partial_accumen

Just because its not sent in doesn’t mean it was forgotten.

Not my joke, but a good one:

Dentist: When was the last time these teeth have been flossed?

Patient: You should know, doc. You did it.

Of course it is a low confidence answer for that non-English but literate population. I’m not saying that 100% of those called illiterate are actually literate in another language. I’m saying that the statement that the illiteracy rate is as high as posted is likely wrong because it only accounts for English.

The “may” statement you’re taking issue with is a quick attempt to find out possibly how big that non-English but literate population might be. Its not a definitive answer. You’re welcome to spend your time chasing a more precise number. I’d exhausted my interested when I got my number.

Time magazine “Person of the year” doesn’t necessarily mean “good” it means “pivotal to change”. The “change” may not be a good change.

Hitler, Stalin, Khrushchev, Kissinger, Ted Turner, Newt Gingrich, Putin, Zuckerberg, and Turmp have all been Person of the Year.

The percentage of the population that’s illiterate is way higher than it has any business being.

Like “can’t read at an elementary school level”.

“There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics” - Mark Twain

Not in your link, but I found the same statistics as your link in another with a critical piece of information:

“According to researchers, 4 out of 5 Americans 18 and over possess medium to high proficiency in English reading and writing.” source

These statistics, both your link and mine, may only be measuring literacy in English.

So looking to get a clue how many may have literacy in another language:

“Today, 13.8 percent of the nation’s residents are foreign-born” source

So at least a percentage of those being counted as USA illiterate may indeed be literate in another language that isn’t English.

Ask why? don’t just stay with oil companies PR talk points.

I do. I’m not using anyone’s talking points. I couldn’t even tell you what they would be. I have 2 smaller nuclear power plants in my state. I liked the idea of nuclear power, but looked into it myself. It seems like it should be great. Reality shows it isn’t great. I does one thing well (24/7 carbon free electricity), but thats it. Everything else is negatives I found.

Nuclear is expensive because innovation has been artificially stifled.

I read your article. It doesn’t say what you’re saying it does. That article says “nuclear is expensive” because projects are building old designs retrofitting existing plants.

A huge part of this, is the insistence to forbid newer designs and more modern improvements,

See you say that, but facts don’t align with that: “NRC Certifies First U.S. Small Modular Reactor Design” Jan 2023 source

Do ALL new reactor designs get approved? No. Do no new reactor designs get approved? Also no.

Nuclear power is expensive (in the US), because it was made expensive by refusing it all the factors that typically reduce costs of technologies.

I read your article there. Its argument is that the theoretical arguments for pricing nuclear power are faulty. We don’t have to work with theoreticals. The customers of the most recently brought online reactors at Vogle nuclear power plant in Georgia are paying significantly more for their electricity as the result of their new nuclear reactors, and will, for decades to come. I pointed this out and cited sources in my OP on this.

It doesn’t matter though. Nuclear power could’ve help us survive climate change…40 years ago. It’s too late now anyways. Even if we covered the whole planet with solar power and stopped every single combustion engine in existence, we are already on the way to living in a hellscape. We must focus on survival of the species now.

Agreed, so its irrelevant to bring up what could have been done in the past. We have what we have today.

The argument I’m replying to is a classic “not perfect, thus not worth it”. Its disingenuous and it calls for disingenuous reply.

I wrote nearly a page of text all of factual and relevant points. If your threshold for bad faith replies is that every facet of every argument must be explored before you’ll allow a genuine reply, you’re in the wrong place.

We are also pursuing renewables in despite of their political and technical flaws.

Agreed! We are seeing their benefits over their shortcomings. Additionally, its not an all-or-nothing decision. A blend of solutions is the best likely path forward. Some nuclear (currently built) should be part of that. However, putting all the efforts into scaling nuclear would be extremely expensive. If we do that, we should understand that cost will be much larger than most people understand.

The point is that all the flaws that OP exposes about nuclear power also applied to renewables (at one point in history solar power was 10x more expensive than nuclear) and also to oil.

Thats a bad argument to support your pro-nuclear position. Other renewables are expensive when they are first developed and get cheaper over time. Nuclear has gone the other direction. Nuclear power is more expensive now than it was when it began, and is only getting more expensive.

They are status quo defending arguments designed to halt thought, paralyze action and scoff change. Just because it isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it isn’t better.

My dollar cost argument against nuclear is not that.

The exceptionally high dollar cost of nuclear was not part of the conversation before I introduced it. It is an important consideration if we’re talking about scaling out any particular solution. If one solution is more expensive than others that produces the same result that is important to consider.

They want to abolish the separation of church Christianity and state.

FTFY

Watch how quick they backslide when a group supporting Islam or even Church of Satan ask for their dogma to be back by the force of law.

Because oil has never depended on outside countries that are openly hostile.

That argument is so weak to me. No one is advocating “oil is the future! We need to build more oil consuming power plants!”. If people were, sure you’d have a great counter. Since that’s not reality though, its a Strawman response at best. Its Whataboutism at its worse.

