Corporations and governments use ad campaigns effectively all the time. I'm convinced that if you took a fraction of that fusion money and bombarded people with "nuclear is fine" ads for a year or two, public opinion would change. If a TV show can swing opinion one way, why can't something else swing it back?
'Nuclear is fine' ads would work until the next misstep, which the negative proponents will be looking for.
Generally, it was looking good until the Fukushima disaster. It resets the clock and that clock takes 20-30 years to play out.
On the 30 year timescale, all the gen 1, 2, 3 designs have flaws which make them potentials for issues. It doesn't even have to be a big issue, just enough for the press to catch it and push "See, they said it was safe... it's not!".
That flaw makes me want to just skip fission all together =/
In addition to "nuclear is fine", I would add that fusion is not as clean as the public imagines. It is being promoted as power generation without nuclear waste, but in reality you are going to get at least mildly radioactive fusion chamber cladding, which will have to be replaced yearly or so. So there will be a huge pile of radioactive waste generated over the lifetime of fusion power plant. This is in addition to a little problem of fusion power being 25 years away for the last 60 years or so.
The reason we don't have fusion is that we keep looking for above break-even (and for proper fusion power plant we need ratios way above 10:1, afaik) in aneutronic fusion.
If we accepted neutron radiation in the process, which is what would lead to radioactive fusion chamber cladding you mention, we could have broken even already - the experiment JET reactor had the design capacity to run at above 1:1, but wasn't equipped for the damage from neutron radiation.
Breaking even in fusion puts you where fission was in 1942. And that's just a step. The engineering obstacles to practical fusion are enormous, far greater than those facing any advanced fission reactor scheme. I very seriously doubt fusion will ever be practical.
1. The quantity of activated material in a magnetic continent fusion reactor would be orders of magnitude less than what is produced (the exhaust is not radioactive).
2. We get to close the radioactive components. It is much more manageable to put up a sign that says “No entry until 2100” than it is to put up a sign that says “No entry until 30000”. The public at large cares about this.
The "quantity" is less in the sense of amount of radioactivity. But the MASS of activated material can be very large. It's not nicely bundled up in easily removed sealed fuel elements.
The biggest problem with this radioactivity is that it renders the reactor inaccessible to hands on maintenance. Everything would have to be handled by robots. I'm reminded of how they handled that at Hanford in WW2: they demonstrated the reprocessing equipment could be maintained remotely by first assembling it remotely. I'll believe a fusion reactor can be maintained if they do the same thing and build it with robots.
Bioweapons are crappy precisely because of what's happening now. A good weapon discriminates, and lets you kill exactly who you want. By that measure, a virus is about as hamfisted as you can get. Besides, why unleash a pandemic on the whole world when you can just do what China normally does and use conventional military power instead? It's cheaper and easier to get some men in boots with guns to stop a protest than it is to unleash a worldwide pandemic that might last for years or longer.
I can't find the blog post, but I read one once that said, basically: you don't need labels or folders. You need your inbox, the archive, and trash. Once you've tended to an email, either archive it (and just use your search function later), or delete it.
I've tried unsuccessfully to maintain folder/label systems over the years, and I always end up having to search my emails anyway. So why bother with trying to make a consistent folder/label structure? I'm much more likely to remember some key words from an invoice than remember which labels I would've applied.
Folders aren't for filing emails after you've read them. Used well, they're for filing incoming messages automatically. I have a heavily email-driven workflow, and I am active on dozens of mailing lists. My email servers filter incoming messages and deliver them directly into folders based on which list they're coming into. Another filter has a list of commerce-associated domains that get filed into folders based on which accounts they're associated with. As a result, the only mail that hits my inbox proper is mail from friends and family (plus the occasional not-filtered-yet work/list mail). Everything else lands in folders, and I prioritize opening those folders and dealing with those messages.
As you mentioned, once a message is 'consumed,' it just gets archived. But the folder system (combined with sieve filters) is what makes dealing with a ton of incoming email extremely pleasant.
Folder structure (whether email or filesystem) give context. In the same folder may be related emails from other people or with different subjects. Search works for finding a specific email, and folders help finding related emails once you have the first one.
