In other news today...
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@djls45 said in In other news today...:
@ben_lubar But people don't get coffee at Starbucks. They may some kind of caffeinated swill, but it's hardly coffee.
Surely there's at least one coffee drinker there occasionally, even if it's just for the wifi.
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@boomzilla The hands on the belts really help make this one.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
@Benjamin-Hall Or, more to the point, into useful energy. Imagine if this could be applied to waste heat...
Not how waste heat works. You've already used it to do work, and its entropy has increased accordingly. As such, it's not as viable for harvesting "useful energy" per the second law of thermodynamics.
Thermal power plants already do a very good job of extracting as much energy as they can because fuelling them is expensive (nuclear is the exception, and their thermal efficiencies are lower to show for it). Waste heat is literally unavoidable (see Carnot efficiency); you cannot spontaneously convert it all into useful work.
If that paramagnon mechanism is more efficient than any other given thermodynamic cycle, you want to replace that cycle rather than appending something to the end.
I welcome
ry concerning thermodynamics because it's certainly not my area of expertise
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@kazitor said in In other news today...:
replace that cycle
Build a new plant? Too much paperwork. And nukes can't even get permits anymore, so can't be replaced.
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Internet explorer still has 8% market share?
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@mott555 said in In other news today...:
@Vixen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnon
A magnon is a quasiparticle, a collective excitation of the electrons' spin structure in a crystal lattice.
Most
condensed-mattermodern physics sounds like Treknobabble.FTFY. And I like physics!
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@kazitor said in In other news today...:
Not how waste heat works. You've already used it to do work, and its entropy has increased accordingly. As such, it's not as viable for harvesting "useful energy" per the second law of thermodynamics.
As long as there's a temperature difference, there's a potential to harvest energy from it. The bigger the difference, the more you can get, and the cooler the heat sink, the more you can get.
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Still cleaning up after WWI
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
@kazitor said in In other news today...:
Not how waste heat works. You've already used it to do work, and its entropy has increased accordingly. As such, it's not as viable for harvesting "useful energy" per the second law of thermodynamics.
As long as there's a temperature difference, there's a potential to harvest energy from it. The bigger the difference, the more you can get, and the cooler the heat sink, the more you can get.
And in most scenarios where there's waste heat, you'd be hard-pressed to find a sink much cooler than 290 K. (inb4 @TimeBandit
) That leads to significant unavoidable inefficiencies at typical operating temperatures.
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I think @mott555 has escaped the pen.
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@Luhmann I am not surprised. Round here I believe they're still cleaning up an airplane bomb a month or so from WW2.
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@DogsB And if I bought a cheap Chinese one that was rated for 0.01 nanowatts, I'd get one with enough power to initiate nuclear fusion in Jupiter's atmosphere if I point it in that general direction.
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@PleegWat
Oh yeah we have those regularly tooAt least we didn't abandon some villages completely
We also have troubles with dumped ammunition in the North Sea (who would have thought)
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@Luhmann North Sea. IJssel Lake. Parts of the IJssel Lake which have since been drained.
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@Vixen I don't know, Tesla is pretty good at it as well. And they have even less actual truth in the marketing wankery.
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@Carnage said in In other news today...:
@Vixen I don't know, Tesla is pretty good at it as well. And they have even less actual truth in the marketing wankery.
That is debateable as to who uses less truth.
But since this is a civilized place, I think it best if we take that debate out to the Garage.
After you..... -holding front door open-
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When I was a kid, not far from my home, there was a little hill with trees on it. Well, 'hill' may be stretching it, it was around 3m high, with 4-5 trees. It was beside a road and a supermarket. Kids use to play there all the time.
And then, one day, it turned out that it was all made of abandoned artillery ammunition, with something like 10cm of dirt on top of it. Tons and tons of shells. In decomposed crates, loose and caught in tree roots.
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@MrL Damn. How'd they even dispose of that safely?
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@PleegWat By burying it in 10 cm of dirt and planting trees on it, obviously.
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@PleegWat said in In other news today...:
@MrL Damn. How'd they even dispose of that safely?
Like they always do. Army bomb squad excavated the site, loaded all of it on trucks and drove (slowly) to some military base for controlled explosions.
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@Vixen said in In other news today...:
Just another instance of Apple claiming to be the first to market with some new technology which is in fact an already existing and well established technology. All they did was slap a new buzzword on it and call it their invention.
