AlphaGeekZulu

"Now I definitely do not feel like any of my sites are safe on cloudflare."

Now I definitely have some idea, what your sites are all about ;-)

There is a clear (and working) distinction between free speech of type A and of type B in other countries. In Germany, just as an example, you are free to express your OPINION (type A), but not to express false facts (type B). If you express false facts, knowingly, and those false facts have damaging effects you are fully liable for compensation.

Simple example: if a person wrongly claims, that some local artisan's business is insolvent, and the artisan can prove that a potential customer withdrew an order for that reason, the person who spread the fake news has to pay for the artisan's loss. Entirely.

Talking someone into commiting a crime is never treated as free speech, either.

So, this is the legal construct in Germany:

- you are free to have any opinion you like ("Meinungsfreiheit") and

- you are free to express those opinions to the public ("Redefreiheit")

Free speech, here, is limited to opinion. There is no such thing as "i am free to lie, blame, insult, taunt, threaten, defame, verbally harass, berate, incite etc..." with the excuse of free speech.

In Germany, if you say: "The president of the United States suffers from narcissistic personality disorder", AND you cannot prove this as a fact, and the POTUS goes after you for that statement, you will have to compensate for the damages of that claim (this will become very expensive, if the POTUS can prove that he lost reelections because of that statement). If you say: "To my conviction (in my opinion/I believe), the president of the United States suffers from narcissistic personality disorder", this would be completely legal in Germany.

And yes, the distinction matters!

We are loosing the leitmotif in this subthread and I would like to bring us back on track. The logical structure of this discourse is:

1. "[...]We should have nuclear going at 120% of demand and use the exess power to support electricity based carbon capture devices."

2. "Can we mine enough uranium to produce this much electricity?"

3. "Yes. Reactor technologies have advanced, we just haven't built enough. We can actually reprocess the tons of old fuel we have for trillions of MWh."

4. "[...]Can you give any link to anything that is actually implemented?[...]"

In 3., user "bifrost" makes the factual claim, that there was an existing technology that could reprocess old fuel and produce trillions (sic!) of MWh, if built in sufficient quantity.

In the remainder of the thread, me and others ask user "bifrost" to provide some source for the claim, but user "bifrost" was unfortunately not elaborating. Other users stepped in and linked to

- the nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at La Hague, which is, well, not a reactor

- the fast breeder Superphoenix, which was decommissioned (and with it the technology) 22 years ago

- an article of the Heritage Foundation, which refers to French nuclear fuel reprocessing (with false claims)

- and the ITER-technology, which is completely experimental and will use real fuel for experimental purposes not before 2035, being away from commercial usability at least 20 years from now. It will also not burn old fuel.

So none of this (well appreciated) contributions matches the description of the claim in 3.

I will admit at this point, that I am not interested in a public discourse of my opinions about the pros and cons of nuclear energy, as I have made up my mind and don't feel the wish to proselytize anyone.

I simply would like to have user "bifrost" substantiate his claim. Because, if true, this could potentially change my mind about nuclear energy. And because, if false, it would confirm my suspicion about fake exertion of influence by pro-nuclear lobbyists.

"solar requires a massive amount of area"

This areas could be used, maybe(?):

http://projects.wsj.com/waste-lands/

(Has anyone ever calculated the size of radioactive contaminated areas in the US and how much power that areas could produce in solar?)

Thank you for the link, interesting read! The article is available in english as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix

My executive summary: construction began in 1976 and the plant was decomissioned in 1997. It never operated satisfactorily and had a couple of incidents. It produced electricity in the value of about 1,85 billion francs, at the expense of about 60 billion francs until today (producing even more costs until its ultimate deconstruction until 2027), leaving 650 fuel rods in temporary storage pools. It was the last reactor of this type (fissile breeding?) that was built in Europe.

I do not believe, this is the type of "reactor with advanced technology, that can actually reprocess tons of old fuel", that user "bifrost" mentioned above?

www.heritage.org:

"The mission of The Heritage Foundation is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense."

