rsynnott

27 ms·

751.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
And even when we did mine coal, it was a small amount, and this plant never received any of it. It was designed from the start to run on imported coal, brought in on ships, and did not even have a rail connection.
752.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
Okay, but do you have any examples of such alleged lunacy in Ireland? Ireland has no economically exploitable oil or coal, and what gas there is is largely exhausted.
753.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
Ireland has essentially no working oil power generation capacity these days (I think the only ones are a couple of small diesel units on islands, which are not even connected to the national grid). Moneypoint was replaced with some combo of
754.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
Their comment is kinda nonsense, tho. Every single lump of coal burned in Moneypoint over its operating life was imported. We don't have significant coal reserves, and Moneypoint was designed from the start to run on imported coal; it
755.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
An LNG terminal wouldn't help with cost (it would probably increase it a bit, if anything, as the cost of building it would have to be paid back). It's desirable from an energy _security_ perspective; as it is we are very dependen
756.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
Ireland hasn't mined coal at all for about 40 years and _never_ really mined any significant part of its usage; even in the 19th century Ireland imported coal. Moneypoint was designed from the start to run on imported coal; it had no r
757.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
> Are they selling to UK that AFAIU stopped building wind 10 years ago. ... Eh? No it didn't; not sure where you got that. Ireland and the UK sell power to each other on a demand basis, though in practice Ireland is usually a net im
758.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
Coal is about as dirty as it gets (besides peat and lignite). _Even if you were not reducing CO2 output_, getting rid of coal would be greatly beneficial as you'd reduce COPD and other lung diseases.
759.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
> very little coal For practical purposes no coal. There are no working coal mines in Ireland, and Moneypoint would have run entirely on imported coal since it was built. It was built with a bulk handling terminal for this purpose (very
760.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
We never had particularly cheap energy. The recent increases in energy cost were largely driven by gas price increases due to the war in Ukraine. > we've graduated from providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy. ...
761.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
[Insert Picard rambling for ten minutes about how horrible money was; this happened multiple times in TNG] Nothing subtle about Star Trek's political stuff.
762.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
I mean, it's a fair question. I think a lot of people would think of the RDBMS, but obviously they don't have 180k people working on that. They do all sorts of other stuff as well, of course, but I'm not sure people necessari
763.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
Bluesky is, as the article mentioned, basically trying to be old-Twitter. More people want that than want the fediverse. That doesn't mean that nobody wants the fediverse, and they won't necessarily appeal to quite the same audien
764.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
I suppose define 'normies'? There are plenty of non-techies, but they're often primarily using it for a specific community.
765.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
> Written science fiction is dying. Long term trends see fewer books making their way to shelves in the sci-fi section. As in, physically published? I'm really not sure you can read _too_ much into that, these days. As a science fic
766.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
> They were just more familiar, so they don't seem as self righteous. I mean, I think it's maybe just that a certain subset of the readership are now unhappy with any discussion of sexuality (I suspect that people like this sim
767.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
That's _mostly_ just Consider Phlebas and Surface Detail.
768.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
I mean, even if he meant that, he’s still lying. What made you think he was correct here?
769.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
> Remember that if your train is delayed more than a certain amount (30 minutes?) you have the legal right to ignore the routing on your ticket and take any train you want, that leads towards the destination on your ticket There's d
770.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
Investment isn't really down to DB, though; it's down to the government.
771.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
Thing is, that valuation is kind of based on vibes. If people get less enthusiastic about them (or just the sector in general), that valuation will go down. Their ability to raise money off it is limited.
772.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
Is that… actually faster than just doing it yourself, tho? Like, “I could write the right thing, or I could have this robot write the wrong thing and then nag it til it corrects itself” seems to suggest a fairly obvious choice. I’ve yet to
773.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
In Europe, interchange fees are capped at 0.3%, so generally handling cards is going to work out _cheaper_ than handling cash for most retail businesses. In the US, interchange can be ten times that, so it's a slightly different situat
774.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
And if you believe that, you'll believe anything.
775.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
See also: Twitter's csam/revenge porn generator. Pervert market is apparently big right now.
776.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
While that may have been the original motivator, they have largely settled into a niche as a sort of fitness sensor. People do not typically use apps on them.
777.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
Can we just get Robert Scoble to come back and destroy these, please?
778.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
This isn’t a case of “made a mistake”/“did something incorrectly”, though. This is “knowingly broke the rules”. They had a policy against using our benevolent robot overlords to generate slop. And fabricating quotes is pretty high up t
779.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
I mean I think a lot of it is that they're not _really_ forcing it upon people. I think I've declined it maybe twice over the last two years. Meanwhile, Google are trying to crowbar bloody gemini in _everywhere_, and I gather Micr
780.
by rsynnott 8mo ago
It's for this audience: https://www.theregister.com/2009/09/14/verity_stob_abigails_... (Microsoft _actually_ encouraged 'fans' to have Windows 7 Launch Parties...)

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