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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • I’ve been playing around with the disabled GIL build and though I use threads fairly extensively in my projects, it’s been smooth sailing so far. I feel like my GUI scripts might be a bit more responsive now? (I tend to farm out user events to dedicated threads, so this is entirely possible.)

    But overall, everything is stable and awesome! I’m so excited! This has been a long time coming for Python.


  • Yeah it’s kind of an arm’s race with people feeling they need to be the biggest thing on the road to feel safe. I’ve driven a few larger vehicles as airport rentals when they had nothing else in stock, and I’ve noticed they also tend to have a lot more blind spots than what I’m used to.

    I remember when I was taking lessons, my instructor said I should think of the airbag as being a spring-loaded spike that will impale you if you screw up. I guess he was trying to impress on me that it’s not good to feel safe and smug when you’re driving? And actually, I’ve read since that air bags can be pretty violent when they go off, so he may not have been as far from the truth as I thought?


  • I wish there were more regulation on the size of private vehicles, particularly in North America. It’s pretty clear at this point that what is contributing to higher pedestrian/cyclist fatalities despite better urban infrastructure is the increasing curb weight and ground clearance of automobiles. We can hope that collision-avoidance tech in newer models may reduce human-error type accidents, but at the end of the day, kinetic energy is a bitch.

    I wonder how the EV transition will affect things? On the one hand, an EV would weigh more than an ICE of the same class since batteries are heavy. On the other hand, batteries are also the most expensive component by far and you need more in a larger vehicle, so from a dealer’s perspective, the margins may not necessarily grow the bigger you go like with an ICE. The sweet spot might actually be something smaller. (In fact, for me, it’s actually ebikes.)


  • tunetardis@lemmy.catoTechnology@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    22 days ago

    But the mining, milling, and production of nuclear fuel, as well as the construction and decommissioning of nuclear plants, emit greenhouse gases at levels ranging from 10 to 130 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of power — lower than fossil fuels but higher than wind and hydroelectricity (and roughly on par with solar).

    That’s interesting. The article they link gives a bit more detail:

    These energy intensities translate into greenhouse gas intensities for LWR and HWR of between 10 and 130 g CO2-e/kWhel, with an average of 65 g CO2-e/kWhel.

    While these greenhouse gases are expectedly lower than those of fossil technologies (typically 600–1200 g CO2-e/kWhel), they are higher than reported figures for wind turbines and hydroelectricity (around 15–25 g CO2-e/kWhel) and in the order of, or slightly lower than, solar photovoltaic or solar thermal power (around 90 g CO2-e/kWhel).

    The wide range for nuclear apparently comes from difficulties in estimating the carbon footprint of mining/processing the uranium, but that nuclear is sort of in the middle of the pack in carbon footprint relative to renewables in spite of the fueling costs is good to know.

    I suppose these sort of numbers may change dramatically in years to come. Take solar. A lot of focus seems to be on the efficiency of panels, which would almost certainly lower the carbon cost per unit of energy as it improves, but a breakthrough in panel longevity would also do that in an amortized emissions sort of way.


  • My most common use case is probably looking up stuff that may or may not be in a dict.

    if (val := dct.get(key)) is not None:
        # do stuff with val
    

    I guess that’s pretty similar to what you were doing?

    Sometimes I also use it in some crazy list comprehension thing when I get backed into a corner, though it’s hard to think of an example off the top of my head? It usually happens when I’m in a rush and desperate to get something working, but it has an uncanny way of being just the thing you need at that point.







  • I guess the central premise of capitalism is that while every society has its haves and have nots, capitalism is supposed to encourage the haves to invest in the economy rather than hoarding their wealth. In return, they stand to get even wealthier, but a stronger economy ought to generate more employment and generally improve the lives of commoners as well.

    Unfortunately, in a never-ending quest to make wealth-generation more efficient and streamlined, employment is being eliminated through automation, outsourcing, etc. and the system is eating itself out from the inside. I doubt it can persist much longer, but what will replace it remains unclear. I pray that it will be something sensible that ensures everyone has their basic needs met and can still find rewarding pursuits in life. But there are so many ways it could go very wrong, and that includes staying on the current course.





  • Any New Yorkers here? I’m interested in your perspective on Giuliani. I only have a cursory knowledge of him. He first came to my attention when he made headlines busting some crime family as a DA way back when. Then he was in the news a lot as the mayor of NYC during 9/11. He seemed pretty respected at the time? I dunno. And next thing you know, he resurfaces as an enforcer for the Trump administration, winding up getting disbarred and generally shunned by society. I guess I’m curious as to whether he was always a scumbag or grew into the role?