In addition, folders have better discoverability, whereas I find search to be finicky (looking for exact words when I only remember a synonym)
I have a similar problem with google drive. Oftentimes I will find a file that I was looking for, but I know there are related files in the same folder (maybe a spreadsheet used to generate the other document). But I can't get to the folder from the file (as far as I know). If I don't remember some keywords from the other file, I may be SOL.
This is 100% a rightwing talking point, pushed by the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter, and I wish it would go away. Look... if we all want to get along, then we need some way of working together despite disagreements. If 51% of people want to do something, we all must agree that that's okay. Otherwise nothing would ever get done.
You missed one piece - a limited government. The 51% can get what they want, as long as it's within the things that we let government do. If it's outside that, then they need a lot more than 51% - like maybe 3/4 of the states.
I’m astonished the National Socialist experiment in Germany is being ignored by this commenter. Indeed your premise is antithetical to Western tradition, which is presumably good because of its endowments to humanity. See: the death of Socrates and the death of Jesus.
I'm consistently amazed by HN's ability to take the most meaningless, inconsequential part of an article (the scroll behavior, the whitespace, the usage of the word "bricked"), and nitpick it to hell and back instead of actually discussing the article.
Yes. People on reddit are too boring serious and straight to the point. Here on HN we can have a link about some programming language and we start discussing about physics, the Universe or cats. Much more creative. :)
People on reddit are serious ? Which subs are you following ? All I see everywhere there is one word comments such as @nice, @oof,..etc and witty remarks. The discussion quality on HN is far better. Granted we do nitpick here though..
Sure the discussion quality is far better, if you're comparing to reddit in general. Discussion is often on par if you're on a niche subreddit focused on something technical.
From a personal perspective, the discussion quality on HN (on average) has declined over the past couple years. In the past the majority of comments were more substantial; it was more common to see paragraphs of well thought-out comments that delved into nitty gritty details when addressing a point.
But in the past couple years there's been a gradual increase in single-sentence comments that contribute nothing to discussion but only end up taking up screen space. Like the random person who wants to throw in their 2 cents, but have zero cents to offer.
Typical HN response, there is no multi-million dollar exchange going on here. How about filling in some of the blanks or correct the wrong parts yourself? This is such an unnecessary defensive response.
People go into Karen mode here, yes they bought expensive piece of hardware with expensive operating system.
Though site is rather technically minded they still underestimate how complex are those things.
It just another "Dropbox? Who needs that I can do the same in an hour", but somehow they don't realize when you have a budget, timelines and as always not enough developers who understand this specific thing - it is different than sitting on your own and making perfect thing. (which then if scrutinized by some other dev would be labeled as crap :D)
Especially when it's a developing story and probably published in a rush (in less than ideal situations). Mistakes happen and the informative side is more important at these times.
"Whenever the band found brown M&M's candies backstage, they immediately did a complete line check, inspecting every aspect of the sound, lighting and stage setup to make sure it was perfect. David Lee Roth would also trash the band’s dressing room to prove a point -- reinforcing his reputation in the process."
So, in summary: the team of roadies DIDN'T always do a a complete line check. And DLR would just make life hard for the hotel staff. That's just dumb all around.
I feel so conflicted after reading that article. On one end, it does a good job explaining a neat trick some smart people have used. On the other hand, it abuses it as "a proof" for some trivial and only vaguely related advice.
It's also used as a tactic to derange a discussion and get offtopic top comments to bore away or otherwise trap casual, click-happy readers. Not saying it is in this particular case.
> to get more attention than its content justifies
That your Mac can get to the point by an Apple OS update that you need to enter recovery mode? (Even as someone who is exclusively Apple, I have seen the mockery Microsoft has endured for similar).
Or worse, to the point that unless you have access to a spare Mac or the _currently closed_ Apple stores, you are shit out of luck?
"Eh, no big deal, not worth reading or commenting on".
