UnderpantsWeevil

UnderpantsWeevil , vor 8 Tagen

One of the saddest bits of the show was when they kinda just gave up talking about socio-economic issues and made the whole show revolve around Homer being a big dumb-dumb.

Some of the harshest criticism they had around nuclear power revolved around its privatization and profitization. A bunch of those early episodes amounted to people asking for reasonable and beneficial changes to how the plant was run, then having to fight tooth and nail with the company boss for even moderate reform.

UnderpantsWeevil , vor 8 Tagen

I would rather see more investment on better renewable tech then relaying on biohazard.

Modern nuclear energy produces significantly less waste and involves more fuel recycling than the historical predecessors. But these reactors are more expensive to build and run, which means smaller profit margins and longer profit tails.

Solar and Wind are popular in large part because you can build them up and profit off them quickly in a high-priced electricity market (making Texas's insanely expensive ERCOT system a popular location for new green development, paradoxically). But nuclear power provides a cheap and clean base load that we're only able to get from coal and natural gas, atm. If you really want to get off fossil fuels entirely, nuclear is the next logical step.

UnderpantsWeevil , vor 8 Tagen

I just dont see any reason to ever invest into it nowadays, when renewables and batteries have gotten so good.

Renewables and batteries have their own problems.

Producing and processing cobalt and lithium under current conditions will mean engaging in large-scale deforestation in some of the last unmolested corners of the planet, producing enormous amounts of toxic waste as part of the refinement process, and then getting these big bricks of lithium (not to mention cadmium, mercury, and lead) that we need to dispose of at the battery's end of lifecycle.

Renewables - particularly hydropower, one of the most dense and efficient forms of renewable energy - can deform natural waterways and collapse local ecologies. Solar plants have an enormous geographic footprint. These big wind turbines still need to be produced, maintained, and disposed of with different kinds of plastics, alloys, and battery components.

Which isn't even to say these are bad ideas. But everything we do requires an eye towards the long-term lifecycle of the generators and efficient recycling/disposal at their end.

Nuclear power isn't any different. If we don't operate plants with the intention of producing fissile materials, they run a lot cleaner. We can even power grids off of thorium. Molten salt reactors do an excellent job of maximizing the return on release of energy, while minimizing the risk of a meltdown. Our fifth generation nuclear engines can use this technology and the only thing holding us back is ramping it up.

Unlike modern batteries, nuclear power doesn't require anywhere near the same amount of cobalt, lithium, nickel and manganese. Uranium is surprisingly cheap and abundant, with seawater yielding a pound of enrichable uranium at the cost of $100-$200 (which then yields electricity under $.10/kwh).

We can definitely do renewables in a destructive and unsustainable way, recklessly mining and deforesting the plant to churn out single-use batteries. And we can do nuclear power in a responsible and efficient way, recycling fuel and containing the relatively low volume of highly toxic waste.

But all of that is a consequence of economic policy. Its much less a consequence of choosing which fuel source to use.

UnderpantsWeevil , vor 8 Tagen

Don't forget Blinky, the three eyed fish.

https://hero.fandom.com/wiki/Blinky_(The_Simpsons)

UnderpantsWeevil , vor 27 Tagen

Carving my soul into seven unholy partitions in order to maintain my unnatural existence as a Windows Guy whose shit still works.

UnderpantsWeevil , vor einem Monat

I think it's given us a big wave of "Return to pixelated tradition" style games. When you see 16-bit sprites in the teaser, you can feel reasonably confident your computer will run it.

UnderpantsWeevil , vor einem Monat

Most of the abstractions, frameworks, “bloats”, etc. are there to make development easier and therefore cheaper

That's true to an extent. But I've been on the back side of this kind of development, and the frameworks can quickly become their own arcane esoteric beasts. One guy implements the "quick and easy" framework (with 16 gb of bloat) and then fucks off to do other things without letting anyone else know how to best use it. Then half-dozen coders that come in behind have no idea how to do anything and end up making these bizarre hacks and spaghetti code patches to do what the framework was already doing, but slower and worse.

The end result is a program that needs top of the line hardware to execute an oversized pile of javascripts.

UnderpantsWeevil , vor einem Monat

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/addfcf2b-3089-4471-8edc-733e010eed4b.gif

UnderpantsWeevil , vor einem Monat

Was that game any good? The mobile version had a Gacha mechanic that scared me off, but it otherwise looked like a really smooth SNES style JRPG.

UnderpantsWeevil , vor einem Monat

I agree that this is bullshit and Linux is better. But as someone with a Windows work computer, this was a huge help.

UnderpantsWeevil , vor einem Monat

emerge

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f7dfddf1-cb9b-4212-a5b4-f32d2663f876.jpeg

UnderpantsWeevil , vor 2 Monaten

there are literally millions of people who don’t even know or care about knowing how to change desktop background

I'll cede "know", but I heavily dispute "care".

Plenty of Boomers are painfully aware of how awful the internet has become over the last decade. Hell, they got to experience it before the rest of us precisely because folks who never knew how to migrate off AOL or Yahoo got enshitified first.

My own mom hates using the computer in no small part because she takes too much of what she sees at face value and ends up with tons of spyware, bloat, and scams rampaging across her laptop. I have to clean it out for her every few months, and I'm constantly fighting with her over what's actually garbage and what she's convinced she needs.

But the end result is that she just... won't check her email because she hates it. She won't answer her phone because she's afraid of scam callers. She won't trust ANY website, so she doesn't use Amazon or Uber or Netflix.

It isn't that people like my mom don't care. They care immensely, because modern technology has become unusable for people like her.

UnderpantsWeevil , vor 2 Monaten

If its pre-installed, its typically called "Bloatware".

And I remember having bloatware on my machine going back to the 90s. The first really high quality gaming computer I got was a Sony Vaio and it had tons of bullshit excess software I had to mop out of it before I was ready to really use it.

UnderpantsWeevil , vor 2 Monaten

https://finalfantasyxv.fandom.com/wiki/Cup_Noodles

They also had a bunch of Coleman camping gear as a major feature of the game.

As ad placement went, I thought it was kinda charming and cute. More like a goofy Superbowl ad than an obnoxious "BUY ME NOW!!!" splash screen or pop-up insert. But I'm glad the latest FF7 Remakes didn't continue this trend.

UnderpantsWeevil , vor 2 Monaten

I've never tried to install linux on an Apple before.

UnderpantsWeevil , vor 2 Monaten

I'd have to check the specs, but I believe its an M1 or M2.

UnderpantsWeevil , vor 2 Monaten

You claim you've never liked Final Fantasy and yet I can clearly see a copy of Chocobo Dungeon in your Dreamcast.

UnderpantsWeevil , vor 2 Monaten

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/82af6a89-7fe9-4704-b0f4-546eb3ab2b6d.png

UnderpantsWeevil , vor 2 Monaten

I won't lie. One of the bigger hurdles for getting into Linux - for me at least - has been overcoming choice paralysis.