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Comment Re:The fish, it's a "trap" (Score 3, Informative) 73

But wolves accepting the gesture of friendship paid a heavy price. The alpha leaning probably ended up in the stew pot, the beta leaning more likely to be kept around. We brutally bred the wolves for submissiveness. I'd reconsider your dog example. The fish, it's a "trap". :-)

The alpha/beta thing is completely debunked. When you rip animals from their families and throw them into a cage to fight for scraps you might find more alpha and beta like behaviors but in the wild, when not treated unnaturally by humans, they form family groups. There isn’t some large male using violence to get its way with every thing and every one, that’s what happens when humans get involved. Instead they tend to be highly cooperative.

Comment Surface area to volume ratio (Score 4, Insightful) 186

The problem with miniature reactors is the cost of operation. Basically the amount of material that becomes contaminated and needs to be replaced and or disposed of is vastly higher on a lifetime $/kwh basis. It’s like running ten thousand one horsepower motors instead of one ten thousand horsepower motor. You are going to have incessant and massive component supply and disposal demand costs compared to the single reactor. Further, the mess from ten thousand units makes for rampant pollution whereas it’s easier to pin down and hold to account a single reactor. If you have a base in the Antarctic, or a satellite, these may be an option if the total supply is highly limited. But the ease and cost of a simple generator is going to price everyone out of miniature reactors except all but the least serviceable and hospitable applications.

Comment Out of sight, out of mind (Score 2) 60

by burtosis (#65498940) Attached to: Near Antarctica, Saltier Seas Mean Less Ice, Study Finds
You can’t have a climate catastrophe if you don’t look up - taps head. It works swimmingly as long as the body needs are looked after, despite the brain unhindered by reality. Usually they shuffle mindlessly about and moan about the freedom they lost in vapid irony. But if it’s deep enough, and they are truly faithful, that realization will lie beyond their grasp to the last breath.

Comment Re:But not in the US (Score 1) 227

Sadly, this won't be coming to the US any time soon. RFK Jr. has arbitrarily declared that future vaccines will only be approved if the control group in the trials got an inactive placebo. Why? No reason at all, it's just an absurd requirement he made up. The control group in this trial got a conventional flu vaccine instead of a placebo (which would have been unethical), so it doesn't count.

Medical care is quickly becoming illegal.

Comment Re:The onion: (Score 1) 25

by burtosis (#65494034) Attached to: Samsung Working on Three-Panel Smartphone

âoeWould someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of foldables in this industry. The Galaxy Z Fold was the phone to own. Then the other guys dropped a folding phone too. Were we scared? Hell, no. We fired back with the Z Fold2. Bigger screen, better hinge, tougher glass. We defined the category. But you know what happened next? Shut up, Iâ(TM)m telling you what happenedâ"they went dual fold. And now Samsungâ(TM)s out here triple-folding like itâ(TM)s origami season. Meanwhile, Appleâ(TM)s circling, about to drop a foldable wrapped in titanium and smugness. Suddenly weâ(TM)re standing around with our one-fold phones, pretending itâ(TM)s still innovative. Well, fuck it. Weâ(TM)re going to quad fold. Thatâ(TM)s four folds and a stylus slot. For productivity.â

Your phone only folds along one axis? Pathetic. Our new phone has 24 folds. In the side swipe direction! It also has 15 in the vertical direction for 360 times the phone screen. You have a screen for damn near every day of the year! But were we done? Hell no, it also reflects infra red heat and becomes an emergency blanket not that your going to need any more comfort with that big a screen.

Comment Re:500 means statistically significant health effe (Score 2) 136

by burtosis (#65491630) Attached to: Earth's Atmosphere Hasn't Had This Much CO2 in Millions of Years

When CO2 gets above about 500ppm, you'll start to see statistically observable health effects in humans. People who are more susceptible to CO2 toxicity will feel drowsy, run-down, and complain that air quality is noticeably poor. At 1000ppm, about 50% of humans will begin showing these symptoms. At this rate, we'll see 1000ppm in the next century, and maybe faster as America tries so hard to make itself great again.

I get the feeling I’ll be forced to buy canned air.

Comment Re:How much does war contribute? (Score 2) 136

by burtosis (#65491622) Attached to: Earth's Atmosphere Hasn't Had This Much CO2 in Millions of Years

The amount of toxic clouds created by war is a metric I would like to know.

It surely is a major carbon dioxide contributor, but, it is also dumping a plethora of exotic materials into the atmosphere

All the particulate and CO2 released from all the oil wells purposely set on fire in the first Iraq war in Kuwait is a good example. Around 750 burned continuously and the last one took almost a year to get to with the average one gouting a column of flame for months. They needed to be explosively stopped from burning and sea water was pumped into them to stop the combustion. The scale of it was so bad it’s still not fully realized to this day and we have so many other examples no one thinks about this anymore and it was world news at the time.

Comment Re:Uh huh (Score 1) 174

Getting into peoples heads so that they may be manipulated to spend more money or align with political views automatically is a massive cash cow that will provide trillions in wealth and collapse governments in only the next few years. What used to have to be done manually can now be automated and every last one is clamoring to outdo the rest and keep on top, it has little to do with actual artificial intelligence or what efficiencies it could bring generally and everything to do with manipulating humans. It may only work on the weak minded, but that’s at least 40% of the voting population.

Comment Re:Frenetic churn (Score 1) 206

Chemistry may be optional, but the energy required/exuded during phase transitions along with specific heat and phase diagrams etc, is taught to all mechanical engineers as part of core thermodynamic coursework. Not knowing what the material properties are on a basic level means all that math and application knowledge is just taking wrong inputs and providing a garbage output.

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