Shurimal

joined 2 years ago
[–] Shurimal@kbin.social 10 points 2 years ago (4 children)

TBH, nuclear waste is a political problem, not an engineering one. Finns figured it out, no reason other countries couldn't.

Fusion of course is better (though some small amount of radioactive waste will still be produced due to neutron activation of the materials used in the equipment), but it seems like it's been 10 years away for the past 60 years. And we really shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good—we need to phase out fossil fuels yesterday and fission is good enough for answering the needs of the industry; solar and wind is good enough for distributed residential power and also a good choice for poorer countries who lack the knowhow or even stability for safe operation of nuclear.

[–] Shurimal@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah, Hollywood has become even more risk-averse than in the old days and boring. There used to be a new original Hollywood film coming out every month. Now all you have is reboots, rehashes and sequels. Avatar 2, Barbie and Oppenheimer are an exception. Even though technically Avatar 2 is a sequel and the Manhatten project has been covered very well before—the TV series Manhattan was exceptionally good and in 1989 there was Fat Man and Little Boy which was OK.

Netflix used to be the risk-taking innovator for a while (Okja, Birdbox) but that has died, too.

[–] Shurimal@kbin.social 5 points 2 years ago (4 children)

What I see in this graph is a nosedive in 2020, then things getting normal in 2022 to 2023, and immediately going into nosedive again in the latter half of 2023 with the cost of living crisis.

Frankly, I wouldn't care if cinemas died out completely. Get much better sound and picture quality at home, anyway.

[–] Shurimal@kbin.social 9 points 2 years ago

If you somehow got rid of your rest mass to move at the speed of causality, two things would happen: first, you'd experience no time; second, you'd instantly crash into your destination and die in a rather energetic way. That's the neat thing about photons; from a photon's POV time and distance do not exist. A photon, from its POV, is emitted and absorbed at the same time in the same place.

Much more interesting is having rest mass and moving at a high fraction of c: http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/

[–] Shurimal@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

Best system for calculators IMO. Especially if you need to add many numbers together (eg doing price calculations)—just enter all the numbers to the register, double-check for errors, then add together. Way less error prone than traditional calculators.

[–] Shurimal@kbin.social 6 points 2 years ago

Blindsight by Peter Watts. It's the quintessential modern take on cosmic horror. First there is the "external" horror of a truly alien spaceship that is compared to a "crown of thorns" and "devil's baklava" with its strange inhabitants, and then there is the "internal" horror of musings about the nature and relationship between conciousness and intelligence. Then there is the transhuman main cast, including Jukka Sarasti the vampire and the AI of the ship Theseus. The sidequel Echopraxia is also great, expanding on the concepts and introduces concepts like human hivemind, militarized zombies and Portia-like alien intelligence.

Killing Star by Zebrowski and Pellegrino discusses the Dark Forest hypothesis with various subplots about scientific ambition gone wrong, personal loss, paranoia and religious zeal (some nutjobs cloned Jesus and Buddha, and the clones, after raising their eyebrow in amusement, went "Nah, we're outta here!"). The novel starts with 99.9% of humans and life on Earth wiped out in relativistic bombing, and then it gets worse. The attacking aliens and their technology is well thought out and the way they hunt down the last remnants of humanity is harrowing.

[–] Shurimal@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I don't notice any typical AI artifacts.

Lots of .jpeg compression artifacts, but nothing that screams "generative AI".

[–] Shurimal@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

any company releasing a VR product with this price tag is obviously going to fail…

Varjo is doing very well and offers probably the best VR sets. Prices start at around 3000€

[–] Shurimal@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Wrong. Vivaldi has had local translation for half a year now.

[–] Shurimal@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

The MSI mini-PC-s for office/business use have separate TPM modules on their mobos. I wouldn't be surprised if other mfg-s do this too.

[–] Shurimal@kbin.social 12 points 2 years ago

Named aptly in game files as "Gonarch".

It also squirted white corrosive liquid on you.

The mini-headcrabs were kinda cute, though.

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