ResplendentNautiloid's recent activity
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Comment on Looking for a recommendation similar to Uprooted by Naomi Novik in ~books
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Comment on Bill Willingham sends Fables into the public domain in ~comics
ResplendentNautiloid LinkCory Doctorow has a good article about this: https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/15/fairy-use-tales/#sampling-license Corporate mergers lead to huge corporations with internal chaos, that the...Cory Doctorow has a good article about this: https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/15/fairy-use-tales/#sampling-license
- Corporate mergers lead to huge corporations with internal chaos, that the corporations then exploit in ways that are always favourable to the corporation
DC – like so many other corporations – participated in an orgy of mergers as its sector devoured itself. The collapse of comics into a duopoly owned by studios from an oligopoly had profound implications for the entire sector
This performance of seriousness is belied by the behind-the-scenes chaos that these corporate shifts entail – think of the way that the banks that bought and sold our mortgages in the run-up to the 2008 crisis eventually lost the deeds to our houses, and then just pretended they were legally entitled to collect money from us every month
- Fables / Willingham was intentionally or unintentionally affected by this at DC
Willingham's hard-fought, unique deal with the publisher was atypical. A giant publisher realizes its efficiencies through standardized processes. Willingham's books didn't fit into that standard process, and so, repeatedly, the publisher broke its promises to him.
The company repeatedly – and conveniently – forgot that Willingham had the final say over the destiny of his books.
- And the public-domainification of Fables is a bad-ass, but muddy, response. It doesn't give the rights that most people might expect it to.
Willingham has since clarified that his public domain dedication means that the public can't reproduce the existing comics ... it's vanishingly unlikely that he owns the copyrights to the artwork created by other artists ... he may or may not have control over trademarks, from the Fables wordmark to any trademark interests in the character designs
When Willingham says he's releasing Fables into the public domain, it's not clear what he's releasing – and what is his to release.
Warners can (and may) release [their rabid attack lawyers] on you, even if you are likely to prevail in court, betting that you – like Willingham – won't have the resources to defend yourself.
- And some discussion about Creative Commons licensing, and how it might apply to Fables (the existing ones not well, but maybe a new one could be created)
It's a good article - I recommend reading all of it.
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Comment on Tim Berners-Lee 'sorry' for slashes (2009) in ~tech
ResplendentNautiloid Link ParentThere totally was! To begin with, it was necessary to specify http, because ftp and gopher were already important protocols, browsers supported all of them, and you couldn't just assume http. And...Meh, there was literally never a time when browsers could not technically expand abc.com to www.abc.com to http://abc.com to http://www.abc.com
There totally was!
To begin with, it was necessary to specify
http, becauseftpandgopherwere already important protocols, browsers supported all of them, and you couldn't just assume http. And it also mattered oncehttpsarrived.And it took a while for
wwwto be the generally accepted prefix. There were websites that hadwebin place ofwww, and http://info.cern.ch/ is still up!Tim B-L was apologizing for the
//, which is the bit that's are redundant in an http address. I doubt he'd apologize for the other parts of the address. -
Comment on Why investing in new nuclear plants is bad for the climate in ~enviro
ResplendentNautiloid Link ParentPages 17-18. "Battery capacity ranges from 7.6 to more than 279 𝐺𝑊h𝑒 ... and methanation ranges from 7 to 33.5 𝑇𝑊h". The median is about 17 TWh. I don't know the details of their model, but it's...Where do you get 17TWh from? I don't see that in the paper. For reference, France uses about 1.2 TWh/day. 17TWh of storage would be 2 full weeks assuming literally zero power generation anywhere, including the surrounding countries. Short of an apocalypse, I don't think that's reasonable.
Pages 17-18. "Battery capacity ranges from 7.6 to more than 279 𝐺𝑊h𝑒 ... and methanation ranges from 7 to 33.5 𝑇𝑊h". The median is about 17 TWh. I don't know the details of their model, but it's not actually that huge if you compare it to the levels of natural gas storage that already exist and would need to be replaced with non-fossil-fuel alternatives.
You say these options aren't great, but don't elaborate.
I'm not saying that large-scale energy storage is impossible, or that we won't have to do it. I am saying that it's hard, and the technologies involved are currently either too small scale (batteries, fun things like raising and dropping concrete blocks or compressed air), limited in available sites (hydro storage), have associated greenhouse gas risks (methanation), or are promising but scaling them up will be hard (hydrogen, and I don't know much about synthetic propane but it also seems to be mostly experimental at the moment). We need to do all of those things; as well as demand shaping and better interconnects; but none of it is a straightforward "we can easily build lots more of these using existing known technology". I think it's a false dichotomy to pit "cheap easy energy storage" (or "cheap renewables ignoring storage") against "expensive tricky nuclear power" - they're both hard!
They seem completely reasonable and doable, given we're already constructing them and this trend is growing
I'm afraid the paper you've linked is too expensive for me... I do recall reading about a hydrogen storage facility in Utah (https://www.powermag.com/massive-utah-hydrogen-storage-project-garners-finalized-504m-doe-loan-guarantee/) which will be 300 GWh once it's in operation, and will be the biggest yet. That's great - but it doesn't exist yet, we'll need lots more like that, and there are only so many salt mines available.
