blind3rdeye

joined 1 year ago
[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 1 points 3 minutes ago

The cost of constructing and decommissioning power plants is important for sure; but it has nothing to do with energy density - which is what we were talking about before. It's true that building solar panels takes energy and resources, and the panels don't last indefinitely. So there is a lifecycle cost to using them. But the same is true for all forms of power generation.

A common way to compare these costs is to look at the 'payback time' of each form of power generation. The payback time is the amount of time it would take for the power plant to produce enough energy to pay back the lifecycle costs required to build, operate, and decommission that type of plant. It's basically how long it takes for the construction to have been 'worth it'.

In terms of payback time, wind power is by far the best; typically taking less than 1 year to pay itself off. Solar is pretty good too, but is highly dependent on where it is used. And nuclear... is not good on this measure. It takes decades for a nuclear power plant to pay itself off, because the plants are very expensive to build and decommission.

Obviously there are other things to consider in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of power generation. But you've been talking about the cost of materials and construction as though it is a weakness of renewables, and it really really isn't. That's in fact one of their strengths, and a major weakness of nuclear. Its strange that you say nuclear is 'insanity powerful for its cost', because its cost is the greatest weakness of nuclear power. Its much cleaner than coal, but much more expensive, even though it uses so little fuel. And it is not cleaner than solar or wind, but it is still more expensive.

Your point about land usage is a stronger point in favour of nuclear power... except that depending on what country you are talking about, that could easily swing the other way. Solar and wind do take up more space than nuclear, that's for sure. But nuclear requires certain geological conditions for the safe operation of the plant, and the storage of waste. So depending on where you live, finding unused land suitable for renewables can be much easier than finding a suitable location for a nuclear power plant and waste containment facility.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I was totally fine playing HL1, and HL2, and HL2 episode 1.... but I never finished episode 2 because of motion sickness. The problem isn't really with episode 2 though. The problem is just that I got old, and now I get motion sickness from FPS games that didn't affect me before.

But I do know that not every FPS makes me sick. I think mouse-look smoothing helps. I'm not certain what else, but I'd try messing with the field-of-view angle and stuff like that.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 5 points 3 hours ago

Just mention lemmy from time to time on other platforms; not to say "please come here", but rather just to let people know that lemmy exists and has interesting stuff on it. People will check it out if they are interested.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 2 points 7 hours ago

The receipts for food aren't so that you can return it. They are for expenses record keeping. For example, some jobs have a food allowance; or special tax concessions for food bought while working. But to get those benefits you need to have evidence that you bought the food.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 4 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

What are you trying to say here? Are we still talking about fuel types here?

Again, let me point out that solar power does not consume any fuel. The materials used to construct the solar panels are not having any power extracted from them. And secondly, nuclear power plants require construction materials too. ... So I really don't know what kind of comparison you are asking for here.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 1 points 12 hours ago

I'm with you on that. It's hard to blame lesser evil voting when the greater evil is the one who wins the election.

If the lesser evil was winning and yet still shifting right to compromise, that would be the problem the comic describes. But in reality, the lesser evil is retreating right because that's the side that is getting more votes.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 12 points 13 hours ago (5 children)

only antimatter could provide more energy density, it’s insanely powerful.

Nuclear energy indeed has very high energy per mass of fuel. But so what? Solar and wind power doesn't even use fuel. So the energy density thing is a bit of a distraction.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 1 points 23 hours ago

As in "we are the knights who say jif"

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 2 points 23 hours ago

I thought it was a old animated image file type.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That does sound pretty bad. I guess it really highlights the power of a monopoly. Businesses may rely on each other, but if one relies more, then they pay all costs due to necessity while the other pays nothing because they can easily outlast the pain.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Unless I've misunderstood the law, it doesn't hurt small engines, because small search engines don't have to pay.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 1 points 2 days ago

I've never see anyone respond with hostility to any 'how to' question on mastodon. What you've described sounds totally unlike anything I've seen there. So if you have a link to your discussion, I'd be interested in seeing how that happened.

 

I've recently realised something about Pythagorean triads; a topic which very few people I know would be interested in hearing about... so I'm posting in here - a ghost town maths community. (But I'll also post on mastodon.). Anyway, the realisation is related to complex numbers.

If I have two complex numbers, I can multiply them like this: (x₁+y₁i)(x₂+y₂i), or like this r₁r₂cis(𝜃₁+𝜃₂). So then, if I represent a Pythagorean triad as a complex number, x+yi, with r as the hypotenuse, then multiplying two of these together is guaranteed to produce another triad. The rectangular method of multiplication guarantees integer real and imaginary components, and the polar method guarantees an integer hypotenuse. For example, (3+4i)(3+4i) = -7+24i. And 7²+24²=25².

So that's a bit interesting. But I have more. Since the polar angle in these triads is always an irrational multiple of 𝜋, repeatedly multiplying by the same triad will never return the angle to where it started. You'll just get new triads every time. But of course, if we are multiplying different triads together, its easy to come up with different ways of producing the same triad product. Following this line of thinking, we can view the Pythagorean triads as either 'prime' or 'composite'. Any triad can be written uniquely as a product of prime triads - just like with integers. (For this to fully work, we must allow 'flat' triads such as (1, 0, 1), (2, 0, 2), etc.)

How can we tell if a triad is prime? Well, I don't know - other than trying to brute-force the factorisation. If the hypotenuse is a prime number, then the triad is definitely prime. But if it isn't... I haven't thought much about that yet, but my current answer is to just check to see if a triad can be made with the factors of the hypotenuse.

Anyway, that's all I've got on that for now. No doubt there's some fully fleshed out details somewhere on a wikipedia page citing some well known facts from 2000 years ago or whatever. But discovering is more interesting that knowing. So I'm not going to check right now.

 

I'm looking for discussion and suggestions about the best way to play games from GOG on linux.

My current method is that I've got GOG Galaxy installed with bottles, and then I use GOG Galaxy to install and launch the Windows games. That's working alright so far. One downside is that won't install Iinux versions like that, so for games that have a native linux version I have to decide if I want to install it separately, or just run the windows version with the others. So that isn't perfect. Another minor thing I don't like is that since I'm installing games via GOG Galaxy via Bottles via Flatpak... I end up having very little idea of where stuff is being saved. It's difficult to find save game files for example; and if there is some junk installed or left over from something, there's very little chance that I'm going to notice and delete it. It just feels very opaque. (I guess that's mostly just about my personal lack of knowledge though.)

Anyway, I'm mostly just wondering how others are choosing to handle their games from GOG.

 

I just think it's cool to when indie developers are an active part of the gaming community.

 

I'm vaguely interested in having a few different encrypted folders on my computer, with different passwords on each. I don't have any particular strong requirements. It's more of a velleity; mostly just to try it so that I know more about it.

That said, when I search for encryption options, I see a lot of different advice from different times. I'm seeings stuff about EncFS, eCryptFS, CryFS; and others... and I find it a bit confusing because to me all those names look basically the same; and it's not easy for me to tell whether or not the info I'm reading is out of date.

So figure I'd just ask here for recommendations. The way I imagine it, I want some encrypted data on my computer with as little indication of what it is as possible; and but with a command and a password I can then access it like a normal drive or folder; copying stuff in or out, or editing things. And when I'm done, I unmount it (or whatever) and now its inaccessible and opaque again.

I'm under the impression that there are a bunch of different tools that will do what I've got in mind. But I'm interested in recommendations (since most of the recommendations I've seen on the internet seem to be from years ago, and for maybe slightly different use-cases).

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