• 7 Posts
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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: July 28th, 2023

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  • Not that fossils/natural gas are required per se but their capabilities. Some places like Norway and Quebec are geographically blessed with distributed hydro that can fill a lot of that need. The variable load for a nuclear in that case could be many times larger than the generator itself but I’m not aware of any studies on that. Kinetic storage with massive flywheels is maybe the closest thing to that, or even batteries. You can ramp nukes by venting steam but that heat can cause environmental issues. Similar to hydro how their capabilites are reduced based on environmental factors like handling spring runoff.

    There are some very recent reports out of the Ontario regulator who are dealing with this exact issue right now. Long term demand increasing for the first time vs carbon legislation, and the mandate to have a reliable grid.


  • Nuclear vs fossil gets in to why you don’t/can’t run all nuclear, else things would be very easy. Nuclear’s capabilities are best suited to supplying the base load/minimum demand but they can’t be ramped or dispatched, reactors basically run most efficiently at their designed output levels, so you can’t use them to balance supply and demand. The use of fossils for base load is more a thing in countries with lower regulations, usually because of things like a growing manufacturing economy (ie “global south”), but also in some extraordinary regulatory circumstances (Germany) or just because of when fossil was brought online/refurbished. Fossil’s capabilities are like the opposite and they are most efficient and economical used for load-following, which is even more important with renewables you can’t dispatch.

    So fossil is still the main control lever for reliability, and that’s the crux of why a suitable replacement technology isn’t available yet. If it was simply a matter of output level then we’d have no problem. Mitigations to reduce use of fossils when demand is high can even be things like a demand response/dr program for transmission-connected facilities, where they are incentivized to reduce their use during times of high demand. Basically instead of having a higher energy price and all this generation online, you take a bit of what that price would be and use it to incentivize consumers to reduce their demand. Smart stuff but fossils are still a thing with that and if storage could replace them we could easily just have nuclear+storage, even smaller nuclear like those SMRs/small modular reactors.

    Another massive consideration with all of this is the logical location of each type of generation at the transmission level. In the event you might have to bring the grid back from 0, or even just handle expected equipment failure, the specific location in the logical grid where types of generation is attached has to consider the capabilities of each type of generation. For example in a blackout situation you can’t just start a nuclear generator when the demand is effectively 0, you have to bring generation and loads online from scratch in very increments initially. During the 2003 northeast blackout there were opinion articles complaining about how the casinos were online before neighborhoods, ignorant to the fact those casinos were instrumental in providing an initial load on the transmission grid.





  • Depends what you use it for, there’s some great servers for a lot of things. I don’t really care about platforms and basically use them all. Certain people really hate Discord but the alternatives don’t have many interesting things on them, and the people who use them aren’t a very diverse group. Checking all the right FOSS and feature boxes is nice but it’s not what actually makes a platform good to use.



  • Problem I have with calling this a feudal arrangement is a lot of serfs actually had family rights to their land/means of production under land tenure agreements. It’s more the notion of private ownership of land and production that has led to these private technology increasingly mediating more of our lives. I’ve seen the concept of technofeudalism used in good ways but the overall thing is capitalism and they are more elements of feudal type arrangement within that.





  • As someone who uses windows to produce music

    Exactly and some other media/creative stuff as well. Windows is the only way to run Ableton with full VST support on my own hardware. Then if I’m going to need a Windows workstation anyway, I might as well use it for gaming too, and lump in all my other “power station” uses. It’s sometimes frustrating when you mention this and people who aren’t familiar with these programs to try to debate you or assume you haven’t entertained the alternatives. In my case I run Linux on my laptop and servers, and even some of my instruments like the monome norns and m8 are rpi based. Real time audio synthesis on linux is actually amazing, PureData and Supercollider are the ones I’m somewhat familiar with.






  • RollJam and RollBack are the exploits for bypassing rolling codes. These exploits are possible because you can replay captured codes at a later time.

    What’s happening in most cases is the proximity-based fobs are simply amplified with a device to reach the person’s car in the driveway, since most people keep their keys by the door, and in some cases even within reach of the car without a device. It’s this low hanging fruit where the theft happens, or just a tow truck…

    The Flipper is more of an enthusiast and pranking device. The devices used in actual thefts are like disposable $50 alibaba pieces of shit. Canada is effectively creating a clandestine market for simple radio amplifiers made from the most basic electronic components. As someone in Canada who used to build the classic cmoy Altoid-tin headphone amps to sell on etsy, this is tempting…


  • Yeah I just scrolled passed that shit cause it shocked me too much to engage. Not exactly proud of my b-slur days, but also wasn’t the best time in my life, and there was something oddly welcoming about the site back then. A site where everyone called each other a f*g in ironic comradery vs having it thrown at me by homophobes. Would have never associated the site with anything good though, using it was like willfully exposing yourself to something insane at the click of a button. If you were the right mix of computer nerd and socially isolated, 4chan offered something that you couldn’t get anywhere else.

    Almost 20 years later I actually value the experience of being on 4chan more because of how influential it became to online culture, and later how politics happens on the the internet, and the demographic who uses it becoming so identifiable. It’s very rare but on a few occasions I’ve come across normal people in real life who were b-slurs at the same time, and it’s crazy how recognizable it is.