Even if I agree that some online nuclear might be a good idea (and I don't disagree) the amount doesn't need to be large.
I think we broadly agree on this. I am not arguing that nuclear can solve all our problems, or that it's generally better or cheaper than renewables. I am arguing against the "new nuclear is a costly and dangerous distraction" argument put forward in the linked paper. I think that some percentage of nuclear power is worthwhile to reduce the need for energy storage. In some areas, that doesn't require any new nuclear power plants, since there are sufficient modern plants already in existence; in some, it will.
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Comment on Why investing in new nuclear plants is bad for the climate in ~enviro
ResplendentNautiloid Link ParentLet me attempt to do so... A summary of the article is: nuclear is more expensive than renewables, will take too long to come online, and is not useful in a renewable-based grid because it...- Exemplary
You can be pro-nuclear, you should back those points up with substance though.
Let me attempt to do so...
A summary of the article is: nuclear is more expensive than renewables, will take too long to come online, and is not useful in a renewable-based grid because it provides baseload (poorly) rather than flexibility.
It’s true that nuclear power is more expensive per GW than wind and solar. Some of the specific arguments in the paper, though, are focussed on private financing, rather than overall cost. Insurance costs and higher interest rates due to risk of default are not relevant to governments. If nuclear power provides a net benefit, but is too expensive for private companies, then the state should be funding it. (I note that the paper explicitly declines to discuss China, the largest state funder of nuclear power)
So - does it provide a net benefit, even though it’s currently more expensive? I would argue yes - because it provides power when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. When the grid is primarily fossil fuels, like the US is currently, then this is mostly irrelevant - you can always generate more power from gas, and do it quickly and flexibly. When the grid becomes 100% non-fossil-fuel, then this is no longer possible.
This additional power can come from energy storage (e.g. pumped hydro, batteries, stored hydrogen, generated methane). According to their reference 12 (Shirizadeh et al, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3592447), France would need something like 17 TWh of storage. Haywood et al. in the original paper make a somewhat irrelevant argument that battery storage has become about ten times cheaper over the last decade. Fine - but France’s biggest battery storage facility is 61 MWh - suitable for grid stabilization, but many orders of magnitude less than what is needed for a country’s energy storage. Shirizadeh et al. propose that generated methane could be used for the bulk of this energy storage - but since methane is a considerably worse greenhouse gas than CO2 is, I’d be very reluctant to have it as part of a net-zero power infrastructure. And storing and using hydrogen as an alternative is hard and untested at significant scale - it leaks very easily, and is also a worse greenhouse gas than CO2. There are various options here, but none of them are great.
If you have nuclear power available, then the need for energy storage is reduced. This isn’t just the baseload argument that the paper dismisses, although obviously if a higher proportion of electricity is created from a non-variable source, then you need less energy storage to compensate for variability. But also, the paper doesn’t even mention using nuclear power for load-following (i.e. ramping it up and down as necessary to compensate for other power sources) even though that’s very useful for reducing storage requirements, and France is already doing it. In fact, the paper’s reference 13 (Shirizadeh and Quirion, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/am/pii/S0140988320303443) explicitly talks about using nuclear power for load-following in section 2.1.7, and even concludes in section 3.1.1 that using nuclear power for 10-30% of the share of power production is optimal! (Oh, and regarding the “nuclear power is less reliable because of climate change” - I haven’t read the referenced article because it’s behind a paywall, but the abstract estimates an annual energy loss from this of between 0.8% and 1.4%, which doesn’t seem to fundamentally change anything)
So, if nuclear power should be part of the optimal mix of non-fossil-fuel power generation, and governments should be investing in it - what about the “it takes too long to build” argument from the paper? It’s true that I don’t have much faith that a new nuclear power station could be built in 10 years or less, and so wouldn’t help with reaching our 2030 carbon reduction goals. But, I’m not confident that we’ll reach those goals anyway, and I’d rather have more non-fossil fuels becoming available, so hopefully we can hit the 2040, 2050, etc. goals.
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Comment on What board games have you played this week (to 26th June)? in ~games.tabletop
ResplendentNautiloid Link ParentI'm waiting for Nature Incarnate too! Which spirits are you looking forward to most? Scans of the aspects have been posted (https://imgur.com/a/LqtnKig), so I've played a few games with them - I...I'm waiting for Nature Incarnate too! Which spirits are you looking forward to most?
Scans of the aspects have been posted (https://imgur.com/a/LqtnKig), so I've played a few games with them - I just put the aspect card on a tablet as I played. Ocean Deeps was as much fun as I expected.
Apart from that, I played some Gizmos; and a first play of Paint the Roses on Board Game Arena. Found the latter a bit dry.
Lois McMaster Bujold's fantasy writing - particularly the Penric series beginning with Penric's Demon, also the Chalion series beginning with Curse of Chalion.
You may also like her later Vorkosigan books, although they are SF - particularly Captain Vorpatril's Alliance and A Civil Campaign. The earlier books are very good, but are much more "interesting military SF" than it sounds like you are lookng for.
T Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon is a good recommendation too. I liked the Clockwork Boys, Nettle and Bone, and The Raven and the Reindeer the best; I found Swordheart and the Saint of Steel books to be okay but a bit repetitive.