MystikIncarnate

I see a lot of recommendations for videos from channels I watch that are very old and I've seen them before. I frequently submit feedback that I've seen it and I don't want to rewatch something I've seen before (unless I'm specifically searching for it).

Also, if I jump into my history feed, and go back as far as I can, I eventually hit the end, and I know I've watched more than wherever the end is. So the history falls off eventually. Frustrating.

This is more of a feature than a problem IMO.

Most services (like meta/Facebook/Instagram/anything owned by zuck', the service formerly known as Twitter....) are going to a model of: you need an account to even see anything posted publicly.

Not just extremely limited information like LinkedIn, like, instant redirect to "you need to be logged in to see this" or simply a login page.

At least you can still find something you want to see, and go and watch it... With ads and everything, sure, but the information is there and accessible.

Yeah. The whole episode was kind of off the wall in terms of sanity.

Not the worst episode they made, but it was up there.

My main issue with this is that the bottoms are too tight.

Far be it for me to judge an alien race's fashion, but that does not look comfortable.

The tops aren't particularly great either, though I like the "design" of the female version better than the one that guy is wearing.... "Like" is probably too strong of a term.

In every case, the first few seasons of TNG had it's problems. This episode was one of them. A society where the only punishment was death? What the actual fuck?

They can create interfaces to buffer our experience with their back end (the COBOL running the actual transactions), which is largely what they're doing.

The COBOL back end basically just acts as the service that handles the data that represents the money and accounts.

Not having advanced security options, even as simple as complex passwords to allow clients to access their accounts can be managed by the intermediate layer between the COBOL service and the UI, and there shouldn't be a reason for such limited password length or restrictions on MFA.

The fact that COBOL runs they're back end doesn't excuse the terrible front end, especially on applications for mobile devices.

This has been thrown around as reason why things suck so hard, and bluntly, it's a piss poor excuse if you ask me.

I have too many gripes with banks and how they handle digital interactions.

They're a bunch of dinosaurs, both in what they support and how they support it. They're also in a position where they feel like they can do what they want and you just have to suck it up.

And for the most part, they're right, because all the banks are equally bad. A nontrivial number of the apps are just chrome running in an app window, security is a joke, they make you sign in with your card number which is plainly visible to anyone with eyes that is within a few meters of your card anytime you have it out of your wallet, they restrict your password so you can't use special characters or have it be long enough to actually provide real security, and they limit your 2FA options to SMS. Everything is terrible.

Even when you go into the bank or use the ATM, access is restricted by a fucking FOUR DIGIT NUMERICAL PIN and if you can even use a longer pin code, they don't tell you that and most systems assume your pin is four numbers and won't let you enter any more than that.

God forbid you lose your card, good luck going through the gauntlet of outdated information the bank is going to ask about for you to prove you are who you say you are.

They're all the fucking same and it infuriates me.

I hate this usage of "networking".

I work in IT and this will frequently confuse the shit out of me.

"Join my network" is basically shorthand for: connect to the WiFi.

All this meat space crap drives me up the wall.

Also, we need to normalize giving as a method of showing comfort or condolences. Like, I lose my job and what do I get from people? "You can do it!" Etc, and other useless platitudes. I'd rather have people be like "here's some cash to help cover your bills" or "I'll order a pizza to be delivered to your house".

Same thing with pretty much anything. You were injured on the job, here's free pizza for you to eat while you're laid up in bed, recovering. Here's some money to help cover rent while you're not earning an income.

Meanwhile, some Putz graduates college and lands their first "real" job, and someone buys them a car.

What the fuck man. To congratulate them on making money, you give them more?

But when grandpa dies and you're trying to cover funeral expenses, nobody gives you shit.

The whole fucking system is backwards. When we have everything, we're given more, when we are beat down, the whole thing only ever gets worse.

Another example, you're diagnosed with an illness, you have to miss work for treatment, the boss reams you out for taking so much time off work, you may get fired. Meanwhile, the medical bills are stacking up and creditors are calling because they want all the money you don't have. Your paychecks are getting cut because you're taking so much time off work, meanwhile you feel like shit because you're sick. A whole lot of fuck you is happening. The social norm is to "be supportive".... What good is that going to do? Nah man, here's a couple hundred bucks. Get better soon, okay?

I'm suggesting that my "investment budget" is nothing.

I think this one flew right over your head.

Specifically, I'm making light of the fact that no matter how hard I try to make a living wage, I still struggle to make everything work, indirectly shedding light on the recent discussions about stagnant wages and out of control inflation, raising costs to live while providing me no means by which to afford those increases.

Most months I barely have enough left over to buy myself a single meal at a restaurant as a once-a-month treat, nevermind have money set aside for retirement or have an "investment budget".