OK, now I get it. Sorry, my mistake. Didn't check that before and wondered about downvotes and how they could – completely wrongly – state "The French have recycled fuel like this for 30 years without incident".

I would be super happy, if they'd only shut down the nuclear reactors of the 70s, for starters!

Well, the french reactors are not processing old fuel. Spent fuel is taken out, brought to some other place (La Hague), replenished and then transferred back to the nuclear plant. This stretches the effectiveness of the nuclear fuel by a few percent but does not at all solve the problem of final storage of nuclear waste.

If this is, what the original poster meant with - "Reactor technologies have advanced, we just haven't built enough. We can actually reprocess the tons of old fuel we have for trillions of MWh." - I am a little disappointed.

By the way: La Hague had nuclear accidents, including exposure of Iodium-131 and Caesium-137, explosions, tritium contaminations of the ocean, leaks, a catastrophic fire in the storage facilities of graphite elements and uranium parts, continuous contamination with Strontium-90 and others from 1968 until 2013.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usine_de_retraitement_de_la_Ha...

I just mentioned this because of:

"Anti-nuclear fear mongering has proved baseless. The French have recycled fuel like this for 30 years without incident: no terrorist attack, no bad guys stealing uranium, no contribution toward nuclear weapons proliferaton, and o accidental explosions."

in the linked article of the parent post.

"Thanks for the free shipping by the way."

You are welcome!

Just out of curiosity, as I do not know much about nuclear power: could you give some example of an existing reactor with advanced technologies you just haven't built enough yet and which can reprocess old fuel?

I just googled a bit. The most modern nuclear plant, which is going into operation by the end of 2019, seems to be Olkiluoto 3 in finland. Building time (without planning and licensing procedure) was 14 years and that building time and the actual costs missed the forecasts by pretty exactly the factor pi. This plant is NOT processing old fuel. The current calculations says, if the plant runs for 60 years under full load without interruption, the price of the generated electric power will be equivalent to the price of offshore windpower as it is today. China hasn't started new nuclear power plants since 2016, as the produced electricity would be 20% more than solar and wind. https://www.heise.de/tr/artikel/Atomkraft-Die-letzten-ihrer-...

By the way: all of this calculations do not at all include costs for storing wasted fuel for a couple of thousands years (which is ok, because, as you say, there won't be any, as it can be reused in your reactors).

So any hints where I can find more information about the new reactors that burn old fuel??

Oh, this is so cool news! We actually have tons of old fuel here in Germany, as we are bailing out of nuclear power. Would you mind, if we send it to you? It would be free, including shipping!

And it seems the piece was announced (first incorrectly, then correctly – or the other way round depending on the view) while the pianist and conductor were waiting backstage. So the pianist was aware of the different piece even before he stepped on stage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOUSFNgEy7c

Still an unpleasant situation, but not THAT bad.

The nuclear reactor of Grohnde in Lower Saxony, Germany is also currently being shut down. Like many reactors this one depends on a river (River Weser) for cooling. The water temperature of the Weser will reach 26° Celsius by tomorrow, which is a threshold value for serious damage to the ecosystem along the riverside – so the decision was made to not let the reactor contribute to further heatup of the river. The shut down is expected to last until sunday or monday.

Exactly. Strong encryption is not rocket-science anymore. Criminals can even simply code their own encrpyted tools and in that case, law enforcement is completely out of the game (and actually, professional crime does no rely on Signal and sorts anyways).

It would be so much wiser to just keep quiet about that topic and rely on the neglicence of the common criminal - below the line there is a plethora of information in metadata and connection data, still incredibly better than anything law enforcement had 15 years ago.

The effect of any public advance into "responsible encryption" is only causing criminals to harden their tools.

Encryption doesn't kill people, people do?

"[...]The cost of encryption, he said, is measured in "victims" who might have been saved from crime if law enforcement had been able to lawfully intercept communications earlier.[...]"

Yes, one can measure the cost of encryption like this, just like you can measure the cost of lax gun controls or automobile traffic by their fatalities (= negative costs). But you also measure the cost of encryption and lax gun controls and automobile traffic by their benefits (positive costs). If the balance is sufficiently in the positive, the negative costs might get accepted. There is no logical point, to only reason from one side of the calculation.

