• 0 Posts
  • 9 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

help-circle
  • Reducing dependence on their aging expensive nuclear power infrastructure has been a campaign promise of every French president for the last decade. Switzerland just voted via referendum to shutter their nuclear fleet, Germany has phased out nukes almost entirely.

    The reality of it is: They’re expensive. They generate waste which could theoretically be reused or even locked away in underground vaults, but it’s frequently just stored on site in reality. And whether the danger is real or perceived, no one wants to live next to a nuke, because if things go wrong, they go very wrong.

    Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see nukes make a comeback, I think they’re a valuable part of the energy mix. I actually know a guy in crypto who is trying to set up financially strained nuclear plants with on-site crypto miners to help them gain back some of that lost revenue from paying people to take power during light load periods. Which I think is a fantastic use case and a great way to make Bitcoin less environmentally destructive. There are other dispatchable loads that could fill the same niche (water desalinization, green hydrogen production).

    But the unfortunate reality is that nuclear plants are dying right now, and unless something big changes they’re going to be driven out of existence by wind and solar.



  • There are literally countries that went all in on nuclear power (france and switzerland come to mind), that now regret that play and are trying to transition away from them. Not for safety reasons, just because they are extremely expensive to operate and they become a money pit when renewables eat away at the base load that they were built to supply. You have nuclear plants paying people to take their power during the afternoons because they cant shut down quickly when the sun comes out.







  • endlessbeard@lemmy.mltoTechnology@lemmy.worldPhones should have FM radio again
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    39
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I’m going to chime in here to plug the ulefone power armor 18t I just got. I was pretty nervous to get a chinese phone as I’ve only had samsung and lg phones before, but this thing legit blows me away. Not only does it fully support every band that my carrier uses (rare even for phones made for the US market), but it has:

    • Replaceable battery that lasts 3+ days between recharges

    • Extremely rugged, IP69 waterproof and designed for underwater photography (physical shutter button and diving camera app)

    • 3.5mm jack, sd card slot, FM radio (with built in antenna - no headphones need to be plugged in), and an RGB notification led

    • Dimensity 900 chipset that beats a lot of the snapdragon chips on the market.

    • 12 fucking GB of RAM… yes, 12…

    • Wifi 6(ax)

    • Wireless charging and reverse charging

    • A fucking 60x magnification microscope? (Why???)

    • A FLIR thermal camera (Just because, why the fuck not)

    • Runs mostly bloat free stock android

    All that for under $600 (on aliexpress)

    The only thing it’s missing is an IR blaster, otherwise this is the best phone I’ve ever had, bar none. It is a chonky beast though, be warned.

    This has really changed my view on Chinese electronics, especially at a time when phones for the western world are losing features and functionality all the time (including stuff from South Korean). Turns out capitalism isn’t that great for innovation!