Okay, a small percentage of nothing is....

I'd happily have a RITEG buried in my back yard to sustain my base load from my house. Using geothermal cooling for the unit seems like a good idea, and it would be underground where nobody can fuck with it.

RITEG research and use hasn't stopped, but most of the terrestrial units have been long decommissioned. The most recent example of note was the MMRTG unit used in curiosity (now on Mars), which is 45 KG and can produce 110W of output. The most notable terrestrial examples were the IEU units used by the Soviets for light houses, weighing upwards of 2-3 tones and producing less than 120W at their peak, mostly fueled by strontium 90 (the MMRTG uses plutonium 238). The only modern RTG for terrestrial use is the Sentinel units used for monitoring stations in the arctic by America, which top out under 60W and weigh more than a ton, closer to 2 ton. There are others but information is limited.

A lot of weight is due to the fuel (which is classified as a "heavy metal") and the casing, which on earth is more robust than you would need in space, since it's feasible that people would be nearby the unit for extended periods of time and any breach could be fatal.

Even with the weight, if we're effectively burying it in a yard, deep enough to take advantage of geothermal cooling, then weight isn't really a problem. Even size isn't a problem since it can be the size of a large consumer vehicle and most homeowners have more than enough land to accommodate that... With little more than an access hatch for inspections and maintenance, it would be a viable option to contribute to offsetting the base load of your home. Even a 100W unit would trim about 2.4kWh from a household electricity bill per day for something like 100 years. That's in the ballpark of 8.5 GWh over the lifetime of the unit before the fuel needs to be replaced (based on the half life of the material. Strontium 90 would need to be refueled every 40-50 years or so).

I'm not saying it's a fix to the problem by any stretch, but it could trim about 1/4 of electricity costs per home, based on an average consumption of around 10 kWh per day.

This is why I like RTGs, they're stable and long lasting, relatively safe (unless the housing/shielding fails) and solid state with basically no maintenance.

I'm a fan of the idea, but I'm not going to say it's a one stop fix, nor do I think the regulatory people will green light any implementation of such a system for home use, ever. Nor do I think that even if such a solution were to be given approval, that the general public would ever accept it being installed "in [their] back yard" either literally or figuratively.

You're right that a pair of 200W panels and a small battery system would have a similar effect (at least until the batteries needed replacing... or simply grid tie it), and as long as you can average ~2 kWh/day of generation, you'd be fine... You might need 4-5 panels to get the same daily output, but a system like that is probably still less than $1000, and will probably last ~20 years. So to make it economically viable such a system would need to cost the consumer less than ~$5000 or so before it becomes a better option.

I'm still a fan of the technology, and I find it immensely interesting, but I try to keep my expectations realistic. Due to the excessive weight of a terrestrial RTG, it's not viable for a vehicle, but wouldn't it be cool to have a car that charges itself all the time no matter where you park it or whether it's in the sun or not?

I think that would be cool.

You're forgetting that we also need to work on global shipping. It's a massive contributor to global emissions.

This is bluntly the place where I think we need fuel cells. Yes, they're less efficient, but they can produce a significant amount of power for a significant amount of time given how much space is usually allocated on shipping vessels for the engine and fuel reserves.

I'm not talking about your mom and dad's little motor boat, I'm talking about freight liners. They run basically 24/7 while on the water and consume more fuel daily than your average coal rolling F350 owner would in a year.

Since it would be done in a more controlled commercial context, safeguards can be put in place that other vehicles wouldn't be able to have. Regular inspections of the safety equipment and testing of the storage and energy systems would be almost trivial to implement.

Honestly, I understand why this isn't in the news, but why isn't anyone else talking about this?

The argument for hydrogen generally revolves around the fact that it's only waste product is literally H2O. So by using an FCV, you only really emit water as a byproduct, which in general is not of a global cooling chemical than a global warming chemical; though, I don't mean to suggest, in any way, shape, or form that FCVs have any impact at all in reversing global warming.

I would argue that efficiency isn't necessarily the most critical point in regards to "Green" technology. It's an important factor, true, especially when dealing with portable or vehicular energy, since storing a large amount of fuel/energy/power to do a task is generally considered to be a bad idea, mainly due to the size and weight of such storage. I would argue that the efficiency in a less size/weight constrained system, such as a depot or facility, is less of a problem. For example, let's say we're getting 30+ % efficiency solar panels and generating... say, 10kW from the array on average for 5 hours, a total of 50kWh. There's already losses from the solar, but we'll discount that since there's no competing technology to generate power from sunlight which has anywhere near as much efficiency.

From there, we lose maybe 30% from water electrolysis to generate hydrogen. We will lose an additional 40% when that is converted back to electricity for use in FCVs.

The output power will be ~21 kWh.

