V17's recent activity
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Comment on Britain mandates heat pumps and solar panels in new homes from 2028 in ~enviro
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Comment on Seth MacFarlane teases new life for ‘The Orville’: “Season 4 is written” in ~tv
V17 Link ParentHe didn't just say that it's written, he said that it is happening and it's just a matter of when. We'll only know for sure once (if) they start shooting, but surely that means something.He didn't just say that it's written, he said that it is happening and it's just a matter of when. We'll only know for sure once (if) they start shooting, but surely that means something.
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Comment on Seth MacFarlane teases new life for ‘The Orville’: “Season 4 is written” in ~tv
V17 Link ParentI thought S3 was good, perhaps not as good as S2, but much better than S1. I think it's crazy that they wrote an episode about an alien kid (de)transitioning well enough that I don't recall any...I thought S3 was good, perhaps not as good as S2, but much better than S1. I think it's crazy that they wrote an episode about an alien kid (de)transitioning well enough that I don't recall any culture war drama about it, for example. I definitely agree that as a whole it's closer to Voyager than to the holy trinity, but I'm entirely content with that.
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Comment on 'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy' to end with Season 2 in ~tv
V17 Link ParentThis is hard to judge objectively because we have the benefit of seeing the whole of TNG (or DS9 or Voyager) in retrospect and we don't see into the internal decisions to keep going or cancel...Ending a show after two seasons, well really after one, is kind of everything wrong with modern TV. I love TNG, but the first season was pretty mid. In today's world that show gets cancelled too. A show needing to be a hit in the first season with only 8-10 episodes almost guarantees failure and is not in Star Trek's favour in my opinion.
This is hard to judge objectively because we have the benefit of seeing the whole of TNG (or DS9 or Voyager) in retrospect and we don't see into the internal decisions to keep going or cancel shows (now or then), but from my point of view TNG and something like SFA just aren't the same thing.
TNG had some bad episodes at the beginning, Riker was kind of annoying before growing his beard and other characters weren't exactly settled yet either, but at the same time there were some brilliant episodes in the first season as well, the show clearly had lots of great ideas and there was a ton of interesting work already done even in things like set design - the bridge, the new computer interfaces, the visual language of the Enterprise as a whole.
All of those foundations were present in the first season and indicated the potential that TNG could reach if the characters and stories built upon those foundations settled successfully, and that was already realized in some of the excellent first season episodes. I don't see this kind of creative and no doubt hard earned foundations in most of the NuTrek shows. Maybe the execs would cancel the shows even if they were present, but from my point of view they aren't, so I don't see it as the same thing.
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Comment on 'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy' to end with Season 2 in ~tv
V17 LinkWell that's a relief, for some time I thought that the tastes of Trek fans just completely degenerated. Perhaps the recently announced (though with no date yet) season 4 of The Orville will unite...Well that's a relief, for some time I thought that the tastes of Trek fans just completely degenerated. Perhaps the recently announced (though with no date yet) season 4 of The Orville will unite us again.
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Comment on Quentin Tarantino and Sylvester Stallone are teaming for a 1930s-set series filming in black and white with “1930s cameras” in ~tv
V17 Link ParentNot an expert, but I think it has something to do with the fact that some specifics of color recording and representation in film still cannot be recreated digitally because different films have...It is a bit interesting that the camera is really the only thing that people care about still being analog, like no one really cares about sound being captured digitally, the film being edited digitally.
Not an expert, but I think it has something to do with the fact that some specifics of color recording and representation in film still cannot be recreated digitally because different films have different sensitivity curves for individual color channels. Once a color spectrum passes through that "input filter", information is lost and a different curve response cannot be faithfully recreated. This is not the case with analog vs digital sound.
Doesn't mean that film curves are necessarily the best, but they're different and nice, and film also automatically does other things that can be recreated digitally (like dynamic compression), but have to be done by hand, so it gives a slightly more finished image, the way I understand it.
