black0ut

joined 2 years ago
[–] black0ut@pawb.social 7 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Nuclear is not feasible and will never be.

For starters, it's expensive. Really expensive. Insanely expensive. It also takes years to go online, and decades to decomission (which should be paid by the owner, but sometimes ends up being paid by the government because the owner went bankrupt or exploited a loophole). It's also not quickly variable, so it needs a very constant demand.

Instead of investing in nuclear, one could invest in solar and wind. The latter can produce energy all day long, and if you have enough locations with wind farms, it starts averaging out and becoming constant. Both wind and solar are also quickly variable, so they can easily adapt to demand. They're incredibly inexpensive and pay for themselves in a few years.

Batteries in the distribution network aren't a good idea, and they're also probably not gonna work. Even though they're still cheaper than a nuclear plant, they're pretty expensive and they have a lot of wear. Technologies have been advancing really fast, and we already have prototypes that look promising. However, they don't make that much sense when you look at alternatives like pumped hydro. Pumped hydro is cheap, has a lot of capacity, can also quickly adapt to demand, and requires less maintenance than nuclear or batteries.

Another solution for energy storage is personal battery storage, which people install in their homes. Almost everyone who has solar already has a battery in their house, and even people without solar buy batteries to charge during the night and use up during the day. These batteries can be made with recycled electric car batteries, so they're also carbon neutral and cheap.

And this is all without touching on the real issue of nuclear waste, which nuclear promoters always sweep under the rug. Yes, the amount of nuclear waste produced is minuscule. Yes, it's not dangerous at all as long as it's properly dealt with. Yes, it's still better than the massive amounts of pollution that fossil fuels create. But it's still a form of pollution, it's dangerous when mishandled, and most importantly, it has to be kept in storage facilities for thousands of years. Those storage facilities are paid for by governments, which in turn are financed by our taxes. And we can only keep building them, because no waste goes out and new waste keeps going in. So even if the number in our electricity bill is small, we still pay more costs related to nuclear with our taxes.

TL:DR: Nuclear is expensive and slow to build and doesn't adapt well to the variability of demand. Renewables, especially solar and wind, are cheap and effective, and there are many ways (not just batteries) to efficiently store excess energy to use during periods of low production. Nuclear also generates waste, which even though it may not be dangerous, is still expensive to store for thousands of years.

Disclaimer: I'm not endorsing fossil or non-renewable energy in any way, I'm all for net zero energy production. But nuclear is not net zero and not a good solution. We can completely ditch fossil fuels without relying on nuclear, and it can work. I live in a country where we're decomissioning nuclear plants and we generate more than 50% of our electricity from renewables. On average, we generate close to the same amount of energy from wind than from nuclear (~20%).

[–] black0ut@pawb.social 23 points 1 month ago

All tools that bruteforce passwords attempt each password only once, and if it doesn't work, discard it. Nobody really runs 2 identical attacks back to back (they're incredibly slow when done over the internet), so the password would seem uncrackable at first glance.

This approach wouldn't work with hash cracking, vault breaking or file encryption, because once they get their hands on the hash/vault/file, the attacker can use their own code for hashing/checking a password candidate.

[–] black0ut@pawb.social 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Elon musk has between $470B-$500B to his name, according to bloomberg and forbes. That would make him richer than the world's wealthiest 8 men in 2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_of_Elon_Musk

[–] black0ut@pawb.social 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We don't have our current time zone because of that. We have it because a fascist dictator wanted to be on the same time zone as Hitler.

And the logical timezone is of course GMT, the one closer to Spanish solar time. It's been proven that it's not healthy to be in a timezone that doesn't correspond to your solar time, unless you adapt all the schedules to follow the sun.

[–] black0ut@pawb.social 15 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Out of all the music streaming services, spotify pays artists the least. A Qobuz subscription costs less, and they pay ~10x more to artists per listen.

Spotify is also an evil company, using their profits to promote right wing podcasts (like the Joe Rogan one), to pay for pro-israeli stuff, and to subsidize AI and surveillance companies.

[–] black0ut@pawb.social 13 points 1 month ago

Transcription for those who need it:

Matthew 5:43-48 New International Version

Love for Enemies You have heard that it was said "Love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

[–] black0ut@pawb.social 7 points 1 month ago

Minority Report is the name of the movie, for anyone curious.

[–] black0ut@pawb.social 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

It doesn't. It designs part of the chips that go into their phones.

Google also designs chips that go into its phones, and Microsoft has also designed chips and security co processors that have gone into PCs.

(Of course, I'd never consider a Microsoft "security co processor" secure, nor an apple or google one).

[edit] I also do not see your point of apple being better (or more virtuous) than google or microsoft for designing their own hardware, for 2 different reasons:

  • Currently Microsoft and Google have immense control over the software of PCs and phones. Apple wants to have full control of both the software and the hardware, and making their own hardware is a big step towards that goal. It means they're restricting you (the user) from using the hardware you bought for your own purpose.

  • Making custom hardware does not make a company more or less virtuous. Manufacturing/designing capabilities are just spending money in the respective industry. As I mentioned before, both Google and Microsoft have designed their own chips, and they also have designed chips for their servers. I would also argue that we should stop humanizing companies. They don't have human traits, they're not virtuous, they're just there to take your money and go.

[–] black0ut@pawb.social 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Apple gets money from both their monopoly on user data and their high prices. That's why it's above Microsoft and Google in market cap, even though it doesn't have nearly as much infrastructure and reach.

[–] black0ut@pawb.social 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Disclaimer: never use Brave browser, it's really bad. The CEO is an asshole, and they promote crypto and scams, while still showing their own ads. They also got caught sneakily adding affiliate codes to URLs. (https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/)

Use firefox or any firefox derivative with ublock origin (yes, even on android)

[–] black0ut@pawb.social 11 points 2 months ago

There are many free and libre OCR programs, that have way more accuracy than an "AI"

[–] black0ut@pawb.social 12 points 2 months ago

Yes, and no. No app will display the image if it wasn't already capable of displaying webp, period.

However, there are many places (mainly websites where you can only upload certain formats, but it can also be apps) where the underlying infrastructure supports webp, but they do a simple extension check first with a list of file extensions that doesn't include .webp. In those cases, changing the extension to .jpg will get the image through the filter, and the underlying system will detect the format using the magic number at the beginning of the file.

The same thing can happen when your OS has no associated app to open .webp, but the app it uses for .jpg can also display .webp.

 
 
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