abraxas @ abraxas @lemmy.ml

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2 yr. ago

and we don’t currently have the battery technology to store energy on the scale to handle those fluctuations

We kinda do, though. It's really new, but there are a few battery technologies that claim they can currently store enough power to defend building them and making solar or wind be the base load. At a lower cost per lifetime kwh than nuclear.

This is why people now compare cost of nuclear with cost of solar PLUS capacitors/batteries to handle for base load. Surprisingly, with recent achievements in molten sand batteries, solar is still comfortably cheaper than nuclear per kwh. As the base load.

And solar's cost is far less front-loaded, making it more affordable than the "cost per kwh" implies.

The point is, if we are not at the point of moving our base load to renewables today, we would be faster than we would be with nuclear and provisioning all the locations needed for secure, regulated, nuclear plants across the country/world. And the "world" part is a big one. Nuclear power material might not be fully weaponizable, but allowing some countries nuclear power plants could still create risk.

The problem with Nuclear's "good enough" is that Nuclear is currently worse than other technology we have in almost every way.

1. Higher total lifetime cost per kwh than solar or land-based wind (and hydro, but that's niche), even after factoring in capacitors for weather and time of day/year
2. Awkwardly front-loaded TCO. You basically pay a huge percent of that ugly TCO up front, making Nuclear more prohibitively expensive than its modest total lifetime cost would imply.
3. Long life. This is a terrible thing. TCO's of solar and wind plants are predicated upon a 20 year obsolescence. That means, the TCO includes the cost to build, tear down, and make way for the inevitable better tech in 20 years. Nuclear plants are priced at 50+ year lifetimes. You can't easily retrofit a nuclear plant with better technology if/when it starts to catch up.

It is absolutely true that solar and wind are better because more money has gone into their research. But because of that, they are better options in almost all real world power situations.

The problem with focusing on nuclear is... why waste all that political capital just to spend 100x the money or more that you could spend to be 100% renewbles in the short term? The front-loaded TCO is the real issue with that one. If you wanna hit 0 emissions tomorrow with Solar/Wind, you're just paying the up-front costs, knowing there are per-year costs (still cheaper than fossil fuels) to keep it going. If you want to do the same with nuclear, you're paying for almost all of it out of the gate for 50 years worth. Suffice to say, that's a budgeting nightmare.

And what's left is space. Nuclear creates a lot of power in a small area. But wind and solar are both far more easily/efficiently integrated into the space we are already using.

I agree re: coop. They seem to be the way of the future. Some people I game with get really frustrated being less competitive than the rest in games like Dominion, where taking your time and planning out your turns has huge return but makes everyone have to sit and wait (and don't talk to me, I'm figuring out whether I'm going to play my Laboratory or my Sentry first!)

For some reason, though, Pandemic goes over like a dead weight to most people. So much so, I've never bought Pandemic Legacy as good as it looks. Arkham horror is too crunchy for some, but just right for others. Spirit Island, surprisingly, has been a sweet spot for some recently. It's a little hard to get good at, but the sliding difficulty scale is really granular.

Comparison with Kingdom Death? Interesting. I made a point of watching a few let's plays of Pathfinder the Adventure Card game, and it seems to me as similar as Catan and Pandemic (which is, not at all)

The comparison I see is Townfolk Tussle, which I intend to someday buy for a faster/easier campaign.

Kingdom Death: Monster plays incredibly well solo, possibly better than any multiplayer variant except 4-player. It's one of the reasons I bought it.

Eldrich Horror is on my to-buy list. My wife got really burned out on board games so I've leaned into my ultra-crunchy solo-friendly stuff, but she enjoyed Arkham horror for quite a while.

But yeah. Last time I played Catan I wanted it to stop by round 2. I have horrible dice-luck, so a game's gotta be fun when I roll worst-case 5-10 rounds in a row. In Catan, it means I get all nerdy placing my towns on strategically sound intersections, and then watch everyone else play and I pass as numbers like 6 and 8 never roll for an entire game. My record is like the first half of the game getting no resources. Then getting one or two. Something about seeing the 3rd or 4th 2 roll give someone resources before you've gotten anything just makes you want to flip the table.

Interesting. Because you were doing too well? The only way KD:M gets a little boring to me is if I'm trying to min-max and only fighting the most appropriate monster for maximum return at each twist or turn. All those underleveled lions for 15 rounds, then all those antelopes, avoiding phoenix and any unique monsters, etc. I did a playthrough where I suicided extra population against most bosses instead of risking my better ones. Ok, that can get boring.

But throw all those in? Nothing quite like going for the overpowered unique phoenix and trying to land his death bonus on my character with Immortal disorder. Also nothing quite like that character making it, then constantly being targeted with "instead of damage, roll on critical injury table" and having to blow my party's rerolls to save her. (For the record, no she didn't make it to LY30)

But honestly, to each their own. I really enjoy it. And adding a few more hunt or showdown monsters (when you really "know" your base prey) is enough to keep an entire campaign fresh. And if not, PotSun and PotStars is a blast (said in Tabletop Simulator because I can't afford all that)

I couldn't agree more.

