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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • The cost of constructing and decommissioning power plants is important for sure; but it has nothing to do with energy density - which is what we were talking about before. It’s true that building solar panels takes energy and resources, and the panels don’t last indefinitely. So there is a lifecycle cost to using them. But the same is true for all forms of power generation.

    A common way to compare these costs is to look at the ‘payback time’ of each form of power generation. The payback time is the amount of time it would take for the power plant to produce enough energy to pay back the lifecycle costs required to build, operate, and decommission that type of plant. It’s basically how long it takes for the construction to have been ‘worth it’.

    In terms of payback time, wind power is by far the best; typically taking less than 1 year to pay itself off. Solar is pretty good too, but is highly dependent on where it is used. And nuclear… is not good on this measure. It takes decades for a nuclear power plant to pay itself off, because the plants are very expensive to build and decommission.

    Obviously there are other things to consider in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of power generation. But you’ve been talking about the cost of materials and construction as though it is a weakness of renewables, and it really really isn’t. That’s in fact one of their strengths, and a major weakness of nuclear. Its strange that you say nuclear is ‘insanity powerful for its cost’, because its cost is the greatest weakness of nuclear power. Its much cleaner than coal, but much more expensive, even though it uses so little fuel. And it is not cleaner than solar or wind, but it is still more expensive.

    Your point about land usage is a stronger point in favour of nuclear power… except that depending on what country you are talking about, that could easily swing the other way. Solar and wind do take up more space than nuclear, that’s for sure. But nuclear requires certain geological conditions for the safe operation of the plant, and the storage of waste. So depending on where you live, finding unused land suitable for renewables can be much easier than finding a suitable location for a nuclear power plant and waste containment facility.



  • What are you trying to say here? Are we still talking about fuel types here?

    Again, let me point out that solar power does not consume any fuel. The materials used to construct the solar panels are not having any power extracted from them. And secondly, nuclear power plants require construction materials too. … So I really don’t know what kind of comparison you are asking for here.










  • Yeah, and although it will be painful for Mozilla in the short term - it would be a good outcome. It was always bad that Mozilla’s main source of funding was from their most powerful competitor. It’s an obvious conflict of interest. And obvious way to skew decision making. … But that money is just so addictive.

    There will be some pretty severe withdrawal symptoms if the money gets taken away, but everyone will be healthier in the long run… unless the overpaid CEO continues to suck in all the remaining money and leaves nothing for the people actually doing the work. That would be bad. In that case, if the corporate structure chokes the company to death, I suppose we’d be hoping for Ladybird, or something like it to take Firefox’s place.





  • By default there is a shortcut to the terminal shortcut on task bar. From memory it is one of three default shortcuts. (File browser, Terminal, Firefox.) You can also find it by pressing the menu button (the ‘start menu’). From there the terminal has a prominent special position where it is always accessible. And if you don’t notice it there, you can always start typing to search for it - as with any other installed app. I find that if I type ‘t’, then “Terminal” is the top result; and obviously I can kept typing to eliminate the other results if I want.

    So if your difficulty in finding the terminal is your main complaint about about Mint… I’m not sure what to tell you. Do you want it to auto-launch or something?



  • blind3rdeye@lemm.eetoTechnology@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    27 days ago

    I’d say mastodon is a better choice, mostly so that you’re not beholden to yet another profit-focused tech corporation. I’m sure Bluesky is fine right now, but once they have their userbase they will shift to monetization - and you may regret letting yourself become entrenched in the world they control. They’re not doing it for your benefit.

    That said, I’ve come to understand that a lot of people kind of like having their content feed controlled by others. When they only see what they ask for, they get bored. So I’m expecting Bluesky to always be bigger than Mastodon.