clumma

How long do nuclear reactors last?

Here are some that have been in service over 50 years:

reactor	site	first criticality
F-1	Kurchatov Institute	1946
NRU	Chalk River	1957
UMRR	University of Missouri	1961
HFIR	ORNL	1965

clumma

I've seen a lot of essays claiming to explain why privacy is important even if you 'have nothing to hide'. They all fail because you manifestly don't need privacy unless you have something to hide.

The truth is, laws are written by ignorant mobs and we want to break them. We want to try marijuana, exceed the speed limit, rip DVDs we bought to an archival format and occasionally share them with friends, use incandescent bulbs because they provide better light and alternatives are provably no better for the environment, and fix our shower faucet without having to apply for a permit first.

Privacy is a natural foil to legislation run amok because it lets us break bad laws. It helps ensure that laws really do require the consent of the governed. There's even virtuous feedback, since lawmakers have enforcement budgets and need to appear effective.

So yes, I have something hide. If you need to see inside my house, it's a good sign the thing you're trying to prohibit isn't harmful enough to society to warrant t

clumma

Cartesian Economics (1921)

pg. 1

My own point of departure could not be better illustrated than by a quotation from Descartes and the aspects I propose to examine might well be called Cartesian Economics. "Starting from the forms of knowledge most useful to life, instead of from that speculative philosophy taught in our schools, and knowing the force and processes of fire, the air, the stars and all the other bodies which surround us as distinctly as we know the different occupations of our own workmen, we shall be able to employ them in the same fashion and so render ourselves as the masters and possessors of nature and contribute to the perfection of the human life."

pg. 10

All forms of energy previously utilised by life, with one or two minor exceptions, as tidal energy and that of hot springs, were forms of the solar revenue. Wind-power, water-power and wood fuel are parts of the year-to-year revenue of sunshine no less than cereals and other animal foods. But when coal became king, th

clumma

[
	{
		"date": "1895-11-08",
		"event": "X-rays produced with a cathode ray tube",
		"people": "Wilhelm Röntgen"
	},
	{
		"date": "1896-03-02",
		"event": "Uranium is radioactive",
		"people": "Henri Becquerel"

clumma

How complexity scales with...

	damage	prime limit
JI	Ω(1)	Ω(π(p))
rank 1	Ω(1/d)	Ω(π(p))
rank 2	Ω(1/d)	Ω(π(p)2)

clumma

;; computes TE-optimal generators for a pair of vals
;; e.g. (generators '(1 2 4) '(0 -1 -4) '(2 3 5)) => (1201.397 504.348)

(define generators
   (lambda (val1 val2 basis)
      (let* ((square (lambda (x) (* x x)))
             (log2 (lambda (x) (/ (log x) (log 2))))
             (mean (lambda (ls) (/ (apply + ls) (length ls))))
             (w1 (map / val1 (map log2 basis)))
             (w2 (map / val2 (map log2 basis)))

clumma

var range = function(min, max) {
  arr = [];
  for (var i = min; i <= max; i++) {
    arr.push(i);
  }
  return arr;
}
var fbMod = function(n) {
  var msg = '';
  var result = new Array(n);

clumma

name	city	nation	reactor size (MWe)	reactor type	gee-whiz
Oklo	Sunnyvale, CA	USA	2	SFR *	heat pipes
Dunedin Energy Systems	?	Canada	6	LWR	cermet fuel
Gen4 Energy	Denver, CO	USA	25	LFR *
Seaborg	Copenhagen	DK	25	MSR
StarCore Nuclear	Montreal, QC	Canada	30	HTGR
NuScale Power (Fluor)	Portland, OR	USA	50	LWR
X-energy	Greenbelt, MD	USA	50	HTGR
Kairos Power	Oakland, CA	USA	100	FHR	natgas

clumma

Douglas Crockford
"The Better Parts" (2014)
https://vimeo.com/97419177
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo36MrBfTk4

ES6 Good Parts

1. Proper tail calls
2. Splat operator (rest and spread)
3. Modules

clumma

Hydrochloric acid

What the heck is "20° Baume muriatic acid"? Google to the rescue

It means that 100g of solution contains 31.45g HCl

Your HCl is very near to 10 mol/l or 36.5g/100ml

Strong acids dissociate completely, so pH is just the -log of the concentration (in moles/liter, called the molarity or M)