KD:M may have its imperfections, but I don't think I've ever played another game quite so beautiful (if you're into that existential dread type of beauty).

It's incredible, and a blast. A full campaign (assuming you don't lose halfway through) runs about 60 hours. So I get it :)

The digital version might be more accessible. I really wish they'd sell it without the minis. I just don't have the time to paint minis, which means I don't get the value worth in minis.

A lot of board game geeks hate Catan. I also hate Catan, but my reasons probably aren't their reasons. So there's that.

But I don't entirely disagree. It's complicated. I bought multiple games to find ones I'd love more. I find most people with board game obsession still have a favorite.

Like me, I've spent more time playing KD:M and Spirit Island than the next 5 combined.

For me, it's board games. I figured a few good board games could last a while. I'm sure you are (incorrectly) guessing the next step, that I just bought too many.

No, I bought Kingdom Death: Monster. And now I want the expansion packs, which combine to nearly $3000.

I know this is the wrong server to say it, but there were some things I liked about Hillary. I am still convinced that her gender played far more of a role in people's hatred of her than they will ever be able to accept.

Yes, she's still a neo-liberal, but she's further left than most of the Democrats, and we consistently see that the supermajority of non-Republican voters are simply not as progressive as most of us are. Hillary had a well-conceived labor plan and respected unions. She liked the idea of single-payer, if not enough to spend too much political capital on it. She was left of Obama and of Biden, if still to the right of her "progressive" so-called roots.

Here's my non-opinionated counterpoint. Trump bested Hillary on Labor when his plan was "kick out immigrants and deregulate coal so you get your dangerous job back", and she had a 100 page labor plan that involved things like subsidized retraining of coal workers. The Democrats have learned that you will not win Labor by favoring them. A bad lesson.

Unfortunately, there's a reason cult deprogrammers are heavily trained. If you're not an expert, the above behavior can have the opposite effect, helping reiterate to them that their crazy positions are actually reasonable and acceptable. The worst thing you can do to a cult member is acknowledge their beliefs respectfully. The second worst thing you can do is insult them. See the problem?

You have to use the gray rock method, and prove to them that you both disagree with them, and you are not their enemy.

This is the problem. When someone holds a belief that is not ok, telling them that is "ok" doesn't work. You'll be "one of the good ones", but it'll end there.

You say that, but Biden dominated the Primary in 2020. I wanted Warren. I'd have been ok with Bernie. But I have to admit, Biden just had so many more votes.

The US is filled with conservatives. Most Democratic voters are simply sane conservatives. Biden is their idea of a good candidate. An economic neoliberal that believes in modest safety nets and personal freedom when not at the expense of others. More importantly, he believes in compromise (something Democrats need because their constituents are not single-issue voters, and often have different opinions on the issues)

It would be cool if more people were more progressive in the US. But the media doesn't really want to make that possible.

Where some underrepresented domains have made massive strides, this GPT thing has done relatively little for data science.

The important thing is that "what AI/ML can and cannot do" is not changing that much. It's successful application is what's changed. The idea of making AI libraries more accessible is huge, and leads to stuff like this. But under the hood, OpenAI doesn't do much different than other AI tools. It's just easier to use yourself. You can do more faster as computers get faster, but that seems to be limited with the endgame of Moore's Law anyway.

OpenAI runs on supercomputers now. It'll continue to run on supercomputers in the future. Instead of getting better, it has started to get worse at many things. Experts have always had a fairly good grasp of where it'll end. There are things AI was always expected to do better than humans at. And things it never will.

I mean, I expected AI image generation and better text quality. But I also expected the limits it currently has. And I've only done a little directly in the field.

The real-real issue is how many people don't bloody understand what AI/ML are, but are making huge decisions about where they are appropriate to use.

I can't count how many times I've heard "Let's add AI to this page!" was requested from non-tech execs in the last year, not knowing what does or doesn't work. Our most successful analytical report runs a simple 10-rule heuristic and nobody is the wiser.

So yeah, people trying to inject AI into hiring/firing. The people who did inject AI into predicting criminality. It all boils down to negligence, ignorance of your tools.

Not just us not understanding Celcius. Where I come from, we wear shorts down to 0°C or lower.

I'm getting bugged for the other photo heavy now, by people telling me they can give back with photos of "the mob burning people". Pro-CCP people don't even consider the basically-confession and disagreement of the leader of the Communist party (which led to his long-term house-arrest).

No, sorry. As I said a few times, I don't keep a file of NSFL grotesque photos like that. If the photos already posted in this thread aren't enough, my adding the other won't be. If you can't convince them with the mountains of clear and simple evidence, you can't convince Holocaust Deniers, Flat Earthers, or Tienanmen Square deniers with any evidence no matter how disgusting.