S201

> I don't understand that? If you have functioning nuclear, why would you ever go to wind and solar.

A few reasons: The amount of fissile materials on Earth isn't infinite. As far as I understand (please correct me if I'm wrong... this is not my professional background), there are only ~230 years of uranium available.[1] And that's at today's consumption rates; build the amount of reactors we need and it's even less. Maybe we'd find more or maybe there's some other fissile material to use (thorium?). I'm not knowledgeable enough about the specifics to be honest, but it is finite on some timeline. Whereas wind and solar will last as long as the sun lasts.

Aside from that, there's always the small risk of malfunctions and nuclear proliferation. Even with newer tech that could greatly limit the possibility of accidents to near zero (it's already absurdly low) there's still the constant need of water for cooling and geopolitical issues causing problems like what is happening right now with the Zaporizhzhia plant in Ukraine.

That's why I say it's not perfect but that it does serve an incredibly important purpose in the near term to dramatically lower CO2 emissions and buy time to either deploy more wind & solar, extend the life of nuclear, or maybe deploy fusion if we ever finally crack that egg. Exactly how that looks would likely be a question for our children to answer.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo...

Now if only we could get more reactors built. According to the New York Times, Diablo Canyon provides 9% of California's electricity[1]. It astounds me that a single generating station like that can provide a whopping 9% of California's electricity.

Assuming the same capacity, four more stations would take it to 45%. That's nearly half of your electricity for a state as large as California from a stable, reliable, and clean(-er than fossil fuels) source that drops into the existing grid. I know nuclear isn't perfect and building new reactors is a huge challenge but it's a great stopgap solution for the next 100-odd years until a sufficient amount of solar & wind can be deployed to replace the reactors.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/climate/california-lawmak...

> The former was critical of the military in a way that could not happen in any big blockbuster movie.

It most certainly "could" be made as there is nothing preventing a studio from doing so if they wanted to. It may not be commercially viable and thus it would not get green-lit by a studio but that's a world away from the government explicitly forbidding it.

Because the people of China didn't choose this: their oppressive and authoritarian government did it for them.

Sorry, what? Are you implying that streamlining the already absurdly long and frankly abused NEPA reviews so we can get them done in a more timely manner is somehow a bad thing?

An authoritarian, nuclear armed government that is bent on expansionism by flaunting the established global rule of law and that is likely to start a world war over Taiwan? No, I don't think that's a worthwhile tradeoff.

So you're right back to flying single engine pistons then. I don't understand the point here.

I did not say the shortage was created by GA manufacturers, I said that GA in general is the start of the career progression for airline pilots in the US hence it serves a critical function for society. I too thought the pilot shortage was a myth until this past summer when it became abundantly clear there were not enough pilots in the world to deal with the resurgence of travel.

You could also argue that US pilots have superior training due to their GA experience as well. The over-reliance on automation and lack of stick and rudder skills is becoming a liability in those foreign airlines that train pilots exclusively in simulators and then throw them into the right seat of airliners where they're essentially computer operators instead of pilots.

The inability to for an airline pilot to land without autopilot is a very real thing: https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/16/russian-jet-crashed-captain-c...

Or the ability to fly in IMC conditions without an autopilot: https://www.flightglobal.com/safety/experienced-crew-struggl...

Yes, 100LL still has lead in it. And despite what it may seem based on skewed figures from those who want to see local airports closed so they can build more strip malls and condos, there has been a 99.99% reduction of lead pollution from gasoline overall since the phase out of automotive leaded gas. We're working on getting unleaded avgas, you can blame the FAA for it taking so darn long, but it's hardly an environmental emergency.

> Turns out most (all?) piston-engine driven airplanes still run on leaded gas

Not technically all. There is unleaded avgas although it's not yet common and some piston planes are diesel.

> How is single-engine piston aircraft a critical area?

Where do you think airline pilots come from? New pilots learn to fly in single-engine piston planes. And then again as flight instructors and commercial (non-ATP) pilots while building time to get their ATP rating and move onto the airlines. The continual slow death of GA is only going to worse an increasingly dire pilot shortage.

In all fairness:

* Age limits: There is a similar age limit to buy a gun as there is to drive a car

* Driver's license: Pretty much anyone with a pulse over the age of 16 can get a driver's license and it's nearly impossible to revoke permanently

* Insurance: The legally required insurance limits in some states is so low that it's effectively useless

It's always been apparent to some of us. Unless I have an explicit need to actively collaborate with another person on some document I've continued to use locally saved LibreOffice documents for everything, and even then I still download a copy from Google Drive when finished/periodically.

Yeah, it's all NATO's fault and has nothing to do with Putin's irrational aggression.

Yup, and I really hope we get G100UL distributed widely soon so we can stop having this asinine discussion about how we need to close airports because we're all going to die from the tiny amount of lead they emit.

Ideally we could have the FAA promote the certification of newer engine designs so we didn't need to keep flying around with 1940s engine tech as well that relies on lead, but that's another issue.

The source you cited conveniently links to a 404 page for the study it cites.

But yes, I've read quite a bit about the Reid-Hillview Airport saga. These claims of leaded gas hurting the children around airport is just the newest in a long list of excuses to close airports so their land can be redeveloped into more strip malls and condos. These neighborhood groups are biased towards wanting airports closed. It's textbook NIMBYism and they'll look for any excuse to achieve their goals. If it's not leaded gas, it's something else.

