Posts by imanidiot 4422 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Mar 2012
Those exist/are in development:
https://youtu.be/2-VR4IcDhX0
https://youtu.be/EGBRA24qlEg
Currently human brickies are about equally expensive but way more flexible. The big advantage of robots is that while they are slower per working hour, they're faster over longer time scales (since they can work non-stop, without break for days on end as long as supplies are replenished which is not a fulltime job).
Usually they do that for me too. Still stupidly managed to lock my car keys in my car once. Came out of the shops, opened the car with the key in hand and still carrying stuff. Leaned into the car to put stuff down on passenger seat but did not notice the key came out of my hand and pressed the lock button. The unexpected noise made me turn around and look up, then go "huh, whatever" and closed the passenger door to walk around the car and get in. Only to get that "well *expletives deleted*" feeling half a second later.
On the drives of "back in those days" that trick probably worked. Modern drives (Post 2000-ish) it's hit or miss. The trick worked on drives in the past because back then the bearings did wear out and increased tolerances together with less than stellar head positioning would lead to read/write failures. Cooling things down very slightly improved bearing tolerances and head positioning allowing to get some data off the drives.
Modern drives are 99.99% more likely to have crashed on a headcrash or an electronics problem. Neither of those cases is helped by cooling the drive down. In the very rare case it IS an early death bearing the bearing is very probably so shot it's not going to be helped by cooling it down and even if it IS then the head tracking now has to be so precise a less than perfect bearing will make it throw a wobbly anyway.
Production of the quantities of Tungsten projectiles constantly needed alone makes this a bit of a non-starter. Then there's the problem of dealing with the tungsten debris you'll now have flying around your combustion chamber/reactor at high temperature and high velocity. Tungsten is not exactly an easy material to deal with at the best of times.
Not really. What we are seeing specifically is how vulnerable cold-war era soviet tanks are when used in isolation against scattered but entrenched enemy forced with modern man-portable anti-armour weapons. That tanks are vulnerable (even to weapons as simple as the soviet RPG-7) when maneuvering/operating in isolation is a lesson already learned by the US forces long ago in Afghanistan and Irak. Tanks need to be part of a combined force with infantry and other armour to provide support and cover against anti-tank weapons. Especially in (semi)urban environments.
I can say with certainty they won't be able to do EUV for a LONG time to come. I know very up close and personal what is involved in those systems and how close (or far) China is from being able to replicate that (The only part of the ASML NXE system I haven't seen at least part of the insides of is the optics system). I very strongly doubt China will have the technology to make for instance the multi-layer mirrors at the required accuracy need for the EUV optics within the next 20 years.
As for DUV litho, they're still about 10 years behind there too, amongst the challenges they still need to solve is laser control (dosimetry and beam shaping) and optics (They lack domestic manufacture of lenses and optics to the level of for example Zeiss). They might be able to make steps if they really start pushing and putting serious amounts of research into it (China currently isn't really pushing) but I doubt they'd be able to get to the levels of throughput and reliability at smaller nodes achieved by the likes of ASML.
Sadly for China they lack good homegrown lithography equipment and are still very dependent on suppliers outside of China (ASML, Nikon, Canon mainly afaik), which will be very careful about supplying equipment to Tsinghua Unigroup now and require lots of safeguards to make sure they get paid. Their native equipment is about 10 to 15 years behind the curve. Good enough for some things like memory chips or MCUs but can't keep up with the state of the art.
In KSP terms, an impact like that only raises the orbit on the other side of the planet (could be Apoapsis or periapsis if the impact is near one of the two), but leaves the altitude at the point of impact pretty much alone. If it's an angled impact (not entirely along the trajectory vector) then you'll get a shift in orbit around the impact point as if you did a (anti)normal or (anti)radial burn. This may or may not affect the periapsis or apoapsis slightly, but is unlikely to change it very much. Basically the analogy would be like having a MASSIVE engine on a very small rocket, and then doing a very short burn somewhere vaguely pro-grade-ish. You have to burn a lot in normal or radial directions to change the orbit very much (since your orbital vector is already 2 km/s long in the prograde direction) but a change in orbit apoapsis requires far less change.
