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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: August 1st, 2023

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  • I’m not letting this misinformation without any citations go uncontested. I’ll try to cite my claims but really the burden of proof lies with you, so I shouldn’t have needed to do this in the first place.

    Solar is highly unreliable,

    Sure, weather conditions can vary the power output of PV cells (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038092X23006734). This is why batteries are typically built with them, which usually completely solves this problem.

    requires endless mining of non renewable materials,

    One of many double standards here. This is correct, metals like silver and copper are needed to make cells (https://blog.ucs.org/charlie-hoffs/mining-raw-materials-for-solar-panels-problems-and-solutions/), but they are minor components and are one-time costs. The same goes for batteries, although they need quite a bit of lithium. But are we going to ignore the fact that uranium is also a non-renewable material? And since it’s a fuel, this is the material that is truly endlessly mined. One-time uses of mined materials is far better than continuously mining (and refining) uranium to power these reactors.

    takes up insane amounts of space to make the same power as any other method,

    Couldn’t find a source quickly, but you can put panels above parking lots or grazing areas to provide shade, so it’s not wasted space. Also, nuclear waste needs to be put somewhere…

    requires endless manufacturing (and disposal) of batteries that are also made with mined, toxic materials that end up in landfill,

    Already addressed the materials issue above, but would like to note that batteries can be recycled. Also, would you rather literal nuclear waste in your backyard?

    and the cost of transmission infrastructure needed are in the trillions.

    I don’t understand what this means. Are you implying that adding solar as a power source requires infrastructure that nuclear doesn’t? Other than the batteries that they would presumably be built with.

    Nuclear as the backbone, topped up with solar, is the only realistic way to the fabled “net zero”.

    Ah, here it is: the “nuclear as a backbone” argument. This is an absurd argument to be making considering the energy grid composition in Australia right now. Firstly, there is no legislation or expertise here to even start construction of such a plant. This is already ridiculously expensive compared to solar + batteries (https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/Electricity-transition/GenCost), but building even a SMR would take decades, at a minimum. This would mean extending the lifetime of existing coal- or gas- fired power plants to cover needs during that time, costing millions more. Secondly, we don’t need a “nuclear backbone”, renewables already make up 36% of energy generation (https://www.energy.gov.au/energy-data/australian-energy-statistics/renewables), and continues to get more affordable as time goes on. We’d be spending way more and burning more fossil fuels for a “realistic way to net zero”?

    Face it, renewables already have this handled here. There is no reason to continue down the nuclear rabbit hole, unless you happen to have coal and gas industry interests in mind. Do you?







  • I think you may be misunderstanding what the command did. This command basically downloaded a shell script with curl, then ran it with sh. If you’re familiar with Windows this is equivalent to downloading and running a Batch or PowerShell script.

    EDIT: someone else has posted the shell script you ran. You essentially need to manually undo whatever is in the script in the terminal.







  • I think that if you’re looking for a Linux distribution that is as polished as the Steam Deck, then SteamOS on desktop might not be the right play. SteamOS will probably (rightfully) be developed solely for handheld, low-power devices, and won’t work unless you’re using the specific APUs that they’ll include drivers for.

    If that sort of streamlined experience interests you, Bazzite has very similar goals to SteamOS (good OOTB gaming experience, safe updates etc.), except that they also target wide hardware compatibility. Other gaming distros exist, but I’m probably just not aware of them.


  • Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice was life-changing for me. There’s quite a bit of exploration that will let you experience various bits of deeper lore, including an entire hidden story that links up with the backstory of one of the minibosses. Not sure if that’s what you’re looking for, but I really enjoyed this one.



  • Recently moved to a new place where Opticomm is the provider, experience was not great.

    • speeds are the same as NBN
    • prices are more expensive than NBN
    • outages happen out of the blue, then take days to get resolved

    The Tuesday before last, we had to call our ISP because we were getting no internet access. It took until last Monday for a fix, so we actually had no internet access for almost a week. While this happened, a planned outage happened apparently (no warning obviously) so at least we missed that one?

    I wouldn’t bet on your experience with the even smaller fibre providers being much better.




  • TL;DR Microsoft has a strict policy of only hiring contractors to work on Halo, and only keeping those contractors for 18 months before they’re forced to go. Something something Microsoft execs want to be able to fire people.

    One thing to note that seems to be missing from the article: Halo Infinite uses a custom game engine (Slipspace). So when these contractors are hired, they spend so much time training that they don’t end up working as a skilled employee for very long before they leave, then new contractors are hired.

    It’s so stupid since this is so obviously a lose-lose situation: the contractors gain a skill that is useful literally nowhere else, and Microsoft’s games just keep getting shittier.


  • The desktop client logs and sends lists of currently running processes by default, and they also collect usage data (which channels you open, how long for, who you’re interacting with). In the settings, there’s literally an option for “Use data to customize my Discord experience”. And sure, they don’t show ads, but their third-party integrations do. Article with sources

    In the end, processing and storing millions of texts, images, videos and files permanently, and hosting all those live voice and video calls, and making updates to the clients, will always cost more than what they get from Nitro and server boosting. Discord isn’t profitable; they have to make the deficit up to shareholders somehow.