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Comment on Angine de Poitrine - Sarniezz (2026) in ~music
V17 LinkThe KEXP video seems to have become viral. I discovered them a couple days ago through instagram and today my friend excitedly sent me the same video. What I really like about them is that they...The KEXP video seems to have become viral. I discovered them a couple days ago through instagram and today my friend excitedly sent me the same video.
What I really like about them is that they feel like an old avantgarde rock band that just skipped a few decades and then kept developing the genre in a contemporary way. A big part of their music and their costumes really feels like it came from a golden era of The Residents or something, but it's distinctive enough to feel new. Sent the video to my dad, who enjoys that kind of music and he loved it.
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Comment on Almost a third of Gen Z men agree a wife should obey her husband in ~life.men
V17 Link ParentI only went through the data briefly (it's linked in the article) and I don't have more time right now, so maybe I misunderstood, but that is what it seemed like.I only went through the data briefly (it's linked in the article) and I don't have more time right now, so maybe I misunderstood, but that is what it seemed like.
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Comment on Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability in ~tech
V17 Link ParentOfftopic, just sharing it as good news: probably thanks to the spread of right to repair laws relatively easily repairable USB-C ports are already available. I don't know of any devices that use...Those ports and/or USB-C ports have historically (at least in my experience supporting them) been a common failure point through wear and tear in an office environment, that used to require entire motherboard replacement.
Offtopic, just sharing it as good news: probably thanks to the spread of right to repair laws relatively easily repairable USB-C ports are already available. I don't know of any devices that use them yet (haven't really looked though) and they're kind of expensive for now, but both is likely to change soon since adoption of similar stuff will likely be mandatory. So in time this too will hopefully be a thing of the past.
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Comment on Almost a third of Gen Z men agree a wife should obey her husband in ~life.men
V17 Link ParentNo, that is not what is surprising. What is surprising is the graphs showing that the younger you are, the more of those conservative sentiments you have in general, meaning boomers are by far the...I mean at the risk of being crass is it really that surprising? I feel like it's once a week we have some study that shows gen z men being more conservative and gen z women being more progressive.
No, that is not what is surprising. What is surprising is the graphs showing that the younger you are, the more of those conservative sentiments you have in general, meaning boomers are by far the most progressive generation, gen X less so and millenials are almost as conservative as gen Z.
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Comment on Almost a third of Gen Z men agree a wife should obey her husband in ~life.men
V17 Link ParentSeems like it. At least some of the data exludes "don't know/not stated", which could distort the results by a lot. It doesn't even need to be a true hardening of agree/disagree sentiments in this...Seems like it. At least some of the data exludes "don't know/not stated", which could distort the results by a lot. It doesn't even need to be a true hardening of agree/disagree sentiments in this young generation, it could just be that young people may tend to have stronger opinions in general.
On top of that most of the data was collected online and naturally includes more people from urban/well connected groups. This likely selects for more educated and liberal boomers specifically because 60-80 years old people with more conservative views and/or from rural areas are surely much less likely to respond to online polls.
Some of the groups are also really small. They don't weight the results based on population I think, which means that countries with few respondents have the same weight as countries with a lot of respondents, but the boomer groups may be tiny with a lot of noise in them.
And speaking from experience with similar polls done in the EU, there are sometimes issues with translation that create pretty big biases, for example in this case it could be "wife should always obey the husband" translated to something like "wife should always respect or follow the husband", which is far less extreme. I remember something like this happening with polls on attitudes towards ethnic minorities, the wording was different enough in different languages that it made some countries look nonsensically bad.
Only the first two points would directly lead to what we're seeing in the graphs, but I'm not convinced by the quality of the data in general.
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Comment on Almost a third of Gen Z men agree a wife should obey her husband in ~life.men
V17 (edited )Link ParentWith a carefully selected sample 23k people easily is a big enough sample. But it really seems strange that literally all the metrics are continually increasing from boomers to gen Z. edit:...With a carefully selected sample 23k people easily is a big enough sample. But it really seems strange that literally all the metrics are continually increasing from boomers to gen Z.
edit: looking at the data, it is not a carefully selected representative sample.