This is equivalent to a solar array of ~4.5 kW in the same situation, using BEV.

My argument here, against the efficiency matter is: the BEV array is approximately half as large or using panels that are half as efficient, this is going to be located at a facility or location where the hydrogen is stored, which will likely have room for a larger solar array than 10kW. So the only sacrifice made in the scenario is to allocate a larger space and some additional panels to a static location where the hydrolysis is being performed.... Big deal. It's entirely green energy with immense storage capacity (even just as a pressurized gas), and incredible energy density.

Obviously there are still risks with it being literally an explosive, though it can be argued that gasoline also carries that risk and it's literally everywhere. Albeit not as extreme of a risk, but bluntly, gasoline sticks around. Hydrogen generally screws off. Once it's released into atmosphere, yes it's incredibly dangerous and explosive in the presence of oxygen, but it will quickly rise and clear out from ground level where all the spark hazards are... While gasoline releases vapor continually and any ignition of the vaporized gasoline will likely find it's way back to the source of those vapors and ignite them. Hydrogen is a flash and it's gone. It's a trade off of risks either way.

I hear what you're saying, I just don't necessarily agree that it's as bad as it would initially seem.

In the other hand, I've seen the dumb shit people do with anything flammable or explosive and I'd rather not put something so energetic into the hands of the general public. So there's that as well.

I also want to address the matter of urgency. It's not critical that we convert all of the cars to EVs. Personally owned vehicle emissions are not the greenhouse gasses that cause the most significant problem. What most graphs show are intra-country emissions, which either lump all "transportation" emissions into one category, or categorize mostly land-based transport methods. In more global charts they generalize "transportation" as one thing, not defining what each transportation type is contributing. There's a few graphs that are out there, if you dig for them, which show that global transportation is ~75% of emissions, but break it down by purpose/type of transit, and if you really dig into the data, personally owned vehicles are something less than 10% of overall emissions. The rest goes to shipping, like boats, transport planes, trucks etc. large tank liners or cargo vessels are a huge portion of the emissions. There has been zero push to have those converted to electrical options. Whether fuel cell or battery, it's not something that's even discussed. The fact is, those boats are running basically 24/7, consuming more fuel daily than even a mid-sized town of consumer vehicles, and homes combined. And that's just one ship. There are hundreds of them on the water. So having the public convert to EVs, is a literal drop in the bucket of CO2 emissions.

So the question is, why aren't we talking about it? I think the answer is clear. Ships are the bread and butter for oil conglomerates. They need fuel, usually diesel, to get anything anywhere. The global demand for energy to simply move shit around is massive. Nobody wants you looking at it and complaining. Even if the consumer vehicles were all converted to some form of EV overnight, oil companies would still make money hand over fist.

None of this should be taken as "fuck it, let's just keep going with ICE cars". Absofuckinglutely not. Consumers still need to convert to EVs. There is no "but what about" going on here. But having perspective on the issue is essential. We all need to do our part. Right now, everyone seems happy to stay focused on consumer vehicles and the drive towards personal responsibility of carbon emissions, but that's only focusing on consumer emissions. Industrial emissions from shipping and energy production, even just getting the energy products to where they need to go, should also be something that is a part of the discussion because they are far and above more egregious in their carbon footprint than the consumers are. IMO, they've set the pubic against itself to distract from the fact that we're not the biggest problem. There's now a war of sorts happening between "tree hugging" EV advocates and "dinosaur burning" ICE enthusiasts. It's worked and we need to realise that we are all on the same side, and we need to recognize that the real problem isn't us, it's the companies who would rather ruin the planet than ruin their bottom line. Yes, that includes oil companies, but also shipping companies. Other industries are also guilty of massive ecological destruction too.

IMO, this is yet another example of the "elite" driving a narrative that benefits them. That somehow because reasons we should all feel bad about driving our cars to the places we need to go, burning mere gallons of fuel daily for everything we do, while they burn barrels of fuel hourly so they can line their pockets with our money.

Personally, I don't think we should give up on fuel cells or green hydrogen, because there's literal acres of land that can be used for solar to generate the power to produce hydrogen, and use that hydrogen to power fuel cell based electric vessels for transport. They have a virtually inexhaustible supply of water right next to where these docks exist, and plenty of land for solar which can be used for the process. It makes sense; and with a fuel cell vessel the hydrogen can be stored in large pressurized containers that are regularly tested and validated to be safe, with extended safety mechanisms in place that we basically can't do with consumer goods. Weight is also less of a concern, and they already allocate a nontrivial amount of space on the ship to storing fuel for the journey. It would make such a significant impact to overall emissions that the consumer EV thing would be little more than a footnote, rather than the headline news it is right now.

But I don't see anyone even remotely discussing it. Maybe they should.