UmbralRaptor changed the topic of #kspacademia to: https://gist.github.com/pdn4kd/164b9b85435d87afbec0c3a7e69d3e6d | Dogs are cats. Spiders are cat interferometers. | Космизм сегодня! | Document well, for tomorrow you may get mauled by a ネコバス. | <UmbralRaptor> … one of the other grad students just compared me to nomal O_o | <ferram4> I shall beat my problems to death with an engineer.
<bofh>
egg: noted, okay this actually seems reasonable.
<bofh>
egg: I'm atually astonished that 1 part in a trillion was significant enough to warrant correction for.
<Qboid>
egg: Your options are: nomal, zzz, leekspin. My choice: leekspin
<egg>
;choose nomal|zzz|leekspin
<kmath>
egg: nomal
<egg>
raptorchoose nomal|zzz|leekspin
<UmbralRaptor>
egg: nomal
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<egg>
bofh: also time is confusing
<egg>
especially if you start considering historical timescales and their continuities (e.g. EAL, but also ephemeris time and other pre-atomic stuff, as well as changing definitions of TT or TDB)
<egg>
UmbralRaptor: so do I remember what is happening in starwatch of oxen,
<egg>
there are elves
<egg>
oh right a bunch of academics died recently, I'm still shuffling the tombs around
<UmbralRaptor>
Are they holding a colloquium?
<egg>
the dead academics? possibly
<UmbralRaptor>
Probably an interminable series of talks
<kmath>
<dakami> would whoever had THE PLAGUE in their 2017 predictions please stand up https://t.co/GH9VYoPwu0
<bofh>
UmbralRaptor: yep, it got really lucky on the spawn point.
<Ellied>
I took apart an Amazon Dash button with my friend yesterday
<Ellied>
it's got such an overpowered MCU in it. Atmel SAM G55J. 32-bit Cortex-M4, 120 MHz.
<Ellied>
512 kB embedded flash, but it uses an external BGA flash chip to actually store what is presumably info on how to order doritos
<Ellied>
wifi AND ble, of course. and a non-replaceable AAA battery. it isn't even a coin cell, it would be trivial to replace it if they'd used screws a little differently and let you open it up
<Ellied>
or like, reprogram it to order something besides dorites
<bofh>
120MHz? goddamn, my TI Dash Button from ~2007 used a fucking 8-bit AVR.
<Ellied>
wait, TI dash button?
<bofh>
granted that was possible due to TI for the longest damn time ACTUALLY HAVING A BBS YOU COULD *DIAL INTO* AND ORDER PARTS FROM.
<bofh>
so I wired and programmed together an AVR so that when you pressed a button, it would push commands over serial to a US Robotics modem that would get it to run thru a free sample of 5 of whatever the predecessor to the OPA2134 was to my address.
<bofh>
push button receev op-amps.
<bofh>
I *think* they took that down in 2009?
<bofh>
also non-replaceable AAA? amazing.
<bofh>
I wonder if reflashing it is possible. There's got to be JTAG on that MCU, but it's prolly not exposed in any way.
<Ellied>
I already unsoldered it from the board just to practice my first hot-air SMD unsoldering
<Ellied>
could probably get it onto a breakout.
<Ellied>
assuming I didn't wreck it, of course, but I don't think I did.
<bofh>
ehh, prolly not worth it at all. the BGA flash might be mildly interesting OTOH for those who care about reverse-engineering amazon's backend (i.e. not me)
<Ellied>
me either
<Ellied>
oh, and this was strange - it's surrounded by insulation inside the device. Rubber seal keeping all the pins hidden, sticky pad over the top
<Ellied>
what's the reasoning for that?
<bofh>
waterproofing?
<Ellied>
the thing's already waterproof, the casing is sonic welded together and the button is a rubber membrane
<Ellied>
and no other chips are protected like that
<bofh>
I have no idea then.
<bofh>
also fuck ultrasonic welding. it's impossible to take apart cleanly.
<Ellied>
yup. we had to crush it with channellocks.
<bofh>
not surprised in the slightest.
<bofh>
(if you think that's fun, try disassembling laptop batteries. similar levels of bullshit)
<Ellied>
god yeah
<Ellied>
god I wish Debian Testing would hurry up and finish upgrading Plasma. They've got us on some weird half-updated state where right-clicking task manager entries doesn't even do anything at all.
<Ellied>
fucking hell, the bug is closed with "fixed by something" because it magically stopped happening in some version
<kmath>
<connor_hannigan> As a student, the most comforting words you'll ever hear are "I haven't started either"
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<awang>
UmbralRaptor: The TA's nightmare :P
* UmbralRaptor
is an RA instead of a TA this semester, so…
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<soundnfury>
Raptor Assistant?
<UmbralRaptor>
Sure, let's go with that.
<UmbralRaptor>
"There were at various points in time about half a dozen systems of electromagnetic units in use, most based on the CGS system."
<UmbralRaptor>
AAAAAAAAA
<UmbralRaptor>
"(This warning is a special aspect of electromagnetism units in CGS. By contrast, for example, it is always correct to replace "1 m" with "100 cm" within an equation or formula.)"
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<awang>
egg: Have you tried messing around with C++ Concepts and/or ranges?
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<Qboid>
1d 12h 0m 0s left to event #11: 「みちびき4号機」／H-IIAロケット36号機 [at 2017-10-09 22:00:00]. Say '!kountdown 11' for details
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<egg>
!seen whitequark
<Qboid>
egg: I last saw whitequark on [06.10.2017 22:01:56] in #kspacademia saying: "lol"
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<egg>
Iskierka: yeah hexchat's behaviour with respect to copy-paste and input methods in general is pissing me off
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<icefire>
hexchats IME input for 日本語 drives me nuts
<icefire>
ubuntu's terminal is much better. Which I find ironic
<bofh>
OH: "I Have No Orthogonal Basis And I Must Project"
<UmbralRaptor>
bofh: 19 chapters to be able to draw a triangle D:
<APlayer>
Ugh, the integrator's still not working and I have no idea what I may have screwed up
<APlayer>
The function f(t, Y) works fine, the k parameters are calculated correctly and Y_n+1 = Y_n + h * (sum stuff) is correct as well
<APlayer>
Yet the numbers are wrong
<APlayer>
Uh what
<APlayer>
Now I switched from the regular RK4 method to the 3/8 rule and it seems fine?