Ofcourse if the collision is head-on then things could end up in a lower orbit too but head-on prangs have so far not happened afaik. Even the ASAT tests were oblique shots coming from the side.
There's some argument that we're already in a Kessler syndrome cascade, it's just a very slow process at the start. People imagine a single huge event like in "Gravity" but the reality is that a Kessler cascade would likely take several decades to develop and we might already be in one.
Completely and utterly pointless waste of capital and resources. Especially in areas with good road networks. It's only a matter of time until:
- Someone shoots one down
- Someone gets killed or injured by one of these stupid things
- One of these things interferes with emergency services (possibly by asshats ordering one to an unsafe location "fer shitz and gigglz")
My guideline when packing things for air travel is: Assume some will drop it from the cargo hold of a 777 to the tarmac. Because the reality won't be far off. Second is: assume someone will run over it with a bagage trolley. Whenever possible, delicate pieces should be carried on the carry-on/cabin bag. At least then you can punch whoever is trying to ram their "should obviously have been checked in" steamer trunk into an already full overhead bin.
I'm glad there's still people like "this Yablon bloke" around that have actual morals. Orders are orders is NOT a defense or excuse and Client/lawyer confidentiality is not a privilege without (well established in precedents) limits. And it doesn't even apply in this case.
"Not magically, but because university *taught them that*."
But like I just said, there is a good chance their university DIDN'T teach them that. Mine didn't. We got the basics of gears and cams, but things like non constant radius gears was never mentioned beyond MAYBE a vague picture reference. I wouldn't fault someone for not remembering something like that off the top of their head years later.
You sure it's Millennials you have a problem with? The YOUNGEST of them is now 26! The oldest are 41 and on their way to becoming grumpy old codgers themselves.
You make it sound as if every mechanical engineer should just magically know about the existence of non-constant radius gears. The problem is (and I can attest to this myself as a millennial engineer) the training we receive nowadays heavily emphasizes disciplines like motion control and dynamics and neglects purely mechanical solutions. Because the VAST majority of the work an engineer is likely to do now involves those disciplines. Mechanical gear train solutions are only used in a small subset of the work and the expectation is that if an engineer needs he it will learn that on the job from those with the knowledge they need. Since he went on to run an apparently successful business I am guessing he took a lot of lessons to heart. Just maybe working on mechanical drive lines was not his thing. It happens. (Personally l like that sort of thing, but it's probably also the reason I'll likely never set up any business and become a millionaire.)
The problem I've run into is that sometimes the gray-hairs might have the experience but their "holier than thou, I know it all and you're an idiot" attitude makes it impossible to learn from them. These people get left by the wayside because inevitably they DON'T know it all and there is stuff they can learn from us spring chickens (oh how I wish I was still a spring chicken)
Arbitration clauses don't necessarily have to be illegal, but it should be applicable to cases where it's more gray-scale issues (early termination in breach of contract, firing over workplace disputes from personalities clashing, that sort of thing). But claims of blatantly illegal behaviour like this, I agree. At the very least once ONE person can show funny business going on, anyone claiming the same should be allowed to go straight to court in a class-action.
" the case of Fukushima Daiichi's SFPs, they did heat up the cooling water to the point where the zirconium cladding of the fuel rods were no longer submerged, but instead got exposed to the hot steam."
The explosions in reactors 1 and 3 were directly from hydrogen created inside the reactor vessel itself. The explosion in the reactor building of unit 4 was likely only partially from hydrogen created in the SFP (since, as I linked above, the water level did not actually get low enough to expose the cladding, nor did the bundels get hot enough to cause extensive steam+zirconium hydrogen generation. More likely most of the hydrogen came from unit 3 through interconnects.
