Sir_Osis_of_Liver

That’s just not true. The Westinghouse AP1000 was given type approval in 2011. It’s what is referred to as a GEN3+ reactor. A lot of R&D was put into simplifying the design, reducing the number of pipe runs, valves, pumps etc compared to GEN2 reactors. It also used large sub assemblies that were factory built off-site then moved for final assembly.

In theory they should have been cheaper to build, but they weren’t. Large assemblies that don’t fit together properly need a lot of very expensive site time for rework. There were other issues on top of that, which just compounded the assembly problems. It’s how Vogtle ended up going from $12B to $30B+, and V.C Summer went from $9B to an estimated $23B when the project was cancelled while under construction.

The EPR units from Areva were similar GEN3+and received type approval in the early 2000s. They had similar cost overruns, for similar reasons.

I have strong reservations about SMRs. So far the cost/MW is about on par with traditional reactors while the amount of waste increases by 2 to 30x traditional reactors depending on technology used.

There are reasons why reactors moved from 300-600MW units to 1000MW+ in the first place. The increased output would cover what was thought to be marginal increase in costs. That turned out to be at least somewhat true.

KTM did a thing on some models where electronic features, like cruise control, would all be unlocked for the first 1500kms as a trial mode. After that they’d stop working. If you wanted to keep them, you’d pay and the dealer would unlock them.

I don’t necessarily have an issue with that, as it’s a one time fee, and you only pay for those features that you want. I think people do get upset when they’ve had something and it’s taken away.

Any sort of subscription is an absolute dealbreaker though.

Edit. LOL at the downvotes. Reddit will never die.

Previously KTM had those features behind a paywall. If you wanted them, you’d go to the dealership and they’d unlock them. At least this way you had 1500kms to figure out if they were useful or not. The other option was to just include everything and bump the price up accordingly. KTM were going to get paid for their development work, one way or the other.

Moon regolith is pretty nasty stuff. It’s chemically reduced due to the lack of O2 to react with, and becomes corrosive when exposed to moisture. The absence of atmosphere, means that sharp edges of the dust particles aren’t rounded off by erosion, making the dust/soil particularly abrasive. It’s also positively charged, so sticks to everything.

None of that is insurmountable, but it does stack up mitigation costs.

The only other book I struggled with was Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The travel-log sections were entertaining, and the relationship with his son was interesting, but the discussions on the nature of quality were completely lost on me.

I did get through Zen on the second attempt because I thought it was worth it. I saw no value in Atlas Shrugged at all.

Very early on in my career in consulting engineering, I had an architect tee-off on me for changing the ceiling heights of the office space she’d designed.

I’m electrical, all I was concerned with was circuiting her lights, that was it. I had documentation showing that I’d worked off of exactly the same ceiling heights she had sent me. Heights that she’d apparently changed somewhere along the line without informing the client, who was an international conglomerate, and notoriously picky to work for.

That could have blown over, had she not berated me over email while CCing the client, my management and just about anyone else involved with the project. I made sure to “reply all” showing where the change had happened. She was replaced on the project the following week.

After that I stuck to industrial projects, where the buildings were non-descript concrete and steel boxes with no architectural involvement.

I remember not picking up another book for some time after finishing Shogun. I wanted to hang onto it as long as I could. It’s epic.

Dad had an interesting career. Started as an office clerk for a railway with only high school education. Then he got into using an IBM 650 (IIRC) for doing freight rate calculations. How he managed that transition, I have no idea. He didn’t care for being cooped up all day flipping switches, dealing with punch cards and tapes.

He switched to marketing and got on there very well and retired after 37 years as a regional director.

He always has a book on the go, even now at 83. He has an eclectic pile of them that he kept, from Zane Grey to an early history of the Civil War written around 1870.

Back when I was in junior high in the early 1980s, I found a copy of Atlas Shrugged on my father’s bookshelf, and started reading it. I can’t remember how far I got into it, but I do remember thinking it was just awful in just about every way: story, writing, pacing, everything.

I asked Dad about it, “Oh, that. It’s terrible, isn’t it?” A friend had given it to him. Neither one of us finished reading it and after that it ended up at a book reseller.
On the plus side, he’d gone through his books and gave me James Clavell’s Shogun to read, which was an awesome novel.

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I graduated high school in 1985. This movie spoke to me at the time.

37.8C is 100F

PORKCHOP SANDWICHES!

There were a number of sites that FF choked on, so I just ended up using Edge. uBlock works with it, and that’s about all I need for extensions.

Not sure how people decided that Google is more altruistic with data handling than Microsoft, but here we are, I guess.

Weird flex, but okay

Setting aside the Earth vs moon mistake, much like religion, this is an illusion that uses a human creation to explain a natural phenomenon.

Cool photo though.

I had a 2019 Jetta GLI. I set the temperature the day I got it and never bothered fiddling with it in the 4 years I had it. The fan speed and airflow looked after itself just fine. Temperatures here swing between -35 to +35, so it’s not like we don’t have variability.

It had rain sensing wipers and automatic headlights which worked perfectly. It did have physical controls for those, but I only used the wash and high-beam switches.

It had built in navigation, but I tended to use Apple Carplay and Google maps and Spotify for music.

Now that version of the Jetta had physical controls for heated/cooled seats, HVAC and audio functions. I just never used them aside from the seat heat/cool.

It also had a pile of redundant controls on the steering wheel. That’s where I controlled volume or selection.

There is the UnPinterested! extension for Chrome. I think it still works.

That was just a few years ago, right?

At one point we had a remote office in a bank. One of my coworkers, W, had a pretty severe intestinal condition.

Anyway, I’m using the facilities, and one of the bankers comes in and heads to a stall. His phone rings while he’s in there, which he answers. It’s obviously a work call.

By this time, I’m heading over to wash my hands, just as W slams open the door with an panicked look. He violently shoulders open a stall, drops trousers, and unleashes just an absolutely unholy flume of waste, accompanied by a couple of mercy flushes.

“Uh, I’ll call you back”.

I’m assuming lessons were learned that day.

Not sure if corporate ball-washer or incredibly naïve. Facebook (not using their attempt at rebranding) have more than enough resources to research new and innovative ways to screw over federated instances for their gain. Their goal isn’t to win, it’s to completely dominate. But I’m sure a plucky bunch of volunteers stand a chance against a demonstrably malevolent corporation with infinite money.

I’ve had nothing to do with Facebook or its offshoots since 2015. They’ve used their algorithms to pump all sorts of disinformation and manufactured outrage at the expense of society. That alone should be enough for people to defederate. The abusive information gathering is just the shit icing on a turd cake.

I will likely be shifting to an instance that defederates from Facebook. If that makes me “toxic”, that’s a cross I’m willing to bear.