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Comment on The Lobster programming language in ~comp
V17 LinkOh, it's the guy who made Cube and Sauerbraten, and worked on the first Far Cry engine among other things. I was always a bit disappointed by the unfulfilled potential of Cube and Sauerbraten as...Oh, it's the guy who made Cube and Sauerbraten, and worked on the first Far Cry engine among other things. I was always a bit disappointed by the unfulfilled potential of Cube and Sauerbraten as actual games, but engine-wise they seemed brilliant - original and well thought out. That makes any claims he makes about this project trustworthy for me.
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Comment on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei killed in Israeli and American joint strikes in ~society
V17 Link ParentLikely the most important update at this moment: Times of Israel now claims that Khamenei is confirmed dead. 1 2 -
Comment on You are being misled about renewable energy technology in ~enviro
V17 Link ParentI think Scandinavia is an exception in this regard. I'm from Czechia and our hydroelectric capacity (realized and potential, without negatively affecting too many other things) is very small....I think Scandinavia is an exception in this regard. I'm from Czechia and our hydroelectric capacity (realized and potential, without negatively affecting too many other things) is very small. Hydroelectric is great when it's available though.
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Comment on You are being misled about renewable energy technology in ~enviro
V17 LinkI finally watched the whole video and I'm really disappointed because on one hand he raises interesting and optimistic ideas and calculations, but on the other he completely glosses over the...I finally watched the whole video and I'm really disappointed because on one hand he raises interesting and optimistic ideas and calculations, but on the other he completely glosses over the biggest hurdle: energy storage, grid firming and in general the fact that PVE is currently not a panel cost problem, PVE is a grid infrastructure problem.
The energy grid needs to be firm, meaning we need to be able to provide energy close to 100% of the time. That is not a problem right now because solar adoption is low enough that any state/country with higher proportions of PVE that gets big seasonal drops in efficiency can either temporarily increase fossil production or buy energy from their neighbor, which is economically worth it because you only need to care about overnight storage for PVE plants. When everyone scales PVE up and this ceases to be a risk free option, the renewable energy cost multiplies.
Even overnight firming using battery storage, which is commonly done, increases the energy prices by about 2/3. That is still cheap enough to be competitive, but that's not the real issue, the real issue is seasonal firming: in a big part of Europe for example you can get 2 weeks with virtually no solar energy generation but peak energy consumption. The video mentions that PVE with storage is cheap but completely omits that this is only true for overnight storage, for seasonal storage not only is this completely wrong, but the demands are so huge that even space becomes a problem.
The cost calculations vary, but they seem to at least approach 100 USD/MWh for grids that are mostly but not entirely based on renewables, and climb higher for 100% renewable grids. This is despite the fact that since solar is so cheap, we can simply build more, overproduce during the summer and essentially throw out the energy so that we get more adequate coverage in the winter - even this approach has economical limits.
I am no fan of fossil fuels. I think that, economically, we can still rely on them for a long time, but both ecologically and politically they're a nightmare. But clearly solar still has strong limitations outside of very sunny areas and broad adoption over a certain percentage is going to increase energy costs, not reduce. Energy transport from sunny desert areas is great, but in a large capacity that's not cheap either and increased centralization brings some strategic issues as well - especially from a European point of view (a couple main VHV lines are easy sabotage targets).
Most of all I'm pissed that we have slept on nuclear innovation for decades.
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Comment on Tell me about your favourite web-based logic puzzles! in ~games
V17 LinkKonkr is technically a turn based strategy, but it's so simple that it really feels like a strategy-puzzle hybrid, at least in the small maps. If you know the old shareware game Slay, this is an...Konkr is technically a turn based strategy, but it's so simple that it really feels like a strategy-puzzle hybrid, at least in the small maps. If you know the old shareware game Slay, this is an updated clone that runs in the browser, works well on the phone and is free.
Not web based, but if you have an Android phone, try Tower of the Sorcerer. It's a port of a puzzle game from 1995 that's quite brilliant (literally started a whole genre of games) and can be played in small batches as well (save anywhere anytime), though it is somewhat addictive. It's basically about resource management - you spend health in fights with creatures that block the way, improve attack and defense in various ways to reduce the health spent and decide where to spend limited numbers of keys for locked doors. It has a few special items or monsters here and there, and the goal is to get through 50 floors - each of it is small enough to fit on a phone screen.