I never heard Barr say:

"The cost of privacy is measured in 'victims' who might have been saved from crime if law enforcement had put an officer in every bedroom throughout the country."

"The cost of lax gun controls is measured in dead pupils who might have been saved from death if legislation had passed stricter gun control laws."

Oh, come on. And the correct term for Great Britain would still be UK. And for Germany it would still be BRD, and for America would be USA...

Note to my private journal about the hilarious history of the destruction of our planet: "In June 2019, an article about "Nuclear Power possibly not being the answer to solve climate change", lead to a public discussion, whether the author got a geographic term historically right or not (with the suspicion, that if he didn't, probably everything else in the article was wrong as well).

Yes, exactly. And for a discussion about the pros and cons of Nuclear Energy the important factor is not, if it is less deadly than people generally think, but if it is safe enough that anyone (or at least a democratic majority) would accept the risks.

What is the point of a discussion with the topic "it is deadly, but not as deadly as people generally think, but still unacceptably deadly"? I don't get it.

Exactly!

;-)

OK, simple question: would you be willing to get yourself contaminated with Americium-241 in the same way as the Atomic Man (for example, to proof how harmless a-particles in the body are, or, lets say for money)?

If not, what is the point of your contribution to the discussion?

This is the kind of logic, that always kills me: "There is no climate catastrophe ahead, because avoiding it would mean unthinkable restrictions".

Orgmode.

I have been using personal knowledge repositories for more than 20 years now, and if there is one lesson I have learned: never, never ever use any proprietary, platform specific - or worse, web-based - solution, no matter how good it is. Plain text is the only way to go.

My favorite tools in the past were Tinderbox from Eastgate and Curio from Zengobi, but both were Mac only and I had to leave them behind when I switched to Linux a couple of years ago. I collected some experience with Scrivener and used PMWiki a while, but the first is not really supported on Linux and the second wasn't somehow responsive enough for my needs. ZIM wiki on Linux is actually quite nice, but when I discovered orgmode it hit just right and I never looked back for other tools.

My org-file organisation: I have one super-big master org-file in which I collect just about everything regarding software development, technology in general, life lessons and stuff. For customer projects I generally create a dedicated file in which I not only collect knowledge regarding that project, but also do the project management with tasks, documentation and stuff. If one of the topics in the master org-file grows really big (this is for example the case, when I start to use a new programming language full scale for productive purposes) I will migrate that node to its own file. I also keep most of my bookmarks as links in org-files in a proper context, and I like to use links to files in the local filesystem (like PDF-manuals) within my org-files, although this requires some discipline in the organisation of the local folder hierarchy.

The only other tool that I started to use besides org-mode, just a couple of weeks ago is Anki, for stuff that I want to learn by heart.

"Large cars, very large houses, every product they buy is at least 20 to 30% cheaper"

Ahhh, large-ness and cheap-ness make a better living?

(Oh my. Thread answered, in a way, though.)

I do not think so.

The reason might rather be that it doesn't make sense to purchase an aircraft passengers are reluctant to fly with. No matter how well the problems of the 737 8 MAX are resolved, its reputation is tainted. Every further accident of that type will be blamed to Boeing.

It reminds me a lot of the DC-10 in the 1970s.

Boeing will probably have to rename the 737 8 MAX and marketing it as a brand new type.

"...that they're not prepared to take recycled designs any longer".

I believe that the use of recycled designs is one of the major guarantees for aircraft safety! There is nothing wrong with a gradual development process, where only small modifications are done from one revision to the next. This is a bit like continuous integration principles in software development. Building on former experience as much as possible is an important factor of quality assurance (and also efficient in many other aspects).

I understand your point, though: small modifications can sum up to a point, where they do not blend smoothly in the base design anymore - as is the case with the larger engines of the 737 8 max. At some point, designers have to refactor big.

