms the US government, so the Kremlin sees providing Snowden with protection and a platform as an absolute win.
Most other countries that are remotely aligned with the US might be pressured to keep Snowden quiet.
- Comment on Somebody managed to coax the Gab AI chatbot to reveal its prompt 5 weeks ago:
Tai was actively being manipulated by malicious users.
- Comment on Elon Musk's X pushed a fake headline about Iran attacking Israel. X's AI chatbot Grok made it up. 1 month ago:
As CEO he is ultimately responsible for his platform. So yes, in the end it’s his responsibility. It’s why he gets paid the big bucks.
- Comment on What Do People Think of Apple's Vision Pro Headsets? 2 months ago:
I don’t think about them at all to be honest. Total disinterest.
- Comment on Spotify just changed TOS, giving them unprecedented rights to create "derivative works" from audiobooks 2 months ago:
IIRC this is because Spotify wants to generate translations for thesw audiobooks in the original voices. At least, that’s what I think I remember from a long time ago.
- Comment on Apple fans are starting to return their Vision Pros 2 months ago:
Meh, lots of Apple products have heat dissipation issues. Most notably some of the recent macbooks had that issue iirc.
They’re good, but some of the design choices force some hefty technical compromises.
- Comment on The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Simple Websites 2 months ago:
Strange, it’s the exact opposite for me. Moon in dark mode, sun in light mode.
- Comment on Reason for high refresh rates? 3 months ago:
In theory yes, but as there are many different video recorders, going with a super high refresh rate could be a better catch-all so to speak.
- Comment on Maybe Lovecraft wasn't as talented as people think? 3 months ago:
Lovecraft’s racism is very much a product of fear, not racial superiority. Dude was extraordinarily terrified of everything remotely foreign. It’s why “strange creatures that are vaguely human but completely incomprehensible” is the generic terror in his stories.
In that sense, I find the motivations for his racism far less terrible than the motivations a racial supremacist has.