They're not claiming that
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@loopback0 said in In other news today...:
@Vixen said in In other news today...:
Just another instance of Apple claiming to be the first to market with some new technology which is in fact an already existing and well established technology. All they did was slap a new buzzword on it and call it their invention.
They're not claiming that
It's a
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@DogsB said in In other news today...:
Internet explorer still has 8% market share?
Mostly enterprise I'd imagine.
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What is it with the British and trying to create a surveillance state?
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When the thing first came out I thought it was a missed opportunity that they didn't have this capability. Turns out they thought so too
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@DogsB said in In other news today...:
What is it with the British and trying to create a surveillance state?
Trying to create?
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@TimeBandit said in In other news today...:
@DogsB said in In other news today...:
What is it with the British and trying to create a surveillance state?
Trying to create?
Unless Facebook or Google get involved I honestly believe the UK government is too incompetent to do anything with it
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
https://rare.us/rare-life/food-and-drink/germany-hangover-illness/
Well, this is remarkable. No one ever called in sick for a hangover before.
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
/rare-life/food-and-drink/germany-hangover-illness/
From that same site:
https://rare.us/rare-animals/men-beards-have-more-bacteria-than-dog-fur/
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@jinpa said in In other news today...:
@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
https://rare.us/rare-life/food-and-drink/germany-hangover-illness/
Well, this is remarkable. No one ever called in sick for a hangover before.
Hi! It seems you forgot this:
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@TimeBandit TL;DR, needs a TL;DR…
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@LaoC said in In other news today...:
@PJH said in In other news today...:
Bloody government interventions!!!11
Here in Czechia all travel agencies have to have insurance against isolvency that covers the return trips in case the travel agency does end up in insolvency with some clients abroad. It avoids the need for government involvement and it generally reduces the impact, because the insurance company checks the status of the travel agency and if insolvency becomes likely, they'll cancel the insurance, forcing the travel agent to stop selling more tours while it still has enough money to pay for the outstanding ones. Does Britain not have anything similar?
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@Bulb Oh, they do have insurance. It's just not nearly enough to cover everybody.
That's why none of the customers would be prepared for this event even it they did read the endless legalese in the terms & conditions: they'd think they are insured.
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
Oh, they do have insurance. It's just not nearly enough to cover everybody.
What's such insurance for? The point of the insurance here is that it has to cover everybody (yes, it took some practical experience to set it up right, just fortunately with smaller travel agencies).
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@Mason_Wheeler Antibiotics don't detect anything...
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@PleegWat said in In other news today...:
@Luhmann I am not surprised. Round here I believe they're still cleaning up an airplane bomb a month or so from WW2.
This is how much of the stuff is still found in Laos:
They estimate about 80 million pieces of UXO
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@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@LaoC said in In other news today...:
@PJH said in In other news today...:
Bloody government interventions!!!11
Here in Czechia all travel agencies have to have insurance against isolvency
Government-mandated insurance, eh? Tsk.
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Boaty McBoatFace due to launch soon:
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@lolwhat Here, have a
. You know what it means.
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@LaoC said in In other news today...:
Government-mandated insurance, eh? Tsk.
Yes. Way better than having to have the government interfere when the shit hits the fan.
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@LaoC said in In other news today...:
Government-mandated insurance, eh? Tsk.
Well it would have to be government-mandated or otherwise no one would take it, considering that the insurance seemingly has the option to just drop the client when there's any risk they'd actually have to pay out:
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
the insurance company checks the status of the travel agency and if insolvency becomes likely, they'll cancel the insurance
I didn't think that's how insurance is supposed to work usually.
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Get that shite out to the garage!
In other horrors!
Honestly i just like the pic and headline.
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@ixvedeusi said in In other news today...:
@LaoC said in In other news today...:
Government-mandated insurance, eh? Tsk.
Well it would have to be government-mandated or otherwise no one would take it, considering that the insurance seemingly has the option to just drop the client when there's any risk they'd actually have to pay out:
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
the insurance company checks the status of the travel agency and if insolvency becomes likely, they'll cancel the insurance
I didn't think that's how insurance is supposed to work usually.
Basically, it is. It is probably the fairest way to restrict too risky activity, because competition between insurance companies leads to more realistic estimates of the actual risk than regulations.
Yes, the insurance is mandatory. It's a bit similar to how vehicle owner's insurance is mandatory.
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Anyone want a real, functional giant combat mecha?
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@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
Oh, they do have insurance. It's just not nearly enough to cover everybody.
What's such insurance for?
Presumably to pretend to fulfill legal requirements but really not paying enough for it to actually fulfill them.
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