<APlayer>
@egg, others: I've been wondering for some time - for near-perfect precision, wouldn't it make sense to run integrators with decreasing time step (or some other variable-accuracy algorithm with increasing accuracy) and see what number it converges to?
<APlayer>
Say, with time step 60 sec, 45 sec, 30 sec and 15 sec, and then extrapolate a curve from that
<UmbralRaptor>
yay
<UmbralRaptor>
also, maybe. But watch out for rounding error.
<UmbralRaptor>
"The customary system was championed by the U.S.-based International Institute for Preserving and Perfecting Weights and Measures in the late 19th century. Advocates of the customary system saw the French Revolutionary, or metric, system as atheistic."
<UmbralRaptor>
(Apparently there was a bunch of pyramid pseudoscience also involved)
<UmbralRaptor>
APlayer: demonstration of feline superfluidity.
<icefire>
stuck in reverse gear
<APlayer>
UmbralRaptor: That's a Schroedinger Condensate
<UmbralRaptor>
hah
<Ellied>
;mission
<kmath>
Ellied: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to force the Secretary to disavow any knowledge of your actions. You are now sending a rescue mission for your previous three rescue missions.
<bofh>
kmath: this sounds like a mission straight out of Paranoia.
<egg>
;miſſion
<kmath>
egg: You try to use .mangle to make more sense of your assigned mission. You lose your crew somewhere in the Dark Anthropic Zone.
<egg>
!wpn bofh
* Qboid
gives bofh a pentode
<icefire>
!u ſ
<Qboid>
U+017F LATIN SMALL LETTER LONG S (ſ)
<icefire>
im surprised kmath picked that up?
<Ellied>
;miſsion
<kmath>
Ellied: You convert the LV-N to burn Xenon. suclearnub explodes, emitting all kinds of deadly missiles.
<Ellied>
Nice
<bofh>
egg: already have plenty of pentodes, but thanks.
<egg>
bofh: an ampliop counts as a pentode right, :-p
<Ellied>
so the firefox 57 beta is actually pretty impressive
<Ellied>
so far I've not noticed any problems and it seems quite fast
<egg>
uh I guess it's opamp in english
<egg>
(ampliop is french)
<icefire>
does it have FIDO u2f yet
<bofh>
egg: sorta I guess :P
<Ellied>
op amps aren't discrete devices like diodes or triodes/transistors, so that sounds dubious.
<bofh>
yeah, but vacuum tubes aren't necessarily "discrete" devices either.
<bofh>
I mean sure a typical triode maps fairly well into a JFET, but like take for instance a pentagrid converter. You basically need an entire Gilbert Cell to replace that (MC1496 or equivalent IC).
<Ellied>
hmm
<bofh>
s/into/onto/
<Qboid>
bofh meant to say: I mean sure a typical triode maps fairly well onto a JFET, but like take for instance a pentagrid converter. You basically need an entire Gilbert Cell to replace that (MC1496 or equivalent IC).
<egg>
bofh: Ellied: also that joke about, e.g., a 8087 being a tettaracontode
<Ellied>
heh
<Ellied>
what's the prefix for 64?
<egg>
Ellied: that would give you an hexecontatettarode or something like that?
<egg>
or maybe hexacontatetrode simply
<Ellied>
great, that's what the MCU in an Amazon Dash button is.
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<egg>
!wpn whitequark
* Qboid
gives whitequark an intensive burnt DIAC
<whitequark>
wow harsh
<egg>
whitequark: how are the cats btw
<whitequark>
fine mostly! порошок annoys котя too much
<whitequark>
we're trying to catch another kitten but no luck yet
<whitequark>
too old to be easily caught and too young to be tame enough
<egg>
why are you looking for an other kitten?
<egg>
(control cats? :-p)
<whitequark>
someone for the kitten to play with
<egg>
aaah
<whitequark>
another housecat, unlike котя
<egg>
right, that makes sense
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<APlayer>
whitequark: What country are you from?
<SnoopJeDi>
so uh, Trinity was actually a little underwhelming. Too many people snapping pictures with the obelisk to really sit quietly with the thoughts.
<whitequark>
APlayer: well, I work and live in Hong Kong most of the time.
<APlayer>
whitequark: So that's a place where there are stray cats and it's okay to just catch and keep them?
<SnoopJeDi>
An unusual(?) number of people were also taking pictures of the (super well known and how have you not seen this if you're even here) photos hung along the fence of the detonation and persons involved. Puzzling.
<whitequark>
this was happening not in Hong Kong
<whitequark>
but yes, anywhere there are stray cats I will just catch and keep them
<whitequark>
why the fuck not
<SnoopJeDi>
what does "stray" signify here
<SnoopJeDi>
obviously-not-cared-for?
<whitequark>
yeah
<whitequark>
possibly fed but not anything more
<whitequark>
i.e. likely infested with all sorts of parasites, not vaccinated or chipped, not taken to the vet if anything happens, not sterilized...
<bofh>
SnoopJeDi: honestly in the future I'd recommend skipping that and hitting up the local VLA dish if you can.
<SnoopJeDi>
It was still worth the long haul for the trip-as-a-whole, but I think I'd let my expectations for epiphany get a little unrealistic (I'm gonna blame the total elcipse for this)
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<bofh>
okay, touché
<SnoopJeDi>
...I was also a bit disappointed the author they had answering historical questions did not know about Dan Hornig babysitting the bomb overnight :|
<bofh>
wait, fucking really?