What went (criminally) wrong with the 737 8 max, in my eyes, is the attempt to treat a large redesign as a small modification, to save (certification) time and money. It went horribly wrong, causing loss of lives and trust in the company.

And obviously Boeing is not able to understand the consequences of the loss of trust. Last week I thought, the worst thing that Boeing could do now, was to offer quick fixes (like hot patches for the software), as this would proof their incapacity to embrace the scale of the problem. But this is exactly what happened.

"[...]but nobody I know has actually managed to finish it."

I read the book entirely from first to last page, including bibliography, five times in five years. I was at the age of appr. 19-24 and I did not read many other books in that time. Everytime I read it again, it felt like a new book. I keep casually reading random parts of it until today.

I like Getty's review, although I do not share it at all. I learned many years ago, from a very wise friend, that when I struggle - for example with certain habits of my partner - that the root of my struggling is most likely not within the other, but myself. It points to some personal deficit. This friend taught me to explore myself, before I demand any change from the other. Why is it bothering me, what would I have to change in myself to get over it?

Applying this rule, in Getty's place, I would ask myself: "how comes, that so many people are appealed by this book in a way that I am not? What makes those readers, that share my criticism and those that don't, different?". This sort of introspection is very difficult and sometimes impossible. But in the case of Getty's cognition of GEB I might give some clues:

The parts of the book that receive most criticism in Getty's review are those parts, that I would consider the entertaining sections. For example: never did I perceive the dialogs in the book as didactic. I always perceived the dialogs as a rest period, an intake of breath. After long didactic and sometimes hard to swallow scientific passages, the dialogs in their playful and sometimes childish style would allow my brain to settle down, relax and get ready, very softly, for the next topic. Like you would shake your arms and legs between sportive excercises. The dialogs were always welcome intermissions for me, but I did not take them very seriously and I did not, at all, expect them to be an essential part of the didactic mission of the book.

The second major element of criticism in Getty's review are topics in the book that do not belong to the core themes (Gödels proof, logic, formal systems), but are brought in by the author in a way that does not properly embrace them for one and which he should't refer to in the first place, as he has no sufficient proficiency in those topics (according to Getty).

The expection of Getty obviously is, that GEB is supposed to be a very serious scholarly and didactic work, that must not deviate from its core topic. And I believe that is a mis-expectation: Getty expected a textbook, but got a novel. In MY perception GEB is the novel of Gödels proof and as such it can play and entertain and experiment to any degree that the author desires. Of course the author can make fun of Cage and completely miss Zen buddhism. For me, it was absolutely clear and obvious in every paragraph of the book, whether the author was didactic or playful or personal at any point. The mixture is the essence of the book that makes it so appealing to me. Textbooks are often too dry and hard to swallow, novels on scientific topics almost never go deep enough for me. GEB is an experimental format that hit the sweet point for me.

I want to make clear, that Getty is not "wrong" in his perception - it is his view and it is absolutely legit as such. I believe, though, it is a very big error to blame the author for not fulfilling one's own exepctations or try to convince others, to adapt their perception to one's own - there is no point in this. If Getty is really interested what makes him tick differently than others, he should introspect his indisposition with the "soft", playful, not so scientific, didactic aspects of the book. Why is he upset with those parts, where the author deviates from his views? Why is he unable to distinguish between the serious and the playful parts of the book? It might point him to some revealing aspects of his personality. There is no outcome in the sense of right or wrong!

I liked Getty's review - not for what it was proposedly written for: revealing to me weaknesses of the book I haven't discovered yet, or convincing me, that the book that I so much love, is actually not loveable - but for taking the courage and providing me with an insight in another type of brain and perception, and therefore another aspect of personhood, that I found very interesting and entertaining to learn about! This comes with absolutely no assessment from my side!

Found the answer in the custom CSS manual of Tab Center Redux...

I wonder how you shrink the sidebar to icon size and remove the standard tab bar from Firefox??

I migrated from Mac to Linux about 5 years ago.

