Zagorath

Zagorath , vor 4 Tagen

I dunno if it's "family sharing" or some other thing, but I can play games from my sister's library through some means that I set up a couple of years ago.

Zagorath , vor 6 Tagen

Safe, sure. Efficient? Not even close.

It's far, far more expensive than renewable energy. It also takes far, far longer to build a plant. Too long to meet 2030 targets even if you started building today. And in most western democracies you wouldn't even be able to get anything done by 2040 if you also add in political processes, consultation, and design of the plant.

There's a reason the current biggest proponents of nuclear energy are people and parties who previously were open climate change deniers. Deciding to go to nuclear will give fossil fuel companies maximum time to keep doing their thing. Companies which made their existence on the back of fossil fuels, like mining companies and plant operators also love it, because it doesn't require much of a change from their current business model.

Zagorath , vor 6 Tagen

First, no, that's not what I said. If you're only going to be arguing in bad faith like that this will be the last time I engage with you.

Second, baseload power is in fact a myth. And it becomes even worse when you consider the fact that nuclear doesn't scale up and down in response to demand very well. In places with large amounts of rooftop solar and other distributed renewables, nuclear is especially bad, because you can't just tell everyone who has their own generation to stop doing that, but you also don't want to be generating more than is used.

Third, even if you did consider it necessary to have baseload "until we have adequate storage", the extremely long timelines it takes to get from today to using renewables in places that don't already have it, spending money designing and building nuclear would just delay the building of that storage, and it would still end up coming online too late.

I used to be a fan of nuclear. In 2010 I'd have said yeah, we should do it. But every time I've looked into it over the last 10 years especially, I've had to reckon with the simple fact that all the data tells us we shouldn't be building nuclear; it's just an inferior option to renewables.

Zagorath , vor 6 Tagen

You can't cut the red tape. The red tape is why we're able to say nuclear is safe.

the weird part is most people do think nuclear fusion plants are a good thing and can solve stuff. But they have almost all of the downsides nuclear fission plants have in terms of red tape, complexity and cost

Huh? Nuclear fusion doesn't have any downsides or upsides. Because it doesn't exist. We've never been able to generate net power with fusion. (No, not even that story from a couple of years ago, which only counted as 'input' a small fraction of the total energy used overall. It was a good development, but just one small step on the long journey to it being practical.)

Being anti-nuclear was a poor stance to have 20, 30 years ago. At that time, renewables weren't cost effective enough to be a big portion of our energy generation mix, and we should have been building alternatives to fossil fuels since back then if not earlier. But today, all the analysis tells us that renewables are far cheaper and more effective than nuclear. Today, being pro-nuclear is the wrong stance to take. It's the anti-science stance, which is why it has seen a recent rise among right-wing political parties and media organisations.

Zagorath , vor 6 Tagen

Nuclear doesn’t mean anti-renewable, both can exist.

Not easily, for the reasons explained in my reply to @Frokke.

The people who I talk to who are pro nuclear seem very well informed

I doubt it, because the science itself is against nuclear. Evidence says it would be too expensive and take too long to deliver compared to renewables.

Zagorath , vor 6 Tagen

The fantastic thing about renewables is how much they lend themselves to a less centralised model. Solar collector? Sure, why not‽ Rooftop solar on people's houses? You bet! Geothermal? If local conditions are favourable to it, absolutely!

Instead of a small number of massive power plants that only governments or really large corporations can operate individuals can generate the power for themselves, or companies can offset their costs by generating a little power, or cities can operate a smaller plant to power what operations in their city aren't handled by other means. It's not a one-size-fits-all approach.

This contrasts with nuclear. SMRs could theoretically do the same thing, but haven't yet proven viable. And traditional plants just put out way too much power. They're one-size-fits-all by definition, and only have the ability to operate alongside other modes with the other modes filling in a small amount around the edges.

Zagorath , vor 5 Tagen

Nobody wants energy stored for months. Whatever storage is used needs to get through temporary decreases in efficiency. In places that use solar, that means from one afternoon to the next morning. In places that use wind, it means until the wind picks up. We're talking storage on the order of tens of hours at the most.

Zagorath , vor 6 Tagen

By jove you've got it! I must make haste and alert the Director of this ingenuous new strategum at once!

Zagorath , vor 7 Tagen

by any definition

The IHRA's definition does, so you can't say "any".

That said, the IHRA definition was pretty specifically created to be zionist and a shield for Israel, and should be rejected on those grounds.

Zagorath , vor 7 Tagen

denying Israel’s right to exist, i.e. antizionism, including the Slogan: ‘From the river to the sea – Palestina shall be free’, counts as antisemitism

Yes, if you accept the definition of antisemitism preferred by the Israeli government, that's true.

