i wonder if someone pointed that thing at tarpit already

wint @dril 29 Dec 2014 and another thing: im not mad. please dont put in the newspaper that i got mad.

https://xcancel.com/dril/status/549425182767861760#m

long hand of casey newton (by proxy) outputs a weird hit piece on ed zitron in wired https://archive.is/chsCw so far bluesky in shambles with no other effects

so on top of that 1%-ish gallium (which stabilizes delta phase, the least dense one, that collapses under pressure to alpha, the most dense one, which allows slightly less compression to be used, and this means more compact weapons), which would need to be separated before that plutonium gets turned into MOX, i understand that most of american plutonium stockpiles are somewhere around 94% 239Pu, and some are 97%+. i guess they’re selling the worst stuff, which would make little difference for reactors, and if there’s anything that american military is good at, it’s logistics. on production side, the very shortened story is that we start with uranium and irradiate it, which gives

238U (n,gamma) 239U (beta) 239Np (beta) 239Pu

and that’s it. but it really is a bit more complicated, because first, nothing stops that just made plutonium from reacting further, so some of it will fission which means that it can’t be recovered, but it also means more neutrons, which will also make some plutonium, so it’s not all bad. but not all plutonium will fission, and so there’s entire series of reactions:

239Pu (n,gamma) 240Pu (n,gamma) 241Pu (n,gamma) 242Pu (n,gamma) 243Pu

at this point reaction stops because 243Pu is very short-lived, and it decays into 243Am. at the same time, if neutrons react without leaving fuel pin, they won’t be slowed down much, which means another reaction is possible (but much less likely):

242Pu (n,2n) 241Pu (n,2n) 240Pu (n,2n) 239Pu (n,2n) 238Pu

there’s also 238U (n,2n) 237U (beta) 237Np (n,gamma) 238Np (beta) 238Pu

of these, 238Pu and 240Pu have unacceptably high neutron emission rate, which means that if there’s too much of these nuclear weapon is likely to predetonate. because the most important use of plutonium in modern advanced thermonuclear weapons is in primary, this means that it could be so that entire weapon fails to function if there’s too much of these contaminants (low-kt or even sub-kt yield instead of, say, 350kt). of these, 238Pu and 241Pu have short halflives, which means that plutonium containing these will heat up with considerable power. this can damage explosives bonded to it. 240Pu is additionally a radiation hazard because of neutrons emitted, but it’s only really relevant for submarine crews. this is why these weapons use the better 97%+ grade plutonium, and additionally some of that 97% grade was made in order to blend with some older, worse quality stocks

there’s remarkably few parameters that can be used in order to steer these reactions in the way we want. about the only relevant one here would be neutron temperature, which is really chosen at reactor design stage and increasing it means that neutron capture is less likely. this makes fission more likely, more neutrons are present and more plutonium can be formed. this also turns reactor into fast reactor which are notoriously hard to build and iirc only russia and india operate large fast reactors today. short of that, about the only way to prevent 239Pu from reacting further is to take it out of there, which means low burnup and only tiny amounts can be recovered per run. from what i understand, the choice of 94%-ish 239Pu content is end effect of massive optimization problem focused on how to make a pit at the lowest price. this includes all the (expensive, slightly dangerous) labour it takes in reprocessing fuel and how required pit mass increases with lower quality plutonium

little of that matters when running a powerplant. some isotopes being neutron emitters are actually an advantage because it makes startup smoother. the longer fuel stays in reactor the less fissile plutonium there is as a result, and the more advanced reactors allowing higher burnups make plutonium recovery less attractive, or, in other words, most of benefit of recovering plutonium in order to put it in new fuel can be realized just by leaving fuel in reactor for longer time in the first place. in regular light water reactor, steady state develops where plutonium is formed as fast as it is consumed, and it accounts for about third of energy released when that steady state sets in. this also means that about third of fissile uranium can be replaced by fissile plutonium with no modifications to reactor

on top of weapons use, some countries do reprocessing anyway as a matter of policy as a hedge against future shortages of uranium. some of these schemes require fast reactors which can burn these isotopes useless in regular reactor and make fresh, weapons grade almost pure 239Pu, which limits countries that can make it work, by diplomatic means, only to already established nuclear powers, and labour costs needed for its operation limit it to currently only india and russia, and formerly france. this is because at any burnup, in best case plutonium can be only separated once from light water reactor fuel and used in light water reactor. after that, plutonium quality is too low to be useful this way

in comparison to reactor grade plutonium, weapons grade plutonium would allow to make more fuel per kg of this material, but also it would be astronomically expensive compared to regular stuff, which is already unprofitable for power generation in countries with western labour costs, unless it’s a fire sale. the second problem is that if more than this 1/3 of fissile isotopes in fresh fuel is plutonium, then generally reactors would need recertification or maybe completely new design, because plutonium gives less delayed neutrons which are critical for smooth control of reactor power. this is, mind you, in context of country that practically stopped building new nuclear powerplants. if small reactors are on the table, then these naturally need higher amount of fissile isotopes, like 20-30%, and something tells me people involved would like to try this

another thing to note here is that there’s an old american policy in place that forbids (domestic) plutonium recovery for alleged (international) nonproliferation reasons. i don’t believe this is the case, it makes zero sense, and instead i think that nuclear industry wanted a way out of that money pit without state backing, because plutonium recovery and reuse for power generation is more expensive than just buying more uranium, sustainability of this energy source and volume needed for nuclear waste be damned. they could get away with this because military weapons grade plutonium stockpiles were assessed as sufficient. now they’re pawning heirloom nukes to monorail salesmen instead

