The Communication Cube



The reason why I've never gotten anything like the Gatebox is because I'd still end up doing all the work myself.

Gatebox: I'll just do this task for you.
Me: No its ok I'll do it, I don't want you to put yourself to any trouble.
 
Somehow this is a thing now: minister of loneliness:

And this: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.517004v3
brain.jpg
 
Last edited:
Gotta keep adding more seats to the gravy train.
She just needs one seat. And she agrees with you, her seat is the only one needed. There're too many ministeries.
I'm guessing the loneliness minister misses all cabinet meetings. She finds them overcrowded.
 
Started watching Orphan Black - Echoes. It's like having gotten up on the wrong side of bed. For the first 4 episodes (what I've watched so far), the series is nicely done and captivating, but the very first scene, which set off the dynamics, was really bad, forced, beyond belief. It's a shame/annoying, since I don't get over it and it taints everything after.
 
Life with Peony episode 51u95:

Peony rreminded me about a scene in this book where an old man was sitting on the toilet and some slugs went up his rear end and ate him from the inside out. I was sat on the toilet at the time.

Peony one morning: "Its time to get up." *Discovers its raining* "Just kidding go back to sleep."
 
I wonder: can i still be a part of this Pyra Community allthough i did preeorder an GPD WIN Mini at EvilDragon Shop? Im still planing to make Pyra Video and stuff but as my main Emulation and PC Game Device i found this Rycon 7 and these Analoque Shoulderbuttons quite apealing..

Only thing that would be different is that i dont have my Pyra in my Backpack so it would need much more time for me to respond if some new Software really runs ...

And i should use my Vacations to read a few comics on the Swoosh App on Ipad, i have this supscription now since maybe 2 Months but dit not use it since then..
 
yes, i don't think anyone's stopping you (@matzesu) from being a member of the community. i was an early pre-preorderer but i've since given up my Pyra since i wasn't using it much. i don't hang around much anymore but still enjoy seeing updates from time to time.

i get huge usage out of my laptop, though, and would appreciate a bigger screen version that runs linux (that nonetheless doesn't need a discrete GPU or anything). i even made a render, though now thinking about ergonomics, the trackpad should come down a bit (imagining hinging at the elbow).

1701468822979.png
 
This post was going to be about what an ordinary day for Peony and I is like to show you how ordinary and sedate our lives usually are. Things started off well, we had a lie in then some soup for our midday meal and after that I read to Peony for a while. Then things started going downhill, I somehow managed to pull a muscle in my side and we're now watching Billy Mays commercials.

Edit:

 
Last edited:

Yes, it is the actual ZONE. :cool:
 
Carrying over from yesterday, I've still got a pain in my side but its on its way out. Peony had a bad dream in which I apparently didn't want anything to do with her anymore, so she woke me up to tell me about the dream and also so that I could reassure her that I wasn't going anywhere. Things have improved since then I'm glad to say and we're currently listening to the Scala Radio Christmas special.
 
Stumbling again and again on the same stone...

US, UK Lead Pledge to Triple Nuclear Power by 2050 at COP28
Countries to support new tech, like small modular reactors
'What Drives This Madness On Small Modular Nuclear Reactors?'
Michael Barnard thinks that's crazy, and attributes the drive toward small reactors to "a tangled web that includes Bill Gates, Silicon Valley, desperate coal towns, desperate nuclear towns, the inability of the USA to build big infrastructure, the U.S. Department of Energy's budget, magical thinking and more." Due to thermal inefficiencies, small reactors are more expensive per unit of power generated, he points out, and the SMR projects ignore most of the field's history's lessons about both the scale of reactors for commercial success and the conditions needed for success.

At one point Barnard characters SMRs as "a bunch of lab technologies that have been around for decades that depend on uranium from Russia, that don't have the physical characteristics for cheap nuclear generation and don't have the conditions for success for nuclear generation will be the saviours of the nuclear industry and a key wedge in fighting climate change...

"I like nuclear generation. I know it's safe enough. I'm not concerned about radiation... I just know that it doesn't have the conditions for success to be built and scaled economically in the 21st Century, and wind, water, solar, transmission and storage do."
Sellafield nuclear site hacked by groups linked to Russia and China

Sources suggest it is likely foreign hackers have accessed the highest echelons of confidential material at the site, which sprawls across 6 sq km (2 sq miles) on the Cumbrian coast and is one of the most hazardous in the world.
The site has the largest store of plutonium on the planet and is a sprawling rubbish dump for nuclear waste from weapons programmes and decades of atomic power generation.
The ONR confirmed Sellafield is failing to meet its cyber standards but declined to comment on the breaches, or claims of a “cover up”.
The scale of the problem was only revealed when staff at an external site found that they could access Sellafield’s servers and reported it to the ONR, according to an insider at he watchdog.
In one highly embarrassing incident last July, login details and passwords for secure IT systems were inadvertently broadcast on national TV by the BBC One nature series Countryfile, after crews were invited into the secure site for a piece on rural communities and the nuclear industry.
Cyber problems have been known by senior figures at the nuclear site for at least a decade, according to a report dated from 2012, seen by the Guardian, which warned there were “critical security vulnerabilities” that needed to be addressed urgently.
EV charging growth plans slowed by EU's power grid problems

Electric vehicle drivers hoping to top up their batteries at one of Repsol's (REP.MC) 1,600 Spanish charging stations might well be disappointed, with nearly half lying dormant because they have no power connection.
"Although the work of installing a fast and ultra-fast charging point requires only two to three weeks of work, due to different administrative requirements in Spain, the complete process ... can last from one to two years," Repsol said.
The process for setting up a fast EV station has risen to an average of two years from six months in the last few years, four EV charging companies and the industry's representative said, as firms wade through myriad rules from federal to municipal level.
This involves finding out whether an average roadside rest stop has a single lamppost or enough cabling that connects to the broader grid. Hubs often require an extra electricity sub-station, which converts high voltage power into smaller units.