<SnoopJeDi>
the guy was nice though and they had a small publication about Trinitite that had *fascinating* photos in it
<SnoopJeDi>
yea, I was shocked. "I don't know of anyone babysitting the bomb" uhhhhhhhhh
<SnoopJeDi>
it's too amazing of a story to just forget so I assume he just didn't have a lot of interest in the x-unit
<SnoopJeDi>
(I brought it up because I was trying to imagine looking out at the lightning and didn't know quite in which direction to look)
<SnoopJeDi>
Nice guy, though. Seems like maybe he's more about the history of White Sands itself than the boomy bits
<SnoopJeDi>
and he seemed relieved to not be answering questions about "oh wow the fat man core was the size of this softball?" or "is there radiation here?" which are understandable but surely get old
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<bofh>
Yeah, like I imagine that's what every third tourist asks to the point where I'd prolly record canned responses for those situations (and this is why I am not a tour guide).
<bofh>
also Trinitite is fascinating to look at.
<bofh>
(I kinda want a piece but at the same time I think it believes in public exhibits for the obvious reasons of limited supply and enormous symbolic value)
<bofh>
I'll settle for some old-style Uranium Oxide FiestaWare cookware. :P
<SnoopJeDi>
hehe
<SnoopJeDi>
I hope I can find a copy of that manuscript, but it looks like it may be something like $30 for a barely-bound Kinko's sort of copy :/
<SnoopJeDi>
it has *amazing* photos of various specimens though, not just trinitite. Pieces of lead and copper in particular stand out in my memory
<SnoopJeDi>
"Trinitite: The Atomic Age Mineral" by W.M. Kolb, btw
<bofh>
ooh.
<bofh>
so it's prolly up on libgen/sci-hub, sec.
<SnoopJeDi>
it has other nice photos as well, not just minerology
<SnoopJeDi>
In particular some annotated photos from the time-series explosion that I think I hadn't seen before, but they're probably public domain imagery
<SnoopJeDi>
barely related: Dan Carlin's "Destroyer of Worlds" is still a *phenomenal* listen. Put that on for 6 of the ~12 hour drive back
<SnoopJeDi>
Much more about the politics, but I'd missed so much on my first listen (because a 6 hour podcast is insane)
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<bofh>
Reminds me, the radium clock dial I have is faded to almost-nothingness at this point, but I'm not sure that Ra-226 is something that I can either get easily or that I want to reapply myself.
<SnoopJeDi>
heh, pretty fair
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<bofh>
like I doubt it's that hazardous as long as I don't ingest/inhale it, but again, it's basically impossible for an individual to acquire (and honestly for good reason).
<SnoopJeDi>
yea I think I'd be rather comfortable handling it BUT ALSO things that have been brushed by history in quite that way are just...spooky.
<bofh>
agreed.
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<APlayer>
whitequark: Well, there are enough reasons why not
<whitequark>
such as?...
<SnoopJeDi>
oh man, I'd forgotten all about the canceled Houston BAHFest.
<APlayer>
"<whitequark> i.e. likely infested with all sorts of parasites, not vaccinated or chipped"
<APlayer>
May have all sorts of diseases, too
<APlayer>
May actually be someone's cat, even if they don't care for it
<APlayer>
If that is not enough yet, I may think of more reasons, this is all I can name off the top of my head
<egg|phone|egg>
!Wpn whitequark
* Qboid
gives whitequark a RFC 2324-compliant fountain pen
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<APlayer>
!wpn egg
* Qboid
gives egg an Akkadian pigeon
<APlayer>
!wpn ferram4
* Qboid
gives ferram4 an irrotational standard power supply with a submersion attachment
<bofh>
!wpn egg
* Qboid
gives egg a submillimeter TRIAC which vaguely resembles a dynamo
<kmath>
<ben_rosenbaum> @JustineLavaworm @Lexialex ...if you wanted, from first principles, to design a broken & dangerous group of humans,… https://t.co/HqodgB7qwp
<UmbralRaptor>
^
<egg>
!wpn bofh
* Qboid
gives bofh an instability with a matrix attachment
<egg>
!wpn UmbralRaptor
* Qboid
gives UmbralRaptor a jellied submillimeter NaN
<UmbralRaptor>
egg: Please do not stab people with documentation.
<egg>
UmbralRaptor: well I'll be writing documentation for the catbus at work soon :-p
<UmbralRaptor>
\o/
<whitequark>
APlayer: if they don't care for it they don't get to keep it, duh
<whitequark>
like if ur cat has fleas and ticks all over i'm not gonna hand it over back to you no matter whether it's stray or not
<whitequark>
diseases, sure? that's what vets are for?
<APlayer>
whitequark: Perhaps our opinions differ here. I'd gladly feed stray cats (although I realise that they will come with friends the next day... and with friends friends after that.. and so on) but I would most likely not adopt them.
<whitequark>
I have the exact opposite view
<Iskierka>
if looking for a housecat, aren't strays a really bad starting point?
<whitequark>
feeding stray animals is doing everyone a disservice
<APlayer>
Why would that be?