It doesn't make it true in the real world.

Zagorath , vor 7 Tagen

stress balls in funny shapes and things like that.

Got pulled into the office for using my own money on that one lol

Next time don't buy squishy dicks for work colleagues.

Zagorath , vor 7 Tagen

In Australia I don't think teachers are underpaid, but schools are absolutely underfunded. Which can often mean teachers end up spending personal money on school resources, which means their actual effective pay isn't as good as it looks from the outside.

They also work way longer hours than is reflected in their contract.

Zagorath , vor 18 Tagen

[In the voice of Janet] Not a nut.

Zagorath , vor 19 Tagen

When they get their shit together and implement support for operating system features that other browsers have had since 2019.

Zagorath , vor 18 Tagen

I don't use Google Chrome, but there are plenty of other chromium-based browsers out there.

This isn't the first time I've run up against technical shortcomings of Firefox, either. I used to frequent a site which made use of the CSS class column-span. Chrome added full support for that class in early 2016. I was probably accessing this site from about late 2016 until about 2018 or so. Firefox didn't support column-span until December 2019. The whole time I used the site, Firefox simply could not render it in a usable way.

I've said for a long time that we'd be better off if Firefox switched to Chromium. They clearly don't have the resources to keep up with the rapid pace of change on the web. 5 years and they still don't support a browser feature that Google got out in a out 1 year and I think Edge got it done in 2 or 3 (and unsurprisingly, Apple has it ready day 1, though that's an unfair comparison for obvious reasons). Three and a half years behind other browsers in getting out a CSS feature that's being used live on the web already.

If they based their browser on Chromium, there would be so much less work for them to do. They'd have to spend some effort maintaining features Google has decided to drop, like Manifest V2, but they wouldn't be alone in that effort, since they can pool resources with the likes of Vivaldi and Brave, and maybe even Microsoft in some cases. So I'm the end a much higher percentage of their resources could be spent developing features that differentiate them and help maintain them as a great privacy-focused browser, instead of merely keeping up on the treadmill of platform change.

Zagorath , vor 18 Tagen

it is still developed and maintained by Google

Sure, but Google has no control over any forks of Chromium. They can't control Edge, or Brave, or Vivaldi, or a hypothetical Mozilla fork. And if those other forks want, they can collaborate together to maintain any features they want to have that Google themselves don't want.

Like, yeah, more funding for Firefox would be the ideal case. But that's not something Mozilla really has the ability to effect. They can choose what engine they're using. And using Chromium would allow them to essentially "steal" the work Google has put in, while not preventing them from changing stuff that they don't like. In fact, in some respects it would help them even with that stuff they don't like from Google, since they can pool resources with other privacy-forward browsers like Vivaldi and Brave. I honestly see it as win-win.

Zagorath , vor 17 Tagen

None of the Chromium forks are hard ones

For now. If Firefox became a Chromium fork, ideally it would stay that way. But if Google did make things too hard in the way you describe, then I would suggest Firefox, Brave, Vivaldi, etc. should share a sort of medium-hard fork of Chromium. Keep their own track with features they need, but keep it close enough that the basic rendering engine can still be merged in from work Google does.

We need diversity in web browsers

That's an ideological position. I don't agree that there's any inherent value in the underlying browser engine being diverse. If anything, I think it's useful for it to be consistent and predictable.

As I write this, I'm talking myself into a slightly different position. Maybe they don't need to fork Chromium, but it would be valuable to dump Gecko in favour of Blink. I don't actually know what Chromium gets you besides Blink (and V8, which I lump together with Blink because for the same reasons, I think it would make sense to unify around). Stick with Blink & V8 to let Google to the work on the rendering side (while still being able to contribute back yourself where necessary), while maintaining your own browser and extension ecosystem. So web developers get a single platform to develop against, users get the full experience of any site they visit regardless of their browser, and Mozilla can maximally utilise their development resources in building and maintaining features that differentiate them.

Zagorath , vor 20 Tagen

I had never heard of the sequel until a day or two ago when the YT algorithm fed me Schaffrillas' video about it. I still haven't actually watched it, and based on that review I think I'll keep it that way.

Zagorath , vor 29 Tagen

You thinking of Animal Farm? It's a more direct allegory for the Soviet Union.

Zagorath , vor einem Monat

It looks like a Maccas burger. Famously long-lived.

Zagorath , vor einem Monat

I still to this day don't know how it worked, but I remember back when I would pirate games and often there would be like 20 different compressed archives, but somehow you only need to decompress one of them and the game would install. Was like magic.