I had used the Mac privately and professionally for a living since around 1987, as a typesetter, graphic artist and software developer. My harddisk contained all private and business data and had never seen a fresh install since the first version of MacOS X - I was successfully updating the OS ever since. Shortkeys were of course in my muscle DNA and I new every file in the Library-folders by name. Hard to imagine to leave that experience for good. But I got so concerned about Apple's way into entertainment electronics, that I was commited to leave in time.

Hardware-wise I switched from the MacBook Pro 17" first to a Lenovo Thinkpad W520, and four years later to my current Tuxedo XUX707. Both computers I liked a lot, but the Tuxedo I really love. It is a beast with 32GB RAM, 4TB HD, 256 GB SSD, desktop i7 7700, 4K monitor and a dedicated Nvidia 1060. It is heavy and loud, more a gamer PC than a laptop, but performance and reliability are incredible. I have two external monitors connected to it.

I prepared the transition for about a year. First I tried a couple of Linux distros (on a second partition of my gaming PC) and after a while I decided for Ubuntu. I made sure to execute at least one major distro update of my final selection of Linux candidates to make sure they ran flawlessly. My favorite was Linux Mint, but it failed on one of the upgrades and so I ended up with Ubuntu. Unity was never an issue for me.

Then I investigated how to transfer my mails (some ten thousands), but I had used Thunderbird already on the Mac and so there was no trouble at all. Next I transferred my data to the Ubuntu test machine and played a while to find, how well I could continue with my daily chores. Turned out to work quite well. At that time I was not much into graphic design any more, but much into software development. I found comparable software for everything except Adobe InDesign (Scribus just won't do). I replaced Lightroom with Darktable, Photoshop with Gimp (do not like Gimp a lot, but it works for my needs) and later Krita, Illustrator with Inkscape and Microsoft office with LibreOffice (and later Softmaker).

Not all of the replacements had the same quality as on the Mac, but they were ok, at least no showstoppers for my commitment to switch. In many domains, especially development, text processing and the like, I was overwhelmed how many good (and many free) solutions were available in the Linux world. It was sort of enlightenment. Of course, there was a lot of new stuff to get used to: application installation via package managers, shortkeys and the like.

After about 3 months of "playing" with the prepared test system I decided to switch and I knew that I would have to switch hard. I was very afraid to end up living in two systems. So I decided for a D-Day, did a last synch of data and put the Mac in the shelf. Yes, the first month was hard, but as I was commited to never return, I just went through and it worked. Today, I could not imagine to ever return to the Mac.

I never had crackling sound, blinking screens or anything like this. My Linux computer can connect and handle much more hardware than any Mac I ever had. It is very possible (and likely), that certain computers will not work well with Linux - this is something you have to make sure with a test installation before you switch, but it is for sure not a generic issue. I switched to Tuxedo because they offer Linux-tested hardware (and they build the computer as you want it). The worst hardware issue I ever ran into was lacking support for keyboard lights.

There are occassional issues with the proprietary nvidia-drivers, though, that can really drive someone mad. I know how to handle this by now, but this was the only real annoyance I ever encountered.

One word of warning, though: I have always been a developer since my childhood and I was pretty experienced on the commandline long before I switched to Linux. This might give me an attitude and advance that other Mac users might be missing and that might make a transition more difficult. While the standard Ubuntu system will be sufficient for most users out of the box, there might arise the need to fix or enhance or adjust things and while this felt very natural for me with my background, it might be a big hurdle for others.

My setup today is: I live completely on the Linux laptop. I still have a Mac on the desk for compiling iOS apps and casual use of Adobe InDesign. I use the "Das Keyboard" keyboard with unlabelled switches and the synergy keyboard sharing software, so I can use the Linux computer and the Mac as one computer. I have the keyboard-layouts and shortkeys of both operating systems in my muscle DNA now and in addition a good deal of the Emacs-shortcuts ;-)

I was probably to young for the book when I read it (about 15): the explicit description of a brain-wash torture with the result, that two lovers won't recognize each other emotionally anymore afterwards was beyond my imagination and left me with a mild form of capgras delusion that lasts until today.

"1984" by George Orwell and "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter.