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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • In theory, yes, you could make a mess, and any firmware is supposed to be certified to allow the device to be used.

    In practice, this has been a convenient excuse to keep a whole chip with a separate OS in every smartphone, and it is very difficult to isolate from the rest of the system (see Graphene OS efforts).

    I say all firmware should be opensource. Whether you’re allowed to change them or not is a separate question… for now.



  • I use to say “all extremes call for their opposite”. Since almost no information ever transpires about this whole scandal, the opposite is to release all the names to the public. It was to be expected. If we were trusting the justice system, this would seem inappropriate. But we have what we have, and making the whole list public is the only guarantee we have that not one of the “bad” guy can escape public’s attention. That of course, is valid only if the list is comprehensive and some names have not already been taken out.

    It is indeed unfortunate that a lot of people who didn’t deserve and didn’t want any bad attention will get some.

    I’m not saying I agree with the move. I’m saying it was to be expected.

    [Edit made: grammar & missing words]


  • Nuclear plants consist mainly of a shitton of concrete (and only the best sort is good enough). The production of that concrete causes a terrible amount of carbon emissions upfront.

    Actually, if you compare them to solar or wind at equivalent service, it’s not that straightforward:

    Renewables installed capacity is nowhere close to their actual production, nuclear can produce its nominal capacity in a very steady way.

    Wind turbines also need a lot of concrete, and much more metal for equivalent output. Solar panels need a lot of metals.

    Renewables need a backup source to manage their intermittency. It’s most often batteries and fossil plants these days. I don’t think I need to comment on fossil plants, but batteries production also has a very significant carbon emission budget, and is most often not included in comparisons. Besides, you need to charge the batteries, that’s even more capacity required to get on par with the nuclear plant.

    With all of these in consideration, IPCC includes nuclear power along with solar and wind as a way to reduce energy emissions.


  • Scientists have not been hyperbolic. If anything, so far, they’ve been very cautious abut their statements.

    I still remember reading headlines about “likelihood of global warming” then “probably caused by human activities” because 90% level of confidence is not enough, you need more data until you can reach 95% or 98% confidence before boldly writng “most probably”.

    But in their “probably” they predicted we would see more floods, droughts, violent storms, all of these happening one after the other causing devastation.

    And Ô surprise: we see floods, droughts and storms following each other and causing devastation. Yet our leaders will claim “no one could have predicted all of that would happen at once!”.

    Now they start telling us our civilization could collapse (“could” must be what? 75% confidence level???)

    We’re going to spend 20-25 years claiming they exagerate, another 20-25 years saying “well, they maybe right, but we can’t change things too fast because that would be unreasonable and the people would not accept it”.

    By the time, we will start reading articles stating no matter what we do now, we can only push out the end a bit, but we’re doomed. And the first reactions will be “those damned scientists always exagerate and use hyperboles”.







  • I think it’s worse than that. We humans are inherently selfish and self-preserving.

    People who live far away from any coal mines do not feel threatened by coal, because it will not impact them directly (besides fu**ing up the planet, of course, but that’s another issue humans have with big pictures and long term effect correlation to present small scale actions).

    But most people can’t tell where a nuclear plant can be built, so it could be close enough to expose them to a risk of disaster?

    Therefore: “Nuclear is more dangerous than coal (for my personal case)”


  • 10 years from now, you might be in a situation where the grid is unstable and capacity is insufficient in front of demand. You will also be facing potential renewal of existing solar panels, wind farms, batteries storage, etc.

    If you lack capacity, any attempt at industry relocation locally will be a pipe-dream.

    And at that time, you’ll say either “it’s too late to rely on nuclear now” or “fortunately we’re about to get these new power plants running”. You’re not building any nuclear power plan for immediate needs, you’re building for the next decades.

    Meanwhile, one country will be ready to take on “clean production” and be very attractive to industrial projects because it already planned all of that years ago and companies will be able to claim “green manufacturing”. That country is… China!



  • matlag@sh.itjust.workstoTechnology@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    11 months ago

    Could we define a trade-off system? Classic broadcasting can take way too long to send out a large catalog. Streaming is, as you say, a heavy resources consuming system.

    So how about a combo of a box or a software that can follow a broadcast N times faster than human, and broadcast N movies/series episodes a day? The application let you pick what you’d like to get on your box/app, and then it’s like classic video recording, but on steroids.

    It would be like live-streaming, but at 2, 3, 10 times the normal speed. No human needs to follow that.

    Of course, you still have the issue of glitches, communication interruption, but we’ve dealt with those for years, and there are certainly ways to indeed stream the missing parts, or use rediffusion.

    You read it first here. I’m off to file for a patent and make billions (or not…)