I'd go with the fact that Apple has always been a little finicky, but initially quite fixable; then it became more and more locked down and users had to accept that fact: some left, some stayed. Nowadays pretty much nobody around here is surprised by the shenanigans you may have to go through on Apple platforms outside of the core mainstream experience.
The fact that an OS update can brick a device is a non-event, it's happened before and will happen again. Apple is not perfect, no one is. They do a pretty good job most of the time, comparatively¹.
The fact that in the case of Apple you have to suffer the aforementioned shenanigans to maybe solve the problem is, well, coincidental. It's not an event in itself either.
Note this is why production machines in professional environments usually wait a few weeks-months to update. Also why security updates are generally offered on their own (shouldn't wait to install those).
____
1: Note that, I personally can't stand being at the mercy of 1 corporation so I took matters in my own hands and run Linux: it rarely fails. When it does, it's usually my fault, so I can assign blame, learn my lesson and move on. Otherwise, I'd have to accept that every so often, a proprietary vendor update may brick the device.
Oh c'mon, the real issue here is Apple's abysmal quality control (and really it's an industry-wide trend). They're phoning it in with real, tangible effect, but based on the upvotes here at the time of writing, HN seems to consider the debate around what "bricked" implies to be the most important conversation.
> I'm consistently amazed by HN's ability to take the most meaningless, inconsequential part of an article (the scroll behavior, the whitespace, the usage of the word "bricked"), and nitpick it to hell and back instead of actually discussing the article.
> Bravo.
'Bravi', or 'brave'(f) would be the plural of that.
In English and French, Bravo generically means “congratulations”, “that was great” etc. It’s never pluralised, in the same way foreign words are not pluralised in Italian (from “computer” to “pièce de resistance”...).
Nope. First time I ever encountered “bravi” was right above this. The first time I encountered “tutti” was your comment. I am from the US. It is a safe bet that as such I only speak one language and do so poorly.
Look, if the update might "brick" my MBP, meaning break it irreparably, then I have a reason to care about this, and since it can't, I don't. It's a semantic difference but an important one.
I'd love to complain about all the meaningless parts of the article, but this website seems to detect my basic safety browser addons (uBlock Origin, uMatrix and Privacy Badger) and refuses to show me the content, giving me a lecture instead.
Most content is also available on non-spammy, ethical websites, and we shouldn't support bad actors.
Well, this is not nitpicking. The word "bricked" has a meaning, and this is not what the article describes. From the title, I thought that this update was actually bricking the computer. Thanks to the commenters for pointing it wasn't the case.
It's not like "everyone bashes apple" is a more interesting conversation.
Short articles don't have much to discuss. There's no need to get mad that someone isn't laser-focused on the two sentences you think are most important.
We'll see about (1) but (2) is unfortunately a structural problem that goes far beyond just Apple.
Developers are forced to operate in a "market" dominated by a few oligopolists that are obsessed with control, both on their own behalf and on the behalf of governments.
Something needs to be done about the default comment ordering or subthread collapsing ability on HN. I understand I can easily collapse a comment’s replies with a single tap in the correct tiny location, but that isn’t enough. I became increasingly fatigued as I scrolled down seeing reply after reply to the top comment all arguing over the definition of “bricked”, assuming that surely at any moment I’d reach the bottom of the subthread and be able to move on to read something more useful. Finally I became frustrated enough to scroll to the top and collapse the parent comment, and that worked this time, but the issue is that it isn’t always the top comment on the page you want to collapse, so it becomes a blind hunt for the correct comment to collapse. You probably won’t remember the exact indentation depth of the comment you need to collapse so you’re stuck deciding whether to waste time looking for it or tough out trying to scroll to the bottom of the subthread (while continuously getting excited then disappointed every time the indentation shifts left and you’re tricked into thinking you’ve finally reached the end). It’s a daily annoyance but I’m not sure what could remedy it.
Also I’ve read that submissions with too much early comment activity get removed automatically for seemingly being too controversial. If so then maybe that rule should apply to comments as well. Controversial comments could automatically sink lower despite upvote count, as well as older comments.
You've described the best part of HN for me because I can always count on learning something super obscure but alos super interesting that nobody else would have thought of.