> Instead, the FAA and pilots of piston driven planes have simply decided lead poisoning is a justifiable price to pay for people living near an airport in exchange for individuals getting to fly their quarter million+ $ aircraft.

Don't buy a house near an airport if you're concerned about it then. The airport was there before the houses were.

> Everything you suggest it is useful for could be performed with the already proven and no longer new unleaded alternative. Defending this practice is asinine.

Where did I say I liked leaded gas exactly? I'm quite excited about G100UL being rolled out, even if it costs a bit more, so I can stop having this exact argument about how we need to close airports because of leaded gas. Everything with the FAA moves slowly, but it's moving. We're about to have unleaded gas for all planes.

By the way, the average Cessna 172 is well under $100k (at least prior to the previous two years before asset prices for everything went through the roof). For every fancy late model Cirrus SR22T there's 10 more shitbox Cessna's from the 1970s barely hanging onto life. You think of private pilots as all extremely wealthy individuals. Most of us are solidly middle class. How many people have boats or RVs that cost the same or more? Small planes fall into that same category.

Let's not be so dramatic as to say that the general aviation fleet is single handedly responsible for poisoning the world with lead.

When leaded car gas was still in use it resulted in 4-5 million tons of lead emissions per year.[1]

The use of leaded aviation fuel contributes 500 tons per year according to the EPA[2]. Compared to 5,000,000 tons for cars historically.

Of course, any lead is not good and we should be shooting for zero. Which is the goal of the unleaded G100UL aviation fuel. But let's not try to say that personal aviation is evil when it's contributing a fraction of a percent of lead contamination. Frankly, we have bigger pollution problems to worry about than a very small amount of lead emissions from an ever shrinking fleet of piston powered aircraft.

Mind you that general aviation is more than rich people flying around in their planes. It's medical flights, it's training future airline pilots, it's aerial surveying, and many more critical tasks for society.

1. https://grist.org/regulation/leaded-gasoline-lead-poisoning-...

2. http://www.reidhillview.com/EPA_GA_Lead_2002.pdf

It hasn't been a regulation issue from the FAA that piston engines must use leaded fuel for some reason but rather there hasn't been a viable unleaded aviation fuel that worked with all piston engines.

This is about to change though with G100UL finally being approved. https://gami.com/g100ul/g100ul.php.

1. No one is mixing metric and imperial here. All planes use knots, nautical miles, and feet. No one is measuring altitude in meters in one location and then feet in another.

2. I guess we should just use metric for every application even when it doesn't make sense to do so then.

Uh huh... feet is more useful for aviation than meters. 1,000ft is a comfortable vertical separation between planes and it's a nice round number instead of ~300m.

As for nautical miles and knots, one nautical mile is equal to one minute of latitude making for easier navigation when you're traveling over significant distances of the planet.

I'd hardly call it stuck in the past but rather the right units for the application at hand.

GA pilot here. This is true and most of us don't like using leaded gas either. It's nasty stuff that leads to increased wear on our engines, is more expensive, and is increasingly used as justification for closing airports. Plus we're exposed to it when fueling our planes.

However, it's worth mentioning that recently the first unleaded avgas, G100UL, was approved by the FAA. We're trying to move away from 100LL (leaded avgas) and are finally making some progress on that front.

https://gami.com/g100ul/g100ul.php

Where did those numbers come from? Preflight and run-up can be done in 20 minutes once you've done it many times and securing after a flight is as simple as turning everything off and pushing the plane in the hanger or parking on the pad. That's maybe 10 minutes at most.

The only really time consuming part would be making and filing a flight plan. If you've done the route multiple times, you already have the flight plan and if you're operating under VFR (visual flight rules), you don't need to open/close it.

Source: I'm currently a student pilot and have done this process many times.

There's a live update thread on reddit. http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/1rfc17/rspacex_falco...

> In the desktop version yes, but not in the mobile versions though. They are relying on native UI heavily.

This is because the startup times with XUL were simply too slow. The first version of Firefox for Android did, in fact, use XUL just like desktop Firefox. The app startup times were atrocious. The decision to use a native Android UI made the app usable while Gecko was starting in the background.

Looks like they nixed the Yahoo! sound that played when clicking the dot on the exclamation point.

One reason is that Firefox OS uses the Android kernel. This means that Mozilla doesn't have to beg device manufacturers for hardware support. If a device runs Android, it should be able to run Firefox OS with little software modification. Another reason is that Firefox OS uses Gecko as the UI. So the two major components, the kernel and userland are taken care of; there is no benefit from forking WebOS.

I'm using this project on my Macbook retina and it works wonderfully: https://github.com/dgraziotin/Fan-Control-Daemon The fans only spin up when I'm doing something intensive and go back down to completely silent when finished.

The key to success is not in the idea itself, but rather the execution of the idea. The idea is only a multiplier to the level of success.

Or maybe he just had a spare 1.5TB drive around.

The networks aren't "double-dipping". Your cable bill pays the cable provider and ads pay the content provider; different organizations, different sources of revenue. A much better explanation from a reddit commenter: http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/pz8kz/til_cab...

Looks like Amazon is finally bringing Webvan to fruition. Only took 11 years.