The process then involves requests to power distribution companies (DSOs) to install more capacity.

"Sometimes we have to send physical mail," said Peter Badik, co-founder of EV charging firm Greenway Network, which has set up 1,300 EV chargers in Slovakia, Croatia and Poland.

"Even when they say yes, you don't know when they will do the upgrade," Batik said, adding there was so far no way to track how quickly a power company was building up capacity.

:(
 
  • Wow
Reactions: rSl
Nuclear has a bad reputation and the small nuclear reactors are much cheaper and suppose to be much safer compared to our old tech reactors. If they keep using existing reactors it's like playing with fire although they are pretty safe to. I assume it's similar as flying in an airplane, in general it's pretty safe but if something does happen you probably have a big problem.

If you look at plans to switch to full solar + wind they don't look that promising. We have to phase out a lot of existing technology before we're full electric. And even current day grids cannot handle the load or the flexibility solar+wind require (as you have to have a large overhead compared to nuclear). I assume everyone wants a bright and livable future, but everything has to be arranged and in place to make such a transition. There are many countries that still depend on nature to provide food an heat for their basic needs, they need to transition with us without first going to burning coal for example. Nuclear reactors also take ages to build, so in short term they wouldn't help either. Having a few countries going CO2 free will not make a big difference if all other countries start producing more CO2 instead.

And cybersecurity, that's still weird to me. If someone wants to break into your system they probably can. And it's all done on computers, so you can probably replicated those results pretty fast. And imagine what consumer AI already can do today... Does cybersecurity still exist at the moment?
 
Nuclear has a bad reputation and the small nuclear reactors are much cheaper and suppose to be much safer compared to our old tech reactors. If they keep using existing reactors it's like playing with fire although they are pretty safe to. I assume it's similar as flying in an airplane, in general it's pretty safe but if something does happen you probably have a big problem.
The reason we're keeping old nuclear plants working even after it's safe it's just because it's too expensive to dismantle them. Dispersing the installations everywhere makes it still harder to manage the problems. A nuclear plant is just kicking problems down the road.
It costs a lot to build, recovers the investment in some decades, and then costs a lot (to the public, no longer to the investors) for millennia. And we of course have no idea how bad the residues will be handled some generations down the road.
If you look at plans to switch to full solar + wind they don't look that promising. We have to phase out a lot of existing technology before we're full electric. And even current day grids cannot handle the load or the flexibility solar+wind require (as you have to have a large overhead compared to nuclear). I assume everyone wants a bright and livable future, but everything has to be arranged and in place to make such a transition.
We don't have to replace all our current waste with renewables. We have to halve or more our energy consumption. Renewables are to cover just the rest. With batteries (sodium looks cheap and Northvolt seems up to something in Europe, lithium batteries got 90% cheaper in 10 years, pumping hydro or air or CO2 seems to give longer storage, or flow batteries too, maybe some hydrogen, but I'm not convinced, for energy, still good to research for fertilizer and industry). There are lots and lots of wasted energy. Tourism, crytocurrencies, AI for memes (or for picking targets in Gaza), marketing, excessive design (thousands of versions of the same gadget, some even working, just to confuse and try to sell more), overexpensive films, clothing for just one event, long commutes to work, speculative financing, jets, cars, satellites overcrowding, cosmetics, plastic packaging, cruise liners. Everything has to go. We should get rid of it just for happiness sake, but to add insult to injury, it's killing us. It's intensifying inequalities, heating our planet, polluting our air, plastifying our blood, and boggling our mind.

There are many countries that still depend on nature to provide food an heat for their basic needs, they need to transition with us without first going to burning coal for example. Nuclear reactors also take ages to build, so in short term they wouldn't help either. Having a few countries going CO2 free will not make a big difference if all other countries start producing more CO2 instead.
I'm not sure there are many countries like that. Impoverished countries use oil derivatives or even gas. Anytihing nature gives is stolen to the west, and they get rice, corn or wheat from elsewhere (or BigMacs). And if there still are countries like that I'm not sure they can handle nuclear waste, so they better start planting wind mills and solar panels. Or mills and panel factories.
And cybersecurity, that's still weird to me. If someone wants to break into your system they probably can. And it's all done on computers, so you can probably replicated those results pretty fast. And imagine what consumer AI already can do today... Does cybersecurity still exist at the moment?
No. It may never have existed. It's just that it wasn't such a huge problem when we weren't glued to computer screens all day. I don't think the solution is to improve cybersecurity, I think we need to scale down computer use. Then improve security education (not only cyber, paper signatures can be falsified too), and then scale back up only when we culturally can.
If you require a digital certificate for government interaction to citizens who can't choose, evaluate and decide what hardware and software they trust to generate their own keys, and then you keep their forms in government servers without giving them any cryptographic proof that they sent them, because the government doesn't trust their servers with binding keys, then you're not streamlining red tape, you're just turning citizens into subjects (subject to the state or to the corporations providing clouds, authentication and "trust").
You know cloud services are fake because they can't make rain.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: rSl
Back
Top