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Comment on Third spaces: What do we want, and how do we get them? in ~life
V17 LinkOur local hackerspace is surprisingly open. Honestly I somewhat preferred the time when it was smaller and a bit more gatekeepy as a result (not because we would exclude anybody but because if you...-
Our local hackerspace is surprisingly open. Honestly I somewhat preferred the time when it was smaller and a bit more gatekeepy as a result (not because we would exclude anybody but because if you didn't have an interesting project or something, you would not really have a motivation to join), because the people at that time did more interesting work on average, but it works okay as a larger community these days and it certainly is a place you can visit any time and between say 9 am to 3 am somebody's going to be there to chat. You don't need to be a member (and pay fees) to visit regularly, and we have a grill/community meet every friday. The only challenge is keeping it going by seeking out new members: over the years people naturally fall out because hackerspace projects often take a lot of time with no financial gain, so as you get a more demanding job and/or a family, you stop being active. Few people stay for 10+ years.
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Various music communities. This is quite demanding because you need to be able to make music in some way, but the rewards are immense. The jazz community in my town especially is great - lots of cool people, great music, and with jazz it's natural to play in more than one band, substitute for others etc. Even going to band practice of a mediocre student big band every week is often a great social opportunity. There's a vibrant swing dance scene as well, which is much less demanding with regards to skill and accepting to newbies, though it seems to have a smell of "you need to have the right opinions to be one of us" for some reason, much more than the musicians.
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Beer pubs. This is a bit less kosher since it generally involves drinking regularly, but Czechia is still managing to keep its beer culture, although covid did a number on cheap pubs. The essence is that we still have a lot of pubs that are reasonably cheap and that serve as a social equalizer, because the guests range from a homeless looking person to literally the president. It is not generally normalized to go alone and join random strangers, but there are pubs where it happens, and there are opportunities to do so in other pubs, like foreign language practice groups, tabletop game groups etc. I don't drink much these days, but I love our dirty pubs.
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Comment on What are your architectural hot takes? in ~design
V17 Link"Classic" or "old school" architecture line neoclassicism or art deco is superior in looks to almost everything built today, and even faux historic architecture that is often objectively imperfect..."Classic" or "old school" architecture line neoclassicism or art deco is superior in looks to almost everything built today, and even faux historic architecture that is often objectively imperfect in its representation of a time/style period and slightly kitchy is superior to most.
And a second part of this not so hot take is that most people agree with this and the other reason why other, worse architectural styles are being built (after money) is that most architects have a dislike of faux historical styles that is based on nothing but snobbery.
I can tell you for a fact that returning home each day into a flat in a beautiful 100 years old house with statues on its facade in a street full of such houses is awesome.
I do like well made brutalism though, nothing against that, I just think it's rare. The Japanese seem to be able to do it pretty well.
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Comment on Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube in ~tv
V17 Link ParentIt's region locked though, not working in Czechia, the previous ones were.It's region locked though, not working in Czechia, the previous ones were.
I think it's two reasons. First is that individual solar still costs a lot to purchase and install and efficiency varies a lot based on the amounts of sunlight you get (trees, landscape or taller buildings nearby) - centralized solar in appropriate locations is cheaper than individual rooftop solar.
Second is energy storage. Solar is incredibly cheap as a supplement, but it sucks as a main source because it's not constant, it's dependent on things we cannot influence, while the energy grid needs to be reliable and stable. And energy storage is an unsolved issue. Even just storing energy in batteries overnight almost doubles the cost per kWh (which is still a competitive price), seasonal storage during winter (lowest output + peak energy demand) is just completely financially unviable. Hydroelectric dams are much better for storage, but viable locations are limited. Currently countries with a lot of solar/wind energy production like Germany partially solve this issue by importing energy from other countries (they're the biggest importer in Europe), but that only works because not everyone has such a high proportion of non-firm sources.