It did not exceed 90 degrees according to this article: https://atomicinsights.com/oak-ridge-researchers-prove-fukushima-unit-4-spent-fuel-pool-never-a-danger/ (Thus NOT BOILING) and I've read other articles stating that the temperature likely never exceeded 70 degrees.
Yes, the water level dropped for a multitude of reasons, evaporation being one of them but, I will repeat, there was no boiling!
"The radioactive fuel removed from Chernobyl following the 1986 disaster is set in large pools of water onsite to dissipate the heat it emits."
The spent fuel pools (SFP) at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant still holding water contain used fuel rod assemblies from reactors No. 1, No. 2 and No.3, which kept running until 1996, 1991 and 2000 respectively. Their latent heat will by now have dropped to levels where simple natural convection within the SFP will keep them cool enough to prevent boiling or melting from occuring. IIRC the spent fuel rods from Reactor No.4 (the one that went kaboom) were in the South Cooling Pond which is inside the building now covered by the New Safe Confinement dome and which has boiled/evaporated/drained dry following the incident (Here too, latent heat has dropped to levels where now natural air convection avoids meltdown.)
(Even the SFP at Fukushima during the disaster and blackout never actually boiled with MUCH fresher and hotter spent fuel rod assemblies in the pool, it's estimated it reached about 60 to 70 degrees C at max)
Most German nuke plants are currently in a cold-shut down phase (to allow residual heat and radiation to subside) but that is a relatively easy state to recover from. All of the infrastructure (generators, switch-yards, fuel handling equipment, etc) are still there. Once actual decommissioning starts these are the first things that get torn out and at that point recommissioning becomes a nightmare. At this time it would still be relatively straightforward for at least a few of them to get them back up and running. Basically: Inspect main reactor pressure vessel, inspect and refurb (if required) generators and turbines, refuel, reach criticality.
I also think you underestimate the difficulty in restarting a coal plant, those coal fired boilers are a nightmare on their own just to keep running, let alone restarting one once it's been down for some time. (plus all the same problems with electrical switch-yards, generator plants and equipment, fuel handling equipment etc.
"If lack of red tape was a big factor, they'd put their new fab in Africa or Central America"
The problem is you also need VERY reliable power supply (or be running your own powerplant), heaps and heaps of highly trained and educated workers, many millions of gallons/liters of water and easy access to take heavy machinery into and finished products out of your plant. Not many places in Africa or Central America could meet all those requirements.
I think the reason is simple: Lack of available workers.
You need loads of relatively well trained technical people to operate a fab. ASML and IMEC have already sucked the well dry in their respective region (and pulled in talent from all over the world). Putting a fab right next door might make it difficult to staff it. Apart from that the Netherlands is relatively expensive in terms of overall operating costs (power, taxes, logistics). Belgium has similar issues and heaps and heaps of red tape (what with having basically 3 interdependent but separate governments operating at the same time).
Also, since the universal rule is "don't talk to the police, because they see it as their job to get you to confess to everything" I have to wonder if the Chief of Police was actually on her side of it just felt that way while they talked in hopes of getting her to say something they could later use against her in court.
The reality of course is that the only reason the company is still afloat is Bob down in manufacturing still being awake about half the time (invariably about 2 years from retiring) and Jimmy in shipping actually getting stuff out the door every now and then by working around all the roadblocks.
Look up the video series (or the single long video) by Eudaimonia on Youtube where they break down "The Prince" and discuss some of the intentions and meanings in the text. Quite an interesting watch/listen.
Most of "The Prince" isn't all that applicable in modern day life, but there's certainly some lessons to be learned from it's overal philosophy. Even if it's just from the standpoint of viewing the world from a socio/psychopaths point of view for a change and how you might recognize and deal with such people.