every batch of plutonium is made mostly out of Pu-239 that’s just how plutonium works. it can’t be separated into isotopes in any meaningful amounts so any batch of plutonium is also a mix of a couple of isotopes. reactor grade might be something like 55% Pu-239 plus say 12% also fissile Pu-241 with the rest being nonfissile Pu-240, Pu-242 and Pu-238 in that order. the newer reactor and fuel pin design, the higher burnup and the less fissile isotopes will be present at the end of the cycle. even in purely uranium fueled reactor about third of energy at the end of the fuel cycle comes from plutonium bred in the same fuel pin. i can elaborate on that if you want to

i don’t think so, it’s like megatons to megawatts but stupider, instead of using up uranium from adversary they want to use up their own plutonium, while also having policies against spent fuel reprocessing (for alleged nonproliferation reasons, which is patently bullshit, power generation was straight up cheaper this way because new uranium is cheaper than reprocessing and use of mox. some other countries (at minimum ru, fr, in, pk, jp, cn, il) do reprocessing as a matter of national security/energy independence/hedge against future shortages of uranium). also this requires recertification of reactors for mox use, which won’t always work or else only part of uranium can be replaced, and if it’s for smr, then there’s gonna be a lot of plutonium in there, and it all starts with handing plutonium to motherfucking sam altman, for only a slight chance of any positive results

i see it more as current administration ripping copper wiring from walls than anything else tbh

there was also yolo minneapolis, or whatever was his name i don’t think he was relevant since covid

ahem. h5n1 for ferrets was probably made because ferrets turn out to have immune systems similar enough to humans, in that they do get (common strains of) flu and transmit it by sneezing, that is ferrets are good model organisms for flu vaccine development. so if regular ferrets don’t catch h5n1, then you have to modify either virus or ferret because otherwise it won’t work. it’s not some random virologist deciding to wage biological war against fuzzy noodle critters

if only, maupin spoke on a conference in teheran next to dugin and publishes his books. the layer of red paint on brown couldn’t be possibly thinner. see also: jackson hinkle, maga-communism. i wish everyone involved nice tuberculosis infection in damp ukrainian prison

It’s funny (read: farcical) to see a person posing as leftist say they are “pro-AI” but “anti-AI industry”.

not looking to start instance war or anything btw

iirc one of db0 admins is of this opinion which boils down to, in their case, that they’re pro-ai but only if self-hosted (ie “yes, i’m pro-ai, just not pro-the kind of ai that is actually used in 99.9% ai output”). they join it with pro-piracy and anarchist positions and it’s part of the reason why ai content is allowed on that instance. iirc it’s not even consensus among their other admins

why is aweful systemes broken today? does it depend on aws somehow?

i heard from reliable source (ed zitron) that he has one

tldr is that anthropic spent on aws only 2x their revenue in 2024, spent on aws approx the same as their revenue in 2025 up to september, and they also pay unknown amount but known to be a lot for google cloud, on top of everything else like salaries and who the fuck knows what else

MyBoyfriendIsAI are non-techies who are learning about computers from scratch, just so Sam can’t rug-pull them.

Buterin jumpscare

i’m not sure at this point if it was some (then) ea-er inside belief that eric schmidt (they guy who said that, formerly google) was exposed to, and he sneered at it immediately, then it was shown to the world in length proper to rationalists

about communications, i don’t know how safe or practical would it be for you, but you can hide antennas pretty well. simplest case is if you have nonconductive roof, then you can just put antennas under roof and it won’t be visible from the outside, you can also put them in fake plastic chimney, in plastic electrical box on outside wall, in plastic gutter, there are many ways to go about it. on top of your own installation you’d have to build and conceal your other side’s installation, but since you’re already family’s computer guy it’d be not even particularly suspicious.

nobody will tell 70cm band yagi from tv antenna. instead of normal antenna, you can also use slot in conductive surface instead, ie take satellite dish, cut a slot of specific length, fill back with epoxy, sand flat, connect coax, paint over, done, won’t be visible at all and satellite service works just as well

equipment that goes with it, well, if it’s line of sight you can probably make long distance wifi work using standard equipment and directional antennas (concealed probably? unless you want to “explain” to random soldier that you’re just pulling internet to uncle this way). otherwise i bet you can get secondhand baofengs for cash (safer to connect them permanently inside + to outside antenna so that nobody spots these things). you can use them for voice as usual or you can use software modem, connect to your laptop audio input/output and send digital signals this way

frankly i think that you have better chance of evading state than many other posters here, because for example most of euro states record and analyze in real time their radio traffic 24/7. i guess enforcement of such things might be lacking in lebanon

also,

And not because some stuck up politicians are scared that a teenager could see a woman’s penis online, oh no, I totally think the true purpose is to tag “unwanted” ideologies and prevent their spread.

brits already censored protest footage bc “violent content” for anyone under 18 already, so yeah

I doubt Lemmy would even be allowed there if they knew what it was.

one of admins of your instance is from the region, and a couple of lemmy instances are blocked there, seemingly for “indecent content”

this has been previously sneered on, but only now i’ve clocked this: AI2027 is another name for, or elaboration* of “san francisco consensus”, from april this year or so, “named so because everyone who believes in it is in san francisco”, more precisely timeline roughly matches and it hinges on iterative self-improvement

* which might just mean it was laundered through chatbots to bulk it up initially. what i mean to say is even openai’s dooming might not be original

so if anyone’s counting then this thing is a couple of months older

i looked up and it’s not one but at least two, but anticholinergics will keep them more grounded

i’m pretty sure that there’s an obscure stimulant that is some kind of giga-meth that lasts for 2d or more, that’d be more suitable for them

it seems to me that bigger problem is that they also think that software can solve these problems