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Comment Re:Good (Score 3, Insightful) 104

>It's one of the few segments in IT where you're not directly at constant risk of being replaced by an H1B.

Truth. One of the reasons why I keep gravitating back to defense work. Only since around 2004 or so; there's now this "government shutdown" nonsense, which is a bit of a vicious circle, because programs get fucked over, then you have to roll off the contract and find work on another. And sometimes, there isn't any. (happened to me at Lockheed), so some people have to cycle back into the private sector for a few years (which isn't a bad thing; because THAT is where you pick up new skills, to be honest). Then when some asshole "businessman" crashes the business and does layoffs (to replace you with H1B's), you're back on the street again, and you end up back in the "safe" sector: defense. Oh, and if your Clearance expires while you're in the private sector, then the contractor just pays the $10k (or whatever it is now) to re-do your investigation. This has happened to me twice now.

Comment Re:Other development opportunities (Score 1) 68

Yeah, we were outdoor power centers and strip malls, the indoor guys had it a lot rougher as far as effectively retenanting their space, but again I really doubt they spent a nanosecond worrying about what the mall across town thought about them lowering the $/sq ft on their space if they could get a deal done to keep an anchor and keep the space alive.

Comment Re:Other development opportunities (Score 1) 68

That might be true in commercial real-estate but I can tell you from a decade of doing retail IT that it's got butkis to do with things in shopping centers, what other companies care about isn't even a whiff of a concern. They're focused on total profit for the portfolio and occupancy rates, you do whatever deals need to be done to keep the centers full even if you know that it's not going to be super advantageous at the end of the 10 year period because as long as you have the retailers coming to you for space you'll get them back when they need space to expand and the market is tight. Now for commercial this might be a fundamental shift in the market where occupancy is never going to rebound, but you take the one time hit to mark to market your portfolio and recapitalize to redevelop the property or sell it at firesale prices to the bottom feeders in the market. I mean if occupancy is that low you're probably going to get called on your loan covenants by the banks anyways at some point, so waiting for them to do it for you has to be worse than just biting the bullet and renting it out at whatever the true market value is.

Comment Re:10% efficiency (Score 1) 123

180C is apparently the hottest we've managed to run a heat pump:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fammonia21.com%2Fnorwegia...
Not yet commercially viable and just demonstrated in a lab unit within the last few years, so probably 5 years from running a demo plant. Still, I can see running such a pump as the input to a thermal battery as being a great proof of concept use case, there's no critical load depending on the heat output being available 24x7 so any need to tinker, troubleshoot, or maintain the prototype can easily be accomplished.

Comment Re:Why?! (Score 1) 151

Just like the original law called for micro-USB, if technology comes along and there's a new superior plug format that would make sense to use to supplant USB-C then there will be a new updated law passed. For the next decade or more I think USB-C will be fine for phones, 240W and 80Gbps is going to be enough for quite some time.

Comment Re:Going to be a fun ride for the next 5 years. (Score 2) 48

Look at productivity vs real wages and you'll realize that the "union nonsense" has been a long time coming. The top 1% have reaped almost all the gains for FAR too long and now that the baby boomers are retiring there's a labor squeeze and the working class realizes that there's a once in several generation chance to seize back some of the gains for themselves. I'm sure that will lead to some further automation, but that was going to happen anyways as the technology developed (ie I've never seen a management type say we shouldn't implement this automation because it might cause someone to lose their job, quite the opposite) so getting some wage concessions now while the capitalists don't have much choice is the obvious good move.

Comment Re:This is pointless as nobody will hit that limit (Score 1) 60

Two clients downloading from Steam will easily saturate 2Gbps, if you've got a backup client on a few machines you can also easily saturate your upload bandwidth doing your backups. I mean sure, if all you want to do is browse the web and watch videos (even 4k), then it's massive overkill, but there's plenty of existing use cases where it will be useful at least some of the time, and if more people had the bandwidth there'd be even more since information is like a gas that expands to fill whatever container is available.

Comment Re:This is why I'm opposed to nuclear. (Score 1) 129

>n that environment, a "safer" reactor just means they can get away with more cost-cutting to line their own pockets. Until we figure out a way to eliminate that, I'm not at all confident that even the most theoretically "idiot proof" reactor would actually be substantially safer in practice than the reactors we have today.

It's really THIS.

And we already have a way to eliminate that. Just not in the Civilian world. As soon as you try to run a nuclear reactor as a for-profit business where the costs are borne by others (like the people who live in the town that gets shut down after the plant explodes; they will not get their land back in their own lifetimes, but shareholders don't give a fuck) - it's a recipie for disaster. But operate a nuclear power plant as part of an Navy vessel; these folks mean business, and they do it right. And it's nowhere near profitable, compared to other means of electrical generation. (this is why the commercial industry is leaving nuclear power: it's not profitable unless the government gives them shitloads of money).

And the prevailing Milton Friedman attitudes of running business and informing Government Policy is what is responsible for the NRC being no longer able to do their jobs.

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