<APlayer>
"Feeding" means occasionally taking out a bowl or two
<Iskierka>
ensuring they survive, and therefore breed and spread given strays are unlikely to be spayed
<whitequark>
Iskierka: I don't think so
<whitequark>
strays tend to be a) with no maladaptations like genetic disorders in "purebred" cats
<whitequark>
b) really damn smart
<whitequark>
I want no cat that will die under a car because of its own stupidity
<APlayer>
That sounds to me like saying homeless children tend to be genetically healthier and smarter than... "normal" (please don't kill me, you know what I mean :P) children
<SnoopJeDi>
survivorship \o/
<whitequark>
APlayer: that's not untrue
<Iskierka>
Cats have been bred for much less time than dogs so the only maladaptation I'm aware of are flat-faced cats. The rest are still nearly-wild and the "breed" is just a dominant pattern that survived
<Iskierka>
But what I meant is more that aside from siamese and flat-faced, it's only like the past couple hundred years at most that there's been any serious attempt to breed cats for some trait, versus several thousand for dogs. So a "breed" like tabby is literally just a pattern and has little connection with behaviour or intelligence or such
<Iskierka>
there's some breeds that can be identified geographically that do have more pronounced traits like norweigan forest or maine coon, but they also are largely wild and therefore have evolved traits more than anything else
<Iskierka>
I'd personally not go to a breeder to avoid helping the trend, but I'd be fine with rescues rather than strays (though I don't see strays around here anyway)
<whitequark>
idgi
<whitequark>
strays are like... just there
<Iskierka>
Not here, is more the point :p
<whitequark>
one minute walk from my apartment
<whitequark>
ah
<Iskierka>
maybe I'd have more thought on strays if there were more
<whitequark>
well that explains
<whitequark>
there's a loooooot of strays in moscow
<whitequark>
i think if i said the average house has 3-5 that wouldn't be wrong
<Iskierka>
I think at most there's maybe 2/3 of a cat per house on this street and none are stray insofar as not being taken care of
<Iskierka>
there's one or two that possibly don't stick to a house but they're clearly clean and healthy
<Iskierka>
but that does fit with moscow from like forever, given Laika and the other space dog's stories
<SnoopJeDi>
heh, author of that manuscript got back to me bofh, $20 + S/H (which is kinda shit for ~130 pp but otoh it's dense content so...), but he also advertised some trinitite for sale
<bofh>
SnoopJeDi: ooh, nice, how much for the trinitite?
<SnoopJeDi>
considering buying one as a gift for a friend who mumbled that he should buy some when I said I was going out there
<bofh>
huh that is *far* cheaper than I expected.
<bofh>
def. going to get some if it's actually that common.
<SnoopJeDi>
I think people charge a little more "market" particularly where the ripoffs are
<SnoopJeDi>
(there's a place on hwy 380 that advertises twice that price and is probably just blowtorched)
<SnoopJeDi>
part of what drew me to the book was that it has some photos of trinitite being collected
<Ellied>
how radioactive is it? enough to detect with a geiger counter?
<SnoopJeDi>
the ones he lists are 200-400+ cpm with a 2" tube yea
<Ellied>
wow
<SnoopJeDi>
well, <200 as well
<SnoopJeDi>
you definitely get plenty of counts if you have some of the green stuff, they haul some out for public show and tell every time they have the open house
<SnoopJeDi>
(and delightfully the table where I found this book had a magnifying glass to accompany the handful of specimens they had!)
<SnoopJeDi>
kinda funny, a *lot* of people spent the majority of their time in the little fenced off site area looking down at the ground trying to find some
<Ellied>
I might have to keep mine away from school if I got some, given how much security a sealed ~60 cpm source is kept under around here.
<Ellied>
(lead-lined safe with one of those dials that goes up to a few hundred)
<SnoopJeDi>
I got academic-shamed a little at the tent with the counters, some guy was asking about Becquerel vs. Curie vs. etc. and I said something or other about how there are lots of units with subtle differences
<bofh>
heh.
<SnoopJeDi>
The guy running the thing quoted Einstein's "never memorize what you can look up" at me half-jokingly
<bofh>
There are, and there's not really an easy way to translate between specific activity and exposure.
<bofh>
Ellied: that's for a ~60cpm source?! what nuclide, anyhow?
<SnoopJeDi>
yea, that was actually the first problem I grappled with when I joined my lab
<Ellied>
bofh: I forget. something with a 5-year half-life that's probably 10-20 years old.
<SnoopJeDi>
we wanted to run out a possible future of radiotoxicity of existing spent fuel stores in the "nuclear energy stops tomorrow", "things keep going about the same" and "we get ADS" scenarios
<SnoopJeDi>
(spoiler alert: the official DOE position is pants-on-head stupid and involves timescales about as long as the *species* let alone civilization)
<SnoopJeDi>
((but you could completely eliminate the problem in a few generations without being particularly imaginative))
<bofh>
ugh. once you've passed 4-5 half lives of Cs-137/Sr-90 you're basically good.
<bofh>
and you can often separate those out via salt transfer+dissolution
<SnoopJeDi>
I consider myself pretty pessimistic about "this won't get into the water table" and the like
<Iskierka>
Never memorise what you're going to use so rarely looking it up is a more efficient use of time by the xkcd automation chart
<SnoopJeDi>
but it's a fair point that delivery/exposure mechanism matters a *lot*
<Ellied>
we have a bunch of really old tiny sealed radioisotope disks in the safe that we pull out for experimental physics class. The only ones that are still any good are the gamma emitters that aren't very useful for the metal-disk attenuation demo because they go right through most of the materials without meaningful reduction and only a few of the disks are lead.
<bofh>
everything else is either so short-lived it'll decay to essentially nothing within 5 years, or so long-lived and weak that it's honestly barely worth caring about. I mean sure, I wouldn't eat it (well Ru-107 I wouldn't eat, but not for reasons of radioactivity), but it's perfectly safe at this point to inject into deep salt strata.
<SnoopJeDi>
Am-241 was the big pisser at the time IIRC but yea the point that FPs are really your chief concern is a very valid one
<SnoopJeDi>
(and they are still a concern in the ADS scheme)
<bofh>
yeah, Am-241 is another really fucking annoying one.
<Iskierka>
Can you use multiple gamma emitters to reduce each other by having them adjacent and occluded? (assuming they're good enough to be relevant)
<Iskierka>
@Ellied
<SnoopJeDi>
bofh, the one I identified with the most at the time was Pu-239 actually
<SnoopJeDi>
Am-241/Pu-239 are our principal fuels and "you burn up bomb-making stuff" is a decent pitch to some
<bofh>
SnoopJeDi: so like Pu-239 is fissile, why in the hell would you put that into *waste*? :P
<SnoopJeDi>
the w-word is a sure ticket to get DOE to flat out ignore you :P
<SnoopJeDi>
("we're not wasteful! you're wasteful! lah lah lah we can't hear you!!")
