• 71 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • The coalition has multiple aims here.

    1. This is a political differentiator - they become the “Nuclear” party.
    2. Nuclear technologies create a wonderful wedge to split any green support along the “reduce carbon” and “anti radioactive” line.
    3. In a best case, if they started tomorrow, there would be AT LEAST a decade (more like 15 years) before the first Nuclear electricity got onto the grid, and in the meantime their fossil fuel backers get to BURN-BABY-BURN.

    And that’s before we get into all the other little thing, that are really just colouring around the edges, ie spending taxpayer money to build a new monopoly which the government can later privatise to their sponsors.

    One of the things that I haven’t seen any of the recent articles highlighting is how no investment body is willing to back the construction of nuclear power in Australia, so the government will have to 100% bankroll it with our taxes.
    Meanwhile, private equity are lining up to invest in wind, solar, batteries etc - just angling for subsidies because “why not?”.
    This ALONE should be indicative of most likely outcomes.



  • I think you’re right, hydrogen is ludicrous, and bang for buck, some other tech will win out for time shifting the power, probably pumped hydro.

    edit to add: Hydrogen is ludicrous in the primary context of a battery. There’s other potential uses such as making steel, making ammonia/fertilizer etc that could change the equation again. Hell, you might even find it desirable to make it HERE and transport it THERE as a battery, but again, the maths are currently wrong.


  • It’s definitely not worth using full price electricity to split hydrogen out of water, if your intention is to turn that hydrogen back into electricity through some method (fuel cell, internal combustion engine, steam turbine, whatever).

    But if the electricity was otherwise going to be discarded (as is currently the case practically daily in SA), that cost/benefit gets crazy.

    Wikipedia has 3 links indicating around 70% efficiency on the electrolysis.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production#Electrolysis_of_water_–_green,_pink_or_yellow

    Let’s flip that around and pretend it’s only 30% efficient, because we need to turn it back into electricity afterwards, and rather than quibble about exact efficiencies/losses, I’d rather exaggerate the loss for a theoretical worst case.

    That’s still X amount of electricity saved for later use, that would have otherwise have just been switched off.
    And that’s especially useful when your primary source is not available (ie, solar in the middle of the night).








  • Sounds like you’re stuck in a worst practices mindset.

    Worst/Pragmatic.
    If I get a timeline for a feature request, then everything can be scheduled, tested, whitelisted, delivered at a reasonable time.
    That’s the rarer event - normally it’s more like “the scale head has died and a technician is on the way to replace it” and whilst I modify the program in question to handle this new input, hundreds of staff are standing around and delivery quotas won’t be met.
    Is my position arrogant? This is the job.

    Sign your damn releases and have the whitelisting done by cert.

    I’ll see if this is possible at the site in question, thank you.



  • MountaineertoProgrammer Humor@programming.devSometimes, it's backwards
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    3 months ago

    In a rapidly churning startup phase, where new releases can and do come out constantly to meet production requirements, this one size fits all mentality is impractical.

    If you refuse to whitelist the deployment directory, you will be taking 2am calls to whitelist the emergency releases.

    No it can’t wait until Monday at 9am, no there will not be a staged roll out and multiple rounds of testing.

    I am more than willing to have a chat; you, me and the CEO.


  • Purnell Real Estate principal Nick Purnell, who bought an apartment in Canberra as an investment property in 2020, said people will stop investing in property if negative gearing is abolished.

    Don’t threaten me with a good time.
    Investors, with their ability to outbid potential owner-occupiers are a significant component in the current rise in housing prices.
    Those rising house prices are DIRECTLY related to the raising rent prices.

    Negative gearing was implemented to achieve a change in the market, a large thumb on the scale by the government.
    Now it’s time to step back and reassess the market and figure out what we need to do to achieve our desired outcomes.

    Million dollar plus shoe boxes, whole suburbs dominated by short term rentals, people using the 15% equity on their 4 investment property to back a 5th in a giant house of cards gamble are NOT HELPING.



  • I agree and use Signal myself.
    But people like the extra features of WhatsApp like desktop/web clients with seamless history sync and all the other little things that WhatsApp provides.
    The average Joe doesn’t even think about security or privacy, they just know that the results of using WhatsApp are superior than using SMS.
    iMessage is a non starter everywhere out of the US, it just doesn’t have the market penetration.
    As an Australian, no one I know (many of whom own iPhones) talk about the blue-green bubble stuff.
    They recognise where the fault lies and simply don’t use the app.


  • MountaineertoPrivacy@lemmy.mlWhat's inside the QR code menu at this cafe?
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    3 months ago

    In certain places like India, WhatsApp is the default means of communication for everyone.
    You can use it without phone data if you are on wifi, it supports better quality than sms for sending images, you can video chat with it, it’s cross platform, etc etc.

    What’s more amazing to me is that it’s not more popular in western countries.




  • Just one example of the lies and misinformation out there:

    Smart people I know believe that we have to go Nuclear because it’s the only green way to achieve baseload.

    When press on what baseload is, they seem to think it’s the minimum amount of power needed to keep the grid up.

    Which for anyone listening in, is backwards, baseload is actually the minimum amount of load required because it’s un-economical to spin old coal burners down. That’s why people used to heat their water at night on the cheap, because the power HAD to go somewhere.

    And these are smart people, just disinterested in the how and why of electricity generation.
    They flick a switch, the lights come on.
    Every 3 months they pay a bill and tut-tut about how expensive it is now “because of the green obsession”.



  • MountaineertoMemes@lemmy.mlDear iPhone users:
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    3 months ago

    Funnily enough, I’ve got a few friends who are long time iPhone users, who actually point this stuff out themselves:

    “OMG! Have you seen the eye watering price of the new one?”
    “Yay, I finally get stuff you’ve had for years.”

    Neither party would ever consider anything else, and they both buy the new model every year. 🤷

    At this point I admit that my reasons for choosing Android all those years ago no longer exist or matter, but I can’t imagine changing ecosystem either.