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Cake day: July 5th, 2024

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  • It depends on the type of fusion.

    The easiest fusion reaction is deuterium/tritium - two isotopes of hydrogen. The vast majority of the energy of that reaction is released as neutrons, which are very difficult to contain and will irradiate the reactor’s containment vessel. The walls of the reactor will degrade, and will eventually need to be replaced and the originals treated as radioactive waste.

    Lithium/deuterium fusion releases most of its energy in the form of alpha particles - making it much more practical to harness the energy for electrical generation - and releases something like 80% fewer high energy neutrons – much less radioactive waste. As a trade-off, the conditions required to sustain the reaction are even more extreme and difficult to maintain.

    There are many many possible fusion reactions and multiple containment methods - some produce significant radioactive waste and some do not. In terms of energy output, the energy released per reaction event is much higher than in fission, but it is much harder to concentrate reaction events, so overall energy output is much lower until some significant advancement is made on the engineering challenges that have plagued fusion for 70+ years.



  • Well, sort of. HDCP exists, and does make it harder to capture an AV stream.

    For interactive content, the current push online components hosted on external servers adds a lot of complexity. While a lot of that stuff can be patched around by a very dedicated community, not every piece of content gets enough community appeal to attract the wizards to do such a thing.

    And while anyone can digivolve into a wizard given enough commitment and effort, the onramp is not easy these days. Wayyy back when cracking a game meant opening the file and finding the line for 'if cd_key == ‘whru686’, it was much easier to get casually involved. Nowadays, DRM has gotten so much more sophisticated that a tech background is essentially required to start.




  • I see the point you are trying to make, but inflation doesn’t quite when that way.

    Comparing the prices of the same commodities at two different points in time is literally how inflation is calculated, the increase from $1.50 to $4 is real.

    Now, what the inflation-adjusted dollars are telling you is that if eggs had only increased in price commensurate with general inflation, they would have gone from $1.50 to $2. The extra $2 increase is above what a consumer would expect given the general increase in the prices of everything else. If someone (magically) had a salary that increases with inflation, they would find eggs today to be a larger fraction of their spending if they kept the same level of consumption.

    Eggs are more expensive both in absolute and relative to other products. The reasons for this are complex, but due in no small part to people continuing to buy large quantities of eggs even when they were heinously expensive in the early days of the pandemic. The market absorbed that information and came to the conclusion that eggs were previously undervalued.



  • Just jumping in to say that red soils are not very fertile. They are nutrient-poor in the necessary macro-nutrients (nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus) and have a very poor ability to retain water. They are very rocky - little organic matter content - which limits both water retention and cationic exchange capacity (affecting N+ and K+ bioavailability), and tend to be acidic.

    Cultivation is possible, but it requires large amounts of fertilizers and soil conditioning agents (liming to raise pH and add calcium, addition of organic matter). In effect, recreating an artificial soil that is closer in nutrient availability to the black soils present in the world’s most fertile regions (which today are also heavily fertilized).



  • No, not even close.

    I’ve used Unix systems for years at work, and have dual-booted windows with various flavors of Linux at home for just as long. When I just need something to work, particularly something new or after a stressful day at work, I just use windows.

    Why? Because it will just work. Maybe it won’t work precisely how I want it to, maybe it will send all my data to Bill’s push notifications, but it will run. In the rare case it doesn’t, a quick google will fix it.

    Compare that to Linux, where most things will work most of the time. And when they don’t, you get to hunt through GitHub issues off-the-clock like a peasant, wading through comments from people with entirely different configurations and ‘dunno it works for me’.

    Linux is for tinkerers, and for people who want a Unix shell and can’t afford a Mac, it has a long way to go to be more than that.




  • There is always a tension between security, privacy, and convenience. With how the Internet works, there isn’t really a way - with current technology - of reliably catching content like that without violating everyone’s privacy.

    Of course, there is also a lack of trust here (and there should be given the leaks about mass surveillance) that the ‘stop child porn powers’ would only be used for that and not simply used for whatever the powers that be wish to do with them.


  • skibidi@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    2 months ago

    The world bank isn’t involved so much in printing money - that’s central banks like the US Federal Reserve or European Central Bank.

    They do love to force developing nations to adopt US-style capitalism by withholding loans for needed development projects. They also focus far too much on increasing GDP at all costs and do not give really any weight to increasing living standards or reducing inequality. Basically, think loans to institute Reaganomics and you won’t be too far off.

    The loans pay for large capital projects (power plants, large-scale irrigation, etc) that are built by the state and then mandated to he handed over to private entities that then charge rents and extract wealth. Not every loan and program is bad, but there’s plenty to give pause when they are involved in a project.


  • The war for Arrakis is the classic tale of a small number of colonizers against a larger, motivated, native population. The Harrkonens drastically underestimate the total number of Fremen, and try to fight stand-up battles while the Fremen simply ambush less protected targets. I thought this came across fine in the movie.

    The more problematic undertone come directly from Frank Herbert, who had this theory that military prowess only comes from hardship (that’s why the Sardaukar are so tough - because the prison planet they are trained on is so harsh), and the Fremen are nigh-invincible fighters because Arrakis is so hard to survive on. This is a misconception that repeats across earlier anthropological study (e.g. ancient Sparta) and is closely tied to the ‘Noble Savage’ trope.

    Also, there never was a fight against the ‘resources of the entire empire’, Paul and the Fremen fought and defeated the Harkonnens in months-long (movie) or years-long (book) guerilla campaign aimed at lowering spice production. Eventually the Emperor brought his personal forces planetside to restore order. Detachments from the other houses remained in orbit and were not permitted to make planetfall. This is when the Fremen play their trump card of surprise worm attack.



  • FAF absolutely benefits from action spam, to the point where it breaks the game balance.

    T1 assault bots lose to T1 tanks, and they are supposed to because they are half the price and much quicker to build. You can dance them around if you click enough and they will dodge the tank shells… a few micro’d bots can then defeat 10s of tanks. That swing in mass efficiency is already enough to decide the game on maps smaller than 20km.

    RTS will always benefit from intensive micro because time is another resource. Doing more actions, assuming they are of positivity utility, gives an advantage over an opponent who does not.