<bofh>
my point being if you have Pu-239 on hand and *aren't* using it for a practical use, what is wrong with your process? :P
<bofh>
So I'm curious what you mean by the middle of those.
<SnoopJeDi>
well, middle one isn't a big deal for THAT specifically, I just love shitting on nuke eng
<bofh>
rofl
<SnoopJeDi>
the fuel pins just are not at all up to the task of containing what's in the pin for the kind of timescale involved
<SnoopJeDi>
ARPA-E I think had some solicitation very very specific to trying to solve that issue
<SnoopJeDi>
they're certainly not just "shove that stuff into any ol' container" level of engineering, but neutron damage is a helluva drug
<bofh>
what timescales are we talking about here? the absurd "as long as the species survives " one?
<bofh>
True.
<SnoopJeDi>
embrittlement is a problem in timescales measured in decades
<SnoopJeDi>
like, say you wanna be SUPER generous to DOE and take them at face value
<SnoopJeDi>
just moving those pins to a site? they are gonna fall apart like papier mâché
<bofh>
Well that's hardly surprising at all.
<SnoopJeDi>
well, maybe I'm stretching, there. it's been years since I looked and even then I didn't get too heavily involved (I was more fluid flow/neutronics of our core)
<SnoopJeDi>
but yea like go figure, if you irradiate this stuff with slow-ass thermal neutrons with high dE/dx for YEARS it turns out that's not awesome for it
<bofh>
Like, neutron embrittlement over decades would essentially turn the cladding into something resembling highly porous gypsum.
<SnoopJeDi>
our local culture is "confinement is a non-starter"
<SnoopJeDi>
which is almost a poison pill, taking things out of pins is considered Truly Evil by those who have their heads (literally) in the sand
<SnoopJeDi>
but neutron spectrum is really the crux of the whole thing
<SnoopJeDi>
thermal neutrons will never not-suck
<SnoopJeDi>
you will always be pissing away fissile material and breeding transuranics
<SnoopJeDi>
doesn't matter what the shitty nuclear engineering meme of the decade is, you cannae change the laws of σ
* SnoopJeDi
glances at pebble-bed
<SnoopJeDi>
idk, I lost whatever respect I had for the field when I concluded that the AP1000 is basically the Mark I reactor but someone put a big barrel of water on top of it. 40 years of "progress"
<Iskierka>
with the embrittlement, sounds like someone just didn't fully think through how you're going to refuel a reactor long-term and give you a way to push the fuel rod back out from the bottom?
<SnoopJeDi>
well, they're plenty strong to move to the on-site pool, and that's about as far as anyone ever bothered to think
<Iskierka>
I suppose this is why Sellafield does the vitrification in-situ to minimise transport
<SnoopJeDi>
not familiar, but very possibly
<bofh>
Oh, probably. Since the vitrification is somewhat more resistant to embrittlement compared to metallic cladding.
<SnoopJeDi>
the modularity of fuel pins is a great incentive, it just...also sucks for like every other reason?
<Iskierka>
After PUREX they mix it with sugar and then calcinate the waste, then feed it into a furnace with glass to make a very impure (by waste-%) solid that should remain resistant to just about everything for like several thousand years
<bofh>
thermal neutrons are awful, like I get their allure over the alternatives, but they simply will suck.
<Iskierka>
then they seal it in steel just to be sure and lock it away
<SnoopJeDi>
yea I definitely don't mean to criticize where the technology came from
<SnoopJeDi>
all the decisions are SUPER intuitive and pretty sane...until you run them out for the better part of a century with no technological process
<SnoopJeDi>
progress*
<SnoopJeDi>
bad incentives all around, particularly once popular opinion got its stupid mitts on the problem
<bofh>
I'm curious how much of that is political/social resistance to anything of this sort, tbh. Since a lot of the designs we have been already using are relatively safe and efficient to a large extent.
<bofh>
Like the Mark I is honestly not shit.
<Iskierka>
Is even the oldest western design still in use even demonstrably unsafe as-operated?
<Iskierka>
(qualified to disqualify RBMK)
<bofh>
I don't think so, I think it's only RBMK that's that much of a special snowflake.
<SnoopJeDi>
I'm the wrong guy to ask in all truth, I'm sufficiently extremized to believe that any k > 1 machine is insane
<Qboid>
1d 0h 0m 0s left to event #11: 「みちびき4号機」／H-IIAロケット36号機 [at 2017-10-09 22:00:00]. Say '!kountdown 11' for details
<SnoopJeDi>
(which is shocking considering that my funding at one time depended on it being seen as such, right?)
<bofh>
Come to think of it, is there anything other than RBMK that has such obscenely +ve void coefficients?
* Iskierka
would assume that question probably relies on some classified data for certainty
<bofh>
iirc it had one of 4.7β or something stupid like that.
<bofh>
which is both absolutely ludicrous and yet also wholly unexpected based on what the design optimized for.
<Iskierka>
"Before the Chernobyl accident these reactors had a positive void coefficient of 4.7 beta and after the accident that was lowered to 0.7 beta"
<Iskierka>
apparently even the RBMK as-operated now is ... probably manageable?
<SnoopJeDi>
"This new number decreases the possibility of a low-coolant meltdown."
<SnoopJeDi>
careful wording is careful
<SnoopJeDi>
defense of depth just strikes me as remarkably irresponsible
<Iskierka>
CANDU operate safely with a positive void coefficient so I'm trying to see what they're running at
<SnoopJeDi>
Iskierka, counterpoint: every failure operated safely before it failed
<SnoopJeDi>
(if you're sufficiently generous with what "safe" means, that is)
<Iskierka>
And statistically even if a CANDU failed as dramatically as chernobyl today it'd probably still be statistically safe by generation versus danger caused, taking power generation in general as reference
<UmbralRaptor>
(insert CSB narrator here)
<bofh>
Well even Fukushima honestly was statistically absurdly safe by direct radiation-mediated effects, honestly.
