General news thread

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

5 hours ago, Ramlaen said:

 

The way Reddit names things vs. the way 4chan does, /pol instead of /pol/.

I don't hang out around either site, so I wouldn't know.

[Donward]

Charles Manson is now burning in hell. Pity the bastard wasn't sent to the gas chambers 45 years ago.

[Belesarius]

Good riddance.

 

[Belesarius]

Charming.

 

http://www.newsweek.com/republican-sex-trafficking-child-trump-coordinator-716348

[Ulric]

Way to make a misleading headline, Newsweek. Also, isn't the age of consent in Oklahoma 16?

 

Either way, it is entirely irresponsible to have a headline that makes it seem like Trump himself was coordinating a national child sex trafficking ring, as opposed to a county level coordinator in butfuckistan soliciting for sex from a 17 year old.

[Ramlaen]

The headline is intentional, for all the media’s handwringing they are more than willing to do the same lies / misleading statements / hyperbole they attack Trump for.

[Meplat]

16 hours ago, Donward said:

Charles Manson is now burning in hell. Pity the bastard wasn't sent to the gas chambers 45 years ago.

 

15 hours ago, Belesarius said:

Good riddance.

 

 

Hoping the SOB is roasting in hell on a slowly turned spit.

[Scolopax]

Charlie Rose is the next name on the sexual assault chopping block, with CBS, PBS, and Bloomberg dropping him already.

[LoooSeR]

 

[LoooSeR]

 

[LostCosmonaut]

British water companies are literally using magic to (try to) find buried pipes; https://medium.com/@sallylepage/in-2017-uk-water-companies-still-rely-on-magic-6eb62e036b02

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

Everyone remember the stink about the Dakota Pipeline? 

 

Aka, you now know why the term "Indian Giver" exists?

 

They sign a contract, then make a stink right before everything goes down because they knew they could. 

 

All those memes floating around about how the pipeline was leaking oil onto native land, just as they said it would? 

 

Guess who was caught sabotaging the pipeline and causing all of those leaks. 

Quote

Dakota Access protesters claim responsibility for pipeline sabotage

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2017/07/24/dakota-access-protesters-claim-responsibility-pipeline-sabotage/504136001/

 

 

[Donward]

Weapons-grade Schadenfruede.

 

 

 

[ShamefurDispray]

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/new-zimbabwe-president-seeks-reconciliation-with-west/news-story/795bafa30cae986be9ce631854daea59

 

New president of Zimbabwe wants to repay whites for driving them off their land.

 

This is a very smart move even if none of the whites return.

First, he shows that he actually wants to reform Zimbabwe economically, unlike Mugabe. If Zimbabwe gets richer, he can make some money in the process, either through corruption or more legitimate means. Good results would likely lead him to legitimately win the next election, solidifying his position.

Second, it's not a terribly high amount of money since it's only being paid to 5000 people. Even if he decides to give out a good sum, he can probably get it from other sources (aid money).

Third, it improves Zimbabwe's image to the west, who may be more willing to give him more aid money.

Fourth, it restores some confidence for investors looking to invest into Zimbabwe, especially reassuring the Chinese that he probably wouldn't pull something like nationalizing their investments.

[Donward]

Scanning today's headlines... And I am just continually amazed at the pace of major breaking stories. It's like a meth addicted monkey with ADD that only knows how to swipe left. 

 

Nork Nukes. Lauer. Keillor. Bosnian war criminal commits suicide in court. GOP tax bill. Trump causes the media to lose its shit over yet another series of Tweets. And those are just the above the fold stories.

 

Again, as a comparison, during the Obama Administration, the media spent six weeks pondering the fate of a crashed airplane in the Indian Ocean.

 

 

 

[Belesarius]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-42190358

 

Tesla put a 100 megawatt battery online to help stabilize South Australias energy grid.

 

[Collimatrix]

... Good lord that is some bad journalism.

 

Nowhere, absolutely nowhere in that article does it say how much energy this battery stores.  You know, the thing that actually matters.

 

Energy is the amount of electricity in the battery.  Energy is measured in joules (or ergs if you are a Shiite or BTUs or calories if you are a kaffir).  Power is how fast the battery can discharge that energy.  Power is measured in watts (or... ergs per second if you are a Shiite or horsepower if you are a kaffir).

 

Now, here's the thing; this giant battery is certainly a collection of smaller elements operating together.  In fact, it used to be that a cell referred to an individual electrolytic component while a battery meant a collection of cells working together, by analogy with a battery of cannons.

