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Comment Re:There's a better design out there.... (Score 1) 203

And this is a problem. The businessmodel relies on scaling up when there's a peak. That's very normal in a system of coal and gas plants, but it doesn't work for a system full of renewables and nuclear. For systems with little to no fuel cost, it makes MUCH more sense to create a higher baseline and scale down when there's a dip, but that's not economically viable because we made the pricingsystem to ensure that isn't economically viable.

Comment Re:Idiocy (Score 1) 28

You should watch a lot less Musk promo videos. Or maybe instead, you should watch them better. Musk claimed there would be 4 mars rockets in 2022, but right now, they haven't even gotten a single Starship HLS mission into space, let alone to the moon, let alone four of them to mars last year. Right now, there should be massive doubt if SpaceX can meet their Artemis program promises to get to the moon, not wild-ass plans for mars missions. HLS is already delayed till 2024, and Artemis is scheduled to land on the moon in 2025, and SpaceX has done zero out of it's three required demonstration flights.

This post doesn't even remotely border or anything resembling reality. It's just fanwank scifi.

Comment Re:I think there's another factor at play: (Score 1) 40

This is EXACTLY the problem with interpreting visual data. This is why every single system designed anywhere does not rely on cameras to detect anything beyond "A thing is now nearby" or "Something is different from what it was a second ago". There is just too much margin for error, too many edge cases, and extremely little margin for error.

I've heard the comparison with OCR (turning a scanned page into letters). Imagine if you scanned one page every minute, and every typo was a carcrash. That's self-driving.

Comment Re:College is not for everyone (Score 1) 140

I'd much rather have someone who understands people and how to organize and construct a team actually lead a team than someone who has mostly technical skills being the leader of a group.

In my experience, it's signficantly easier to teach a technical person some management skills than it is to teach a manager some technical skills. That's an experience based on doing it myself and working under/with quite a few of them.

Comment Re: Meh (Score 1) 140

Sure, it shouldn't be a huge department, but there is value.

This is the key part. Human civilization needs a little of everything, and there is absolutely value in having some people who specialize in very niche topics. Some amazing things come from the study of niches topics, even in social studies. But we absolutely don't need thousands upon thousands of people who are experts in the same niche, because it's a niche.

Comment Re:It might actually happen... (Score 1) 87

They're too round. Wind erosion (instead of water erosion) has tumbled each grain into basically a little sphere. The smooth grains offer very little for the cement to "grip" on to, so it makes for weak concrete. You also can't really use it for other construction purposes, because you can't stack a pile a marbles, no matter how much you try to compact it.

Comment Re:It might actually happen... (Score 1) 87

IIRC, sandy deserts are basically a top layer of fine dust (thanks to wind), followed by the coarsest grains (thanks to Granular Convection) and then finer as you go down to the bedrock. Digging down probably wouldn't get you better sand, it'd get you worse sand. You'd need to dredge it up from the seafloor, which means you have to rinse out the salt first, or import it.

Comment Re:"Little-acknowledged" - WTF? (Score 1) 321

Amusingly, I've been to a charging point a grand total of three times in the past year and a half, charging either at home or my destination every other time. I don't really charge it on the road at all.

Of course, I have a 300km range, and if I want to use all of that charge without driving in a circle, I need to cross national borders. It's kind a luxury position.

Comment Re:Take it with a grain of salt (Score 1) 85

I'd personally flip this around. I don't know a single person under 40 (or 60, really) that falls for nigerian prince scammers, or Q-anon conspiracy bullshit, or that facebook is selling all your data and you should copy-paste this message.

But I know half a dozen >40 people who buy into this nonsense hook, line and sinker.

Comment Re: How big? How heavy? How efficient? (Score 1) 54

Average scuba tanks are 21% O2 by volume, matching the atmosphere, but may be other ratios depending on the task at hand. You can use a 100% O2 tank safely down to 6 m, at which point the risk of seizure from oxygen toxicity becomes too high for most.

Not exactly. the gas inside the tank is 21% (or whatever you want, really), but don't forget the tank itself it also very heavy and quite bulky, especially when adding all the other equipment.

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