<Iskierka>
although apparently CANDU separating coolant from moderator means its +ve void is less significant on the operations
<Iskierka>
Most of the fukushima exclusion zone should be considered safe for permanent habitation
<Iskierka>
and all of it is safe enough that they could let people get their stuff
<SnoopJeDi>
Iskierka, I'm loathe to trust appearances tbqh
<SnoopJeDi>
because of aforementioned bile for the field as a game of smoke and mirrors :|
<Iskierka>
I'm going by radioactivity measurements even quite shortly after the event (but post-peak)
<SnoopJeDi>
which isn't fair to the very capable and smart engineeers, of course
<SnoopJeDi>
besides all of this is moot, ITER is going to be a wild success and solve the energy crisis, right?
<Ellied>
god, this course is a tire fire. I'm sitting in front of my laptop and watching an extremely low-quality recording of a livestream of a lecture in India (40 minutes of someone sitting there and talking, plus sparse text-only powerpoint slides)
<Iskierka>
only if you can time machine to 2040+delays and steal DEMO
<SnoopJeDi>
aw I thought that said only 2040 for a second and I was gonna make a 50-year joke
<Ellied>
in-person classes are resuming tomorrow at least
<bofh>
I was trying to think of a response to the ITER comment but first had to catch my eyes which rolled so hard they popped out of their sockets :P
<bofh>
Ellied: my condolences.
<Ellied>
online classes are completely lost on me.
<Iskierka>
fusion would have a chance of solving the energy crisis if actually following the funding levels that initially predicted having it in 10-20 years, instead of declining funding since that point
<Iskierka>
since we're in the latter case, fission plz
<Iskierka>
we can actually persuade you to build that, but apparently not experimental fusion setups
<SnoopJeDi>
I think I'm...apathetic about fusion.
<Ellied>
everyone's still focused on denuclearization these days and it's driving me nuts
<SnoopJeDi>
I was a bit gobsmacked at ICAN being awarded a peace prize
<Ellied>
what else do you think is gonna work? solar? Do you think we have enough silicon for that scale of production?
<SnoopJeDi>
but if I'm truly being honest, I lost respect for *that* years ago
<SnoopJeDi>
oh, you mean denuke writ large
<Ellied>
yeah, like, people want to completely abandon nuclear power
<Iskierka>
space based solar power plants built using asteroid silicon, cause clearly that's more affordable than the whole development cycle for fusion supplemented by fission on the way
<SnoopJeDi>
Ellied, good news for them...
<Iskierka>
solar power relies on a nuclear reactor that gives 40-50% of people cancer
<Iskierka>
can we exploit this to say nuclear is safer than solar?
<Ellied>
god, I can just get a copy of this lecturer's notes? she's clearly just reading off of something verbatim.
<Iskierka>
that's not what I expected from a .css file?
<Ellied>
...was gonna say
* Iskierka
finds it odd that Ellied has lectures that don't have a dedicated lecturer in the room
<Ellied>
I have lectures that have a dedicated lecturer in front of a camera on the other side of the world...
<Iskierka>
the one who didn't want to lecture on my course just brings in a bunch of TAs to run workshops in the labs
<SnoopJeDi>
I wonder if it decided CSS was appropriate because of all the hex?
<SnoopJeDi>
Iskierka, Ellied in fairness, if you run the argument a few steps farther, you run into "why do universities even exist"
<Iskierka>
(I joke that she doesn't want to lecture but given it's software engineering it's debatable if there was anything worth teaching without ensuring everyone has a computer to work on)
<SnoopJeDi>
although I think tech-teaching as such is a mistake, FWIW
<egg>
seems to be a use-after-free in her
<egg>
s/$/e
<Qboid>
egg meant to say: seems to be a use-after-free in here
<SnoopJeDi>
too many 'clever' solutions to pedagogical problems that don't really exist
<Iskierka>
I'm not 100% on what you mean by clickers but the only round tables here are the workshop, and that's just cause that's how they laid out the computers
<SnoopJeDi>
Ellied, what size groups, out of curiosity?
<Ellied>
six or nine, depending on which of the two rooms. Usually groups of three for projects, but cross-group collaboration is encouraged.
<egg>
oh hey morbidelli joined the fun
<SnoopJeDi>
ah okay, I've seen a LOT of value-added from recitations/etc. where workgroups are no larger than 4.
<SnoopJeDi>
I think 3 is my personal cutoff number, truthfully
<egg>
!wpn UmbralRaptor
* Qboid
gives UmbralRaptor a reversed neutronium reactor
<SnoopJeDi>
as I look back at all the academic [anything] I've done, whenever more than 3 people were involved, someone was coasting in neutral
<SnoopJeDi>
egg, the plots in that paper are eggcellent and remind me of yours
<Ellied>
I like round tables, it feels more human and makes you feel more accountable and motivated to contribute
<Iskierka>
Get them to do it on git, with issues, and assigning issues to individuals who therefore must do their own work
<SnoopJeDi>
git's a weird example because of how legitimately good it is for CS edu
<SnoopJeDi>
"so we decided to stop fucking around and teach you what people actually use?"
* Iskierka
is just saying that one because it's exactly how software engineering is doing the coursework
<SnoopJeDi>
it's like any other teaching tool, most people are gonna use it stupidly
<Iskierka>
they're using gitlab rather than github but I don't think transferring should be any problem
<Ellied>
positive side of recorded lectures: you can say snarky comments out loud and the lecturer can't hear you
<Iskierka>
That's what sitting at the back is for
<Iskierka>
then you can't see the slides, so that's what the laptop is for
<SnoopJeDi>
Lectures are rough in general, considering that we don't really teach how to be a student
<SnoopJeDi>
"Hope you work it out on your own how to engage this material I'm about to spew at you"
<Ellied>
my prof for this class doesn't allow electronics in class, because apparently they're conducive to learning when you're watching terrible prerecorded lectures but completely useless and distracting when you're in the classroom.