 

When cells are wired in series, it increases the power.  There are certain practical limits to this which I don't understand well because I am not an electrical engineer, but in principle it is possible to have absurdly high power with very little energy.  It's just a question of how fast the energy gets dumped out.  There are capacitor banks in labs that produce more power than the entire US power grid, but only for tiny fractions of a second.  Their impact on the power grid isn't that important because, relative to the entire thing, they are consuming very little energy.

 

So, what we really want to know, the amount of megajoules that this giant battery stores, is completely absent from the article.  Because journalists are stupid and don't understand anything.  Fuck 'em all.

[Belesarius]

14 minutes ago, Collimatrix said:

... Good lord that is some bad journalism.

 

Nowhere, absolutely nowhere in that article does it say how much energy this battery stores.  You know, the thing that actually matters.

 

Energy is the amount of electricity in the battery.  Energy is measured in joules (or ergs if you are a Shiite or BTUs or calories if you are a kaffir).  Power is how fast the battery can discharge that energy.  Power is measured in watts (or... ergs per second if you are a Shiite or horsepower if you are a kaffir).

 

Now, here's the thing; this giant battery is certainly a collection of smaller elements operating together.  In fact, it used to be that a cell referred to an individual electrolytic component while a battery meant a collection of cells working together, by analogy with a battery of cannons.

 

When cells are wired in series, it increases the power.  There are certain practical limits to this which I don't understand well because I am not an electrical engineer, but in principle it is possible to have absurdly high power with very little energy.  It's just a question of how fast the energy gets dumped out.  There are capacitor banks in labs that produce more power than the entire US power grid, but only for tiny fractions of a second.  Their impact on the power grid isn't that important because, relative to the entire thing, they are consuming very little energy.

 

So, what we really want to know, the amount of megajoules that this giant battery stores, is completely absent from the article.  Because journalists are stupid and don't understand anything.  Fuck 'em all.

My read is that it's basically a giant UPS to stabilize the grid from fluctuations.  Not actually all that useful for long term power usage.

 

[Collimatrix]

1 minute ago, Belesarius said:

My read is that it's basically a giant UPS to stabilize the grid from fluctuations.  Not actually all that useful for long term power usage.

 

 

Agreed.  It's for smoothing out short-term irregularities.  Anything more would be impractically huge.

[Belesarius]

1 minute ago, Collimatrix said:

 

Agreed.  It's for smoothing out short-term irregularities.  Anything more would be impractically huge.

Of course, how bad and outdated does your power grid have to be to need that big of a UPS to stabilize it?

 

[Xlucine]

Quote

When fully charged, the battery can power up to 30,000 homes for an hour.

 

Does average-home-comsumption hours count as an SI derived unit?

 

With average consumption of just under 6 MWhrs/year, and assuming the beeb used the same average, I make it about 20 MWhrs in the battery (72 GJ, or 17 tonnes TNT equivalent)

[roguetechie]

On 11/21/2017 at 3:29 PM, LostCosmonaut said:

British water companies are literally using magic to (try to) find buried pipes; https://medium.com/@sallylepage/in-2017-uk-water-companies-still-rely-on-magic-6eb62e036b02

 

Wow

 

I will preface this by flat out making it plain that I believe in multiple things which I'm perfectly aware are completely scientifically unsupportable just by sheer virtue of having been beaten in the face repeatedly with enough stuff that I'm forced to consider personally convincing "evidence" purely because I have tried and failed to find ANYTHING that could even remotely explain these things to any real degree I find convincing....

 

And to this article I still have no words other than WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!?

 

I don't even begrudge myself or apologize to others for the crazy shit I believe in at this point.

 

But

 

I also don't charge people money for.... Sonofabitch I can't say that because I spent about a year "reading tarot cards" for extra cash. (No I don't believe in tarot cards as anything other than a slick directed social engineering enabler and never have, but if you ask my former customers they'll tell I'm just "hiding my gift"... MOONBATS the lot of them!)

 

Ok, but I'm also not a fucking water company so there is that...

Edited December 4, 2017 by roguetechie
MOONBATS

[Xoon]

On 1.12.2017 at 8:25 PM, Collimatrix said:

... Good lord that is some bad journalism.

 

Nowhere, absolutely nowhere in that article does it say how much energy this battery stores.  You know, the thing that actually matters.

 

Energy is the amount of electricity in the battery.  Energy is measured in joules (or ergs if you are a Shiite or BTUs or calories if you are a kaffir).  Power is how fast the battery can discharge that energy.  Power is measured in watts (or... ergs per second if you are a Shiite or horsepower if you are a kaffir).

Not sure what the measurements are in the US. But in Europe we measure battery size by Kwh. The power divided by the amounts of hours. One kwh is equal to 1kw*3600s (1 hour).   

