Hacker News: dickholesalad

New comment by dickholesalad in "Elephants may be domesticating themselves"

dickholesalad — Tue, 23 May 2023 23:14:05 +0000

We already did this. Humans hunted all the megafauna, including mammoths, to extinction.

New comment by dickholesalad in "Show HN: Shite – little hot-reloadin' static site maker from shell"

dickholesalad — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 20:09:17 +0000

The name is just… thank you.

New comment by dickholesalad in "How to play FPS games if you’re over 30"

dickholesalad — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 23:18:08 +0000

I do this too and am 32. The only way I like to play games is auto muting everyone and pinging everything. I often used to have people get in chat just to yell or curse you out to vent frustration. Like, I couldn’t even mute these guys, almost always males, fast enough for them to not get in a quick little shitty jab if we were losing. No thanks. We may have run past each other and respectfully pinged some badguys. It would be different if people had anything interesting to say outside of they typical hey what’s up talk.

New comment by dickholesalad in "The age of social media is ending"

dickholesalad — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 00:48:18 +0000

https://archive.ph/JfPnd

New comment by dickholesalad in "Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy"

dickholesalad — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 18:51:56 +0000

I appreciate the correction. I had fusion of knowledge with a different reactor accident. https://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/nuclear-plant-acciden...

New comment by dickholesalad in "Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy"

dickholesalad — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 18:42:50 +0000

I can only speak for myself, although I would say I was pretty average as far as people who finished the school. My class had a fifty percent drop rate. Two people killed themselves that year. My good friend was the “petty officer of the watch” and found one of the people that jumped off of their second story common area balcony head first. The housing areas were named after ships so we made gallows humor jokes about them being in the xx diving squad. The school had zero cheating, a very fast pace, and very specific grading requirements. This led to a grade meritocracy that seemed gaussian in nature, distributed around a very specific skill set centered around quickly testing. Some people easily skated by. Others struggled. Some from both groups failed out. I think that seeing people be put into a meat grinder like that was more than I was prepared for. I believed in some kind of justice in the world, or at least in the man-made systems we created but didn’t encounter that. There is also the chance that everyone goes through experiences that change their outlook on life, but that was my lived experience. If you are interested there is a book that was passed around that tells it better: https://www.swm1.com/life%20in%20the%20nuclear%20navy.pdf I didn’t write it but it was pretty accurate and really funny IIRC.

New comment by dickholesalad in "Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy"

dickholesalad — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 01:00:35 +0000

Chernobyl used a neutron moderator with a positive temperature coefficient of reactivity (liquid sodium), while U.S. Navy reactors use water, which has a negative coefficient of reactivity. The more energy you put into the water surrounding the reactor, the less reactive it allows the reactor to be. This has a stabilizing effect on the system. U.S. Navy reactors are inherently stable and inherently safe. To answer your question directly, yes entropy will trend toward making the reactor produce less heat with no intervention.

New comment by dickholesalad in "Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy"

dickholesalad — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 22:02:53 +0000

If by fail safe you mean that powering off the reactor makes it cool down then the Navy uses fail safe reactors. Water is used as the moderator to absorb radiation. When water is heated its density decreases (edit), thereby making it a less good moderator of radiation. This effect lowers reactor reactivity and heat output. This effect is combined with various devices to produce what is called an inherently safe design. Losing power will not make the reactor have a fuel element failure or melt down.

New comment by dickholesalad in "Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy"

dickholesalad — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 21:10:39 +0000

I’m an ex navy nuke (I did the whole thing, school through startups, sea trials, refuel, operations, maintenance, was nuke mechanic). I think some of the main impediments to adoption of navy-style training, operations, and maintenance in the civilian world are that the work is challenging and high stress. The school is very mentally and spiritually challenging to most people. When you get to the fleet the work is very challenging both mentally and physically. You are taking weekly technical short answer tests, operating the thing in 100F degrees doing legit physical work, responding to emergency stuff at 2 am before a 6 am shift. It’s nuts. The navy selects smart people through asvab test requirements. Most students are still challenged by the coursework. When you stay in by reenlisting it gets a little easier because you have less physical work to do but you still have to maintain excellence and train the junior people to the required competency level. Combine this with the fact that the pay is shitty compared to other jobs in industry available and the incentives just aren’t there. Where do we find these highly motivated, fit, young, intelligent people to work like dogs? They don’t exist in sufficient quantity to do this. The navy doesn’t have superior technology; most of the ships are old and maintained. The secret sauce is the personnel and their desperation. You aren’t going to contract people in the civillian world to do this stuff. I really don’t think it’s feasible.

New comment by dickholesalad in "Secretive B-21 bomber to be revealed to public in December"

dickholesalad — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 23:38:51 +0000

I have seen this thing in person. It was rumored to have the ability to autonomously take off, perform missions, and land on a Navy carrier without human intervention using all onboard intelligence. If I recall correctly it could also radio back to the carrier on its own with updates. Inb4 where was it: not saying. When: not saying.

New comment by dickholesalad in "Show HN: I made 7k images with DALL-E 2 to create a reference/inspiration table"

dickholesalad — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 18:15:56 +0000

You might try using image to image with the comic and previously mentioned prompt as inputs.