<SnoopJeDi>
I'm forever in my math advisor's debt for teaching me the value of a bound notebook in *any* context
<egg>
aaaaargh the bug is that we're binding vessels before freeing their parts now, so we bind parts that will cease to exist, sob
<SnoopJeDi>
rather than "this is a thing you bring to classes because that's what you do"
<egg>
(and thus use-after-free, blarg)
<Ellied>
"a new study showed that students who use laptops get lower grads, so laptops are banned" so, one study is enough for that, but all this stuff about how traditional lecture format is shit doesn't matter? cool
<SnoopJeDi>
it sounds stupid to even say it, but it turns out writing things down is helpful?
<Ellied>
sure, I take paper notes either way, but banning laptops for everyone is just dumb
<SnoopJeDi>
Ellied, having sampled both sides of that formula I think it's a non-issue. You can't teach the unwilling
<SnoopJeDi>
And by FAR the unwilling are the people in the classroom.
<SnoopJeDi>
no tech/social/whatever hack can take a who-gives-a-fuck student and turn them into a whiz kid
<SnoopJeDi>
buuuut the system is real good at creating those people
* SnoopJeDi
froths
<SnoopJeDi>
two soapboxes in one day, nice
<egg>
!wpn -add:wpn soap
<Qboid>
egg: Weapon added!
<Ellied>
this powerpoint has none of the important points, just a few random phrases that make no sense out of context
<UmbralRaptor>
AΑAA
<egg>
!wpn UmbralRaptor
* Qboid
gives UmbralRaptor a liquid counter
<Ellied>
"INDEPENDENT INDIA" "Mixed economy with public and the private sector" "five year economic plans"
<Ellied>
what she's actually talking about is imperialism and british capitalism
<UmbralRaptor>
Wait, 5 year plans? like gosplan? >.>
<Iskierka>
... why is india's economy and long-side-gained independence relevant to a physicists' course?
<Ellied>
I have to finish up some gen eds before I graduate
<Iskierka>
and there was nothing more fun?
<UmbralRaptor>
Well, there are all those cheap textbooks you can import from India.
<Ellied>
nope
<Iskierka>
take a language course or something?
<Ellied>
stupidly, a language wouldn't fulfill any of my remaining requirements.
<Ellied>
I wanted to, but it would have been impractical.
<Ellied>
an impractically large course load, I mean.
<Iskierka>
they're actually specific enough to limit what things you can do that are totally irrelevant?
<Ellied>
basically, yes.
<Ellied>
I mean, asian politics isn't completely irrelevant to anyone, but yes, the requirements are arbitrary and terrible
<Iskierka>
in this year we basically just get to have one option per semester be ANYTHING YOU LIKE
<Iskierka>
I wanted to do a language but was too slow on it
<Iskierka>
so course full (while my friends say the room's basically empty, yay)
<Iskierka>
(to be clear, there's a fixed six options per semester so it's a sixth of your course that can be relevant or irrelevant, and you have choice on a lot of the rest so long as relevant)
<Ellied>
I've decided I hate the business and polisci department(s) here. the majors from both always talk like caricatures of businesspeople ("I just wanted to reach out to you and touch base on the") and the prof constantly says things that take it as an immutable given that capitalism is the One True System and communism (which they have no trouble believing is really what China has implemented) and
<Ellied>
socialism are evil and inherently dysfunctional.
<Iskierka>
... has implemented, as in present tense?
<Ellied>
yes, as in "China is presently communist"
<kmath>
<josedelamano> "Abstraction is real, probably more real than nature" Josef Albers @Albers_Lucy https://t.co/VQNUbgtjro
<Iskierka>
...
<Iskierka>
China is the One True Capitalism. How do they even come to any other conclusion?
<Iskierka>
regulations close to zero and market competition
<Iskierka>
tell them to visit Shenzen
<Ellied>
on like the second day: "So, what political system does China have?" (Me: uhhh I mean that's a big question, there's a lot going on there, I mean its mostly capitalist but there's also lots of--) Business major behind me: "Communism!" "Right! Communism."
<UmbralRaptor>
The fun part will be if they decide that democracy must be eliminated to make the world safe for Capitalism™
<Ellied>
communism and democracy are also consistently used as antonyms, which, uh,
<Iskierka>
I mean china was never actually communist by the original definition but it at least takes some arguing if you're talking in the past, but today wat
<Ellied>
I can only conclude that this is like physics, where words that have broad general meanings in most of English have very specific defined meanings. Polisci must have just gone `let communism = "China";`
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<Iskierka>
very specific defined meanings that are antonyms with the actual etynology?
<Iskierka>
because I don't think Mao is the entire community of China
<Ellied>
yeah I don't know
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<Ellied>
I mean I'm very wary of saying that a Ph.D in political science doesn't know what she's talking about because that's almost certainly not the case, but a lot of what she's apparently taking as a given is at odds with what I've understood of the world
<Iskierka>
yet notably not at odds with US cold war-ish popaganda so ...
<Ellied>
I *do* have little trouble saying that she's not an especially good teacher. Likely there *are* a lot of highly specific terms that she's not bothered to define
<Ellied>
yeaaaahah
<Iskierka>
I mean psychology was at one point totally at odds with reality before sane people came in and swept up ...
<Ellied>
I suppose having a Ph.D in someone's idea of how the world works is not the same as having a Ph.D in how the world works.
<Ellied>
the whole idea with science is that you learn a lot of those ideas and how to understand them, but maybe that's not as foundational in polisci?
<Iskierka>
is there a respected peer review journal on the same level as exists in physics/chemistry/biology for polisci?