(They also have a series on "The art of war" by Sun Tzu, equally interesting)
"could you figure this out" can be a lot of fun if you're actually given the time to put your head down and focus on figuring things out. Some smaller companies actually allow for this, some don't and keep you hopping and skipping between all kinds of "not actually my job but part of my job" task, never allowing to get a breather or really put the time in to something.
I guess company culture matters a lot in this. In my experience mid size (20-ish to 100, maybe 150) people is the sweetspot. Enough people to keep the "no overlap in the venn-diagram" jobs with people having more appropriate skillsets, not enough people to get hyper-specialization and keep those fun "off on a tangent" jobs. And small enough that you can actually know most people.
Similar experiences have led me to prefer mid size companies too. Very small companies in my experience require that you get along with everyone and require a very very broad mindset with the ability to switch between tasks rapidly (because you get a lot of "oh, could you figure this out" and "while you're at it, would you please do that". Very large corporations get too much room for deadwood to hide and management loses touch with whats happening on the work floor and how the company actually operates.
My usual quip is: "It starts going downhill once the company is large enough to have a Communications department, because that is the moment all effective communication seizes"
Yes, but actually No, or more precisely: it gets very complicated.
There is a mutual defence clause in the latest EU treaty (Lisbon, clause 42.7) but Sweden and Finland have both joined on the basis of being neutral and NOT being NATO members.The language of the article seems to make the efforts expected of a country contingent on their requirements based on NATO membership obligations:
Article 42.7 Lisbon Treaty (EU)
“If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. This shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States.
Commitments and cooperation in this area shall be consistent with commitments under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which, for those States which are members of it, remains the foundation of their collective defence and the forum for its implementation.”
Note the second part of that: "shall be consistent with commitments under the NATO". An attack on Finland or Sweden thus puts the whole thing into entirely murky territory, because other nations do not have any commitments under NATO to provide armed forces thus doing nothing would be consistent with those commitments.
Finland and Sweden aren't officially in NATO. While they are "friendly" with NATO forces there is no "mutual defense pact" with them and officially they are both independent and neutral (Finland considers itself to have equally close ties with Russia for instance iirc). An attack on them would thus not necessarily invoke a NATO response unless specifically requested bij either nation.
Those twitter recommendations for rappers are all about who's paying who and who's been determined to be "important". They don't care these people are way outside your circle of interest and that these are vapid idiots no-one should pay any attention to in the first place, let alone make them "a celebrity". It's one of the reasons I stay far far away from Twitter (and Facebook)
Having heard people like that baroness talk about how they performed in a job they'd utterly cocked up and should in the end be solely to blame for, they'd have you convinced they were out in the frontlines digging foxholes with the troops in an utterly unwinnable battle against overwhelming forced, sacrificing themselves heroically only for it not to matter in the end because they were betrayed by all the people around them dying. They did everything right but everything just lined up against them and there was nothing they could do. They were given bad advice, the project managers (they themselves appointed) turned out to all be incompetent. Their underlings could not read a calendar and missed all deadlines for no reason and in fact they couldn't read at all because they didn't follow the utterly incomprehensible project documentation. Etc, etc.
Reminds me of that Blackadder Goes Forth scene:
General Melchett : Are you looking forward to the big push?
Private Baldrick : No sir, I'm absolutely terrified.
General Melchett : The healthy humor of the honest tommy. Don't worry my boy, if you should falter, remember that Captain Darling and I are behind you.
Captain Blackadder : About thirty-five miles behind you.
If, as a politician all you've ever heard are the excuses and tall tales from the weaponized incompetents themselves you might believe they're a much better person and manager than they actually are. Which is why it's my firm belief that if you want to know how a person actually performs you should be talking to the people roughly 2 management layers below them. Because the layer directly below them will be appointed suckups with noses so brown and smelly they wouldn't know a garbage dump from a rose farm, layers further down will likely not have enough direct contact. But 2 layers down is the sweet spot for people who indirectly observe exactly what the "guy upstairs" does all day (or doesn't as the case may be).
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