This means that a 1 Kwh battery could run a 1Kw load  for one hour, or a 2Kw load for 30 minutes, or a 4Kw load for 15 minutes. 

 

The exception being power banks and computer batteries, which are measured in Ah.  The reason being that the voltage is constant (5V), also manufacturers usually use mA so that they can make the numbers look big, like 10 000mAh, instead of simply 10Ah. 

 

 

On 1.12.2017 at 8:25 PM, Collimatrix said:

When cells are wired in series, it increases the power.  There are certain practical limits to this which I don't understand well because I am not an electrical engineer, but in principle it is possible to have absurdly high power with very little energy.  It's just a question of how fast the energy gets dumped out.  There are capacitor banks in labs that produce more power than the entire US power grid, but only for tiny fractions of a second.  Their impact on the power grid isn't that important because, relative to the entire thing, they are consuming very little energy.

 

I think you are mistaking voltage and power here.  It is true that wiring cells in series increases the power, but so does wiring them in parallel. Ohm's law explains this:

Take a 12V 1A cell, if we use Ohm's law, we will see that:
V*I=P
12V*1A=12w

 

So we know this cell has a power of 12w.

 

By wiring it in series we double the voltage.

Now the cell is 24V 1A, by using the same equation:
24V*1A=24w

 

By wiring it in parallel we double the amps but the voltage stays the same.
This cell is 12V 2A, and what do we get?
12V*2A=24w

 

Now you talk about stupidly high power with no energy. I am assume you meant stupidly high voltage with no amps. This is easily possible, just take a sweater and rub around a bit to make static electricity. Now touch anything conductive. GASP, you just discharged up to around 12 000 000 volts! Now why did the room not explode and the conductors vaporize? Because the current is minuscule, 0,00001mA maybe.  This is around 0,12w. Absolutely nothing. You can see this is tasers. You only need 12 000 volts to have a very effective taser, at around 20mA. 

 

Voltage is the pressure in a water pipe.
Current is the amount of water flowing through the pipe.
Resistance is the inside diameter of the pipe.
Power is the amount of well, power in the water. Like the power in a motor, it does not matter if the motor is 6V 1000A or 6000V 1A, they both have a power of 6Kw. (It does impact motor design and such, but that is off topic).

 

 

What limits engineers from simply wiring a million cells in series and parallel is the heat generation and BMS.  Example of a Tesla battery pack:

 

 

 

On 1.12.2017 at 8:25 PM, Collimatrix said:

 

So, what we really want to know, the amount of megajoules that this giant battery stores, is completely absent from the article.  Because journalists are stupid and don't understand anything.  Fuck 'em all.

Yes, they could have simply hooked a super capacitor to the grid that lasts for 0,1 second like you mentioned. 

[Collimatrix]

15 minutes ago, Xoon said:

Not sure what the measurements are in the US. But in Europe we measure battery size by Kwh. The power divided by the amounts of hours. One kwh is equal to 1kw*3600s (1 hour).   

This means that a 1 Kwh battery could run a 1Kw load  for one hour, or a 2Kw load for 30 minutes, or a 4Kw load for 15 minutes. 

 

The exception being power banks and computer batteries, which are measured in Ah.  The reason being that the voltage is constant (5V), also manufacturers usually use mA so that they can make the numbers look big, like 10 000mAh, instead of simply 10Ah. 

 

 

Kilowatt-hours are used in the US as well, and it's dimensionally identical to a joule.  A joule is a watt per second, so a watt-hour is 3600 joules, and a kilowatt hour is 3.6 x 10^6 joules.

 

The unit irritates me because it's stupid to derive a unit of energy from a unit of power that is derived from a unit of energy divided by a unit of time by definition.  But kilowatt hours are the industry standard, even though I wish they would just use joules.

 

15 minutes ago, Xoon said:

 

 

 

I think you are mistaking voltage and power here.  It is true that wiring cells in series increases the power, but so does wiring them in parallel. Ohm's law explains this:

Take a 12V 1A cell, if we use Ohm's law, we will see that:
V*I=P
12V*1A=12w

 

So we know this cell has a power of 12w.

 

By wiring it in series we double the voltage.

Now the cell is 24V 1A, by using the same equation:
24V*1A=24w

 

By wiring it in parallel we double the amps but the voltage stays the same.
This cell is 12V 2A, and what do we get?
12V*2A=24w

 

D'oh!  Thank you for the correction.  Yes, either arrangement would increase power.  Electrical engineering is not my jam.

[Scolopax]

The IOC has banned Russia from competing in the 2018 Winter Olympics due to its doping scandal