Another way to say that is: Freedom of speech isn’t freedom from consequences your speech elicits in others.

It’s sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we’ve ever discovered is somehow bad.

Its bad in the sense that is a crazy expensive way to generate electricity. Its not theoretical. Ask the customers of the most recent nuclear reactors to go online in the USA in Georgia. source

"The report shows average Georgia Power rates are up between $34 and $35 since before the plant’s Unit 3 went online. " (there were bonds and fees on customer electric bills to pay for the nuclear plant construction before it was even delivering power.

…and…

“The month following Unit 4 achieving commercial operation, average retail rates were adjusted by approximately 5%. With the Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery (NCCR) tariff removed from bills, a typical resident customer using 1,000 kWh per month saw an estimated monthly increase of $8.95 per month. This follows the previous rate impact in 2023 following Unit 3 COD of $5.42 (3.2%).”

So another $5.42/month for the first reactor built on top of the $35/month, then another $8.95/month on top of all that for a rough total of $49.37/month more just to buy electricity that is generated from nuclear.

Maybe the power company is greedy? Nope, they’re even eating more costs and not passing them on to customers:

“Georgia Power says they’re losing about $2.6 billion in total projected costs to shield customers from the responsibility of paying it. Unit 4 added about $8.95 to the average customer’s bill, John Kraft, a spokesman for the company said.”

So that $49.37/month premium for electricity from nuclear power would be even higher if the power company passed on all the costs. Nuclear power for electricty is just too inefficient just on the cost basis, this is completely ignoring the problems with waste management.

The next biggest problem with nuclear power is where the fuel comes from:

“Russia also dominates nuclear fuel supply chains. Its state-owned Rosatom controls 36 percent of the global uranium enrichment market and supplies nuclear fuel to 78 reactors in 15 countries. In 2020, Russia owned 40 percent of the total uranium conversion infrastructure worldwide. Russia is also the third-largest supplier of the imported uranium that fuels U.S. power plants, accounting for 16 percent of total imported uranium. The Russian state could weaponize its dominance in the nuclear energy supply chain to advance its geostrategic interests. During the 2014 Russia-Ukraine crisis, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin threatened to embargo nuclear fuel supplies to Ukraine.” source

So relying on nuclear power for electricity means handing the keys of our power supply over to outside countries that are openly hostile to us.

12v are great for “car” accessories.

The hardest thing to throw away was the mystery power cables/bricks. Even though everything I own has its power cable with it and labeled with no exceptions, and even though I haven’t touched the mystery power cable for 10 years, I still felt like I’d discover its purpose the moment I got rid of it. Hasn’t happened yet, but I’m still anxious.

I keep those but convert their use to replace disposable battery powered devices.

All those spare USB wall warts you have are 5 volt and at least 1 amp DC power supplies. Anything you have that takes 3 AA or AAA batteries is a 4.5v supply. Almost all of them can tolerate the extra .5 volt. Clip the mini-USB/micro-USB/classic iPod/lightening connector off the cable and run those (I usually solder them) to your device. Now you can plug it into the wall and never have to worry about batteries again.

6 volt DC wall warts can be used to replace things that take 4 AA or AAA batteries.

With classic cryptography being broken that also opens the need for quantum cryptography and commnications. China is a bit farther ahead of us on this launching their first satellite encorporating these concepts in 2020:

“The nation’s Micius satellite successfully established an ultrasecure link between two ground stations separated by more than 1,000 kilometers” source

China is launching a second newer generation satellite next year. source

That gif in reverse would look like Gerodi is about to throw hands.

Do we need to update Sam Vimes ‘Boots’ Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness to Sam Vimes **‘Compute’ ** Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness?

Curious how you calculated that? What system load is it based on? Idle? Max?

Very much an estimate because OP didn’t mention what generation DL360 they had, how many CPUs, drives, etc. So I assumed 120W continuous 24/7/365 consumption which is pretty low. Assuming 22 cents per KWh for midwest, 33 cents/KWh for Boston and 44 cents/KWh for California.

OP is likely drawing much more than my estimate.

My point is, you can possibly spend the same money and get better hardware that isn’t so power hungry and have a better experience with your hobby.

I have 4 DL360s with 96GB RAM each to run a K8s cluster with a handful of containers

If someone is paying you to host those and covering your costs, go wild! However, as a hobby you may be spending $925/year or more for electricity to run those in the Midwest. $1,387 if you’re living in Boston, $1,850 if you’re living in California.

In one year you may have been able to buy more new power efficient hardware from just what you’re spending on juice.

I have been an IT professional since 1995. Never have I ever had a personal PC that wasn’t either a refurbished laptop or some sort of Frankenstein abomination that I pit together from whatever was on sale and upcycled parts.

I’ve been in the game for about the same amount of time. I stopped doing that about 15 years ago when I saw that the electricity I was paying on older gear was equaling or exceeding the cost of buying newer, faster, and lower power consumption hardware.