<Ellied>
I couldn't say, I haven't looked
<Ellied>
I can't remember if the prof said
<Ellied>
oh good, the next lecture is a video recording of a projection screen in a classroom
<egg>
Ꙩ_ꙩ
<Iskierka>
I am suddenly glad I could throw things at all my lecturers
<Iskierka>
I wouldn't, but I could. At least if I was one row forward so the wall doesn't disrupt the throw
<Iskierka>
also all the lecture halls are renovated with the lighting designed to work with the projectors. There's none where it's unclear due to bad setup
<egg>
!wpn Iskierka
* Qboid
gives Iskierka a four-coloured prime/DIAC hybrid
<soundnfury>
Ellied: it's entirely possible that polisci is a cargo-cult...
<egg>
!wpn UmbralRaptor
* Qboid
gives UmbralRaptor a plasma snowy expansion
<egg>
!wpn whitequark
* Qboid
gives whitequark a code-switching µa741
<soundnfury>
!wpn egg
* Qboid
gives egg a harmfully-considered star
<Ellied>
our physics classrooms have wallwasher lights, and more than a few times someone has turned off the overhead lights in the middle of the room but left the wallwashers (pointing directly at the screen) on before running slides or video.
<UmbralRaptor>
Oops
<UmbralRaptor>
!wpn egg
* Qboid
gives egg an irrelevant macrolanguage
<Ellied>
cool, now an argument about how people in Japan need to have more children?
<Ellied>
...gonna run this back and see if I can catch some missed context
<Iskierka>
... I mean their birthrate is negative but is positive necessary? They're overpopulated and the causative factors of overworking and such seem like they should be much higher priority
<Ellied>
yeah, she's talking about today. ffs, she's *from* Japan.
<Ellied>
Has uh, has she considered that economic growth a) might not actually benefit from population growth or b) might not be a good end-all-be-all of end goals?
<Ellied>
I'd be open to hearing her reasoning for this but none is forthcoming
<Ellied>
I might have to start being more of a pain in the ass about this stuff in class tomorrow
<Iskierka>
plz report results
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<Iskierka>
plus isn't Japan's current stagnation because their growth rate was absurd for a while but the retirement age is low enough that the current working age is struggling to support a very old and healthy population.
<Ellied>
right, she mentioned that
<Iskierka>
The latter of which should be the ideal but there needs to be rethinking of how the rest of it comes about
<Iskierka>
(and exactly why healthcare-for-profit doesn't work because why would a for-profit company want to pay for those old people)
<Ellied>
there's this meme in business/economics that bolstering the economy of a country will automagically improve the general quality of life there (the basis for 'trickle-down economics' and rhetoric in support of bullshit like repealing healthcare in the US or shooting down net neutrality that includes the words "encourage investment") that a great many people, including my prof and most of my
<Ellied>
classmates, are willing to buy.
<Ellied>
I'm don't buy a bit of it.
<Iskierka>
Also, of course it's the first welfare state country in the world to run into this problem. They're hitting the same problems as UK-industrial revolution, do it first and then oops there's later problems you didn't plan for.
<Iskierka>
So really, no, they don't need all these crazy ideas from trickle-down economics people. Short-term plans: raise retirement age to increase earnings. Long-term: improve workplace conditions, less focus on the salaryman ideal, get people happier and spending better.
<Iskierka>
Other things too but I should go to bed rather than think of them, I'm ill and need to be up earlyish if I'm recovered enough to go in tomorrow
<Ellied>
like sure, if the economy collapses things do get worse, but if it's a functional economy and it suddenly gets better investment rates or whatever, I don't think that has a meaningful effect on the average quality of life
<Ellied>
but sure, keep using GDP per capita to evaluate how good a country is or whatever
<Iskierka>
The economic strength I would look at for quality of life is how much *everyone* can spend, because this is the main driver of a strong economy as proven by America post-WW1. It was unsustainable with the isolationism, but you can do the same thing on a different tack. Focus on making sure the minimum spending power in the country is enough to move an appreciable amount of money
<Iskierka>
If 50% can't spend on luxuries that's 50% that aren't making a meaningful contribution to the general economy regardless of overall GDP#
<Iskierka>
Insofar as capitalism can work, it needs everyone to be able to take part, and plenty cannot
<Ellied>
ngl I've mostly given up on capitalism working in any meaningful way by this point
<Iskierka>
(and yes, following this argument through, you do basically arrive at socialism. There's a reason for it)
<egg>
Iskierka: I'm confused, I thought people tended to work beyond the age of retirement anyway in japan?
<egg>
also that seems to be 65 now, which is hardly low
<Iskierka>
Possibly they've already implemented these obvious solutions and the results are coming in slowly
<Iskierka>
but it's definitely the ratio of working people : retired people who need to be sustained that's causing a struggle in that particular regard. Japan does have a lot of problems besides
<Ellied>
all arguments for capitalism I've heard basically reduce to "but don't you want rich people to be easily able to get more money?" and no, I don't, not with five empty houses for every homeless person
<Iskierka>
Hence why I started with "no, poor people need to be not-poor enough to contribute for a strong economy, as demonstrated by <actual history>", and then have an argument that leads you to socialism
<Ellied>
socialism looks great from here. I couldn't begin to guess what a perfect system would look like, but the one we're operating over here is bullshit
<Ellied>
yeah I follow you
<Iskierka>
capitalism + selfishness = awful and generally weaker economy anyway. capitalism + not-selfish = good life and good economy and given a few decades wait we're socialist now
<Iskierka>
similarly that same period of history I use in support of keynesian economics. It may not have been the government specifically, but spending kept a strong economy. In a weak economy no-one wants to start to begin with, so you need a monolith like the government to do it anyway, keep the economy afloat on temporary debt, and build enough confidence for everyone to restart
<Iskierka>
notably the same portion of history did not have a keynesian govt response and hoo-boy
<Iskierka>
anyway, yes. Bed. I also need to make time for a shower if I'm going to I've already left it way too late
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* soundnfury
very carefully does not get involved, because if I try to explain why I disagree with everything you just said, we'll be arguing all night