Zagorath , vor einem Monat

Opening somthing.rar also reads the data in somthing.r01 through somthing.r15 etc

Oh so it's just kinda a part of the rar specification then? How did that work on CDs or floppies, if presumably you'd have had to swap out to insert the next part?

Zagorath , vor einem Monat

So the first file acts as a sort of index? From the earlier comment I thought it was autodetecting the presence of the numbered files and expanding what it found.

Zagorath , vor einem Monat

What I don't understand is how people get addicted to smoking in the first place. It hasn't been "cool" to smoke in my lifetime. Going near a cigarette as a non-smoker is gross as fuck. Who decides "I don't care about my health or the gross smell, imma do this thing with no upsides" before being addicted?

Zagorath , vor einem Monat

How do you get that feeling without making a decision to do something really gross? Why did they choose to smoke that first gross death stick?

Zagorath , vor einem Monat

I'm inclined to agree with this comment, to be honest:

Use Barak Obama page as an example. First sentence is about him as a US President. The second sentence is about something he was particularly special for -- bring first African-American US President. Both sentences are above the portrait.

The same should be done for Donald Trump -- first sentence is about him being a US President. The second sentence (still above the portrait) is about him being the first US President convicted of a felony

Zagorath , vor einem Monat

This guy got real !fuckcars energy.

Zagorath , vor einem Monat

Do you mean the empty half of the cable? Because the plug itself has the empty half on the bottom.

Usually easier to look for the USB logo or company's branded logo on top. The bottom is usually blank or containing legal info. The bottom also has the zig-zaggy join in the metal.

Zagorath , vor einem Monat

Also a plug is on the cable

Maybe this is an American English thing, because to me the plug is the socket. The two words are synonyms. Like I'd talk about the electricity plug in the wall.

Zagorath , vor einem Monat

Literally Game of Thrones logic.

Zagorath , vor einem Monat

This woulda been way funnier if you'd Photoshopped out the text in the windows too.

Zagorath , vor einem Monat

Going from Moscow is gonna take a LOT longer than from Vladivostok

In the flat Earth proposed by the above picture? Moscow should be faster, shouldn't it? Even if they're avoiding flying over other countries, enter the Baltic Sea near St Petersburg and navigate the Danish Straits; or if that's too close, fly North of Norway & Sweden, either way, much shorter than from Vladivostok.

If we're talking the real world, it depends on which part of Alaska you're talking about. To Anchorage, it's definitely "a LOT" longer. Along the northern coast of Alaska though, it's actually...well, still longer, but by a surprisingly small amount, thanks to Moscow being so much further north than Vladivostok and able to take the northern passage.

Zagorath , vor 2 Monaten

And Messenger.

I honestly have no idea what it does, because I have no interest in that shit and have never clicked it.

Zagorath , vor 2 Monaten

Reduce, reuse, recycle. In that order.

If you don't need to, don't produce something. Chocolates don't need to be all individually wrapped inside of yet another wrapper. Transport should be mostly by public and active transport (though we also need better city planning to help enable this), and private motor vehicles can, at this point, mostly be converted to the less-polluting EVs. That kind of thing.

If it's been produced, rather than throwing it away, find ways to reuse it. Coke should be taking in glass bottles, washing them, and putting more coke back in it, rather than producing new bottles all the time.

If something has been produced and cannot be reused, we should try to find ways to recycle it. You're right that recycling is bad, but that's mainly true of plastics. Glass and paper are far more easy to recycle, if collected effectively. Which is also why the move from glass and paper products to plastic is such an environmental disaster, brought on because companies don't want to spend the larger cost of producing those products, or collecting them in to effectively recycle the glass.

Zagorath , vor 2 Monaten

Impossible (outside of some small projects that tinker around the edges in beneficial ways, but can never do enough to put a substantial dent in the problem).

The problem comes down to something that's literally taught in economics 101: negative externalities. The cost to society of polluting is put on society, and not on the company actually causing that cost. There needs to be change in the legal situation so that doing the socially good thing is also the profitable thing. Whether that's taxes or outright banning polluting, or something else.

Zagorath , vor 2 Monaten

You can use the "save" function to come later

Yeah you can

Zagorath , vor 2 Monaten

I am kinda curious what about these were illegal. Like, are they particularly shoddy home-made stuff? Just some boring lack of import permits? Does Czechia have strict laws around sex toys?

Zagorath , vor 3 Monaten

has no proof to debunk it

Yeah, because you can't prove a negative. He doesn't need to debunk it, only to provide an alternative explanation which is more likely. Occam's razor.