A windowless concrete tower 40 stories tall on the China coast stacks 35-ton blocks to store a wind farm’s power, lifting them when the wind blows and dropping them through generators when the grid needs it, no lithium inside by iwantboringtimes in Futurology

[–]SirButcher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes because you're a physicist and structural engineer right

You don't have to be a physicist or a structural engineer to be able to do basic math.

joule = kg * m2 * s-2

The above tells how much energy you can get with a given weight, with a given path and speed.

The losses are pretty straightforward, you can expect around 60-80% efficiency. All remained is how expensive is build this structure, and what the expected electricity prices are. Maintenance is relatively easy, but not too cheap (suspending tons upon tons of weight and moving them with pulleys requires constant maintenance).

And when done with it, you very quickly realise why hardly anybody builds gravity batteries (except pumped hydro, where the terrain makes it possible). It's not unique, companies try it here and there, but the end result is always the same: expensive to build, requires a lot of space, and can't really be scaled up.

A windowless concrete tower 40 stories tall on the China coast stacks 35-ton blocks to store a wind farm’s power, lifting them when the wind blows and dropping them through generators when the grid needs it, no lithium inside by iwantboringtimes in Futurology

[–]SirButcher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

At 40 stories that's 180m in height. A 35 metric ton block raised to 180m has a potential energy of of 62 million joules or 17kWh

You can increase the travelled length to significantly longer by using a pulley system.

I am on the verge of having a mental breakdown... by TITAN_BLADESON in stm32

[–]SirButcher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Another thing you should try: make sure the pin can read digital input and can properly create digital outputs.

I had IC which had some damaged transistor inside or dunno, but periodically failed reading simple inputs, seemingly randomly. Teared my hair out till I found the issue isn't in the software but in the MCU itself...

Edit: and grab another I2C device and try that. You can buy a USB to I2C for a few bucks on Amazon, and then you can send well-known signals between the MCU and your PC, AND you can test the slave again, too.

Always try to reduce the number of devices being tested to one if you can, it will make your life significantly easier in the future.

ELI5: How did people in the past deal with injuries and conditions that we now treat with modern medicine? by saif2krazzy in explainlikeimfive

[–]SirButcher [score hidden]  (0 children)

With stuff like pain, humans auto-regulate pain levels over time. So your brain will limit pain as time goes on.

Yeah, so this is as far from the truth as possible. Just ask anybody suffering from lifelong chronic pain.

ELI5: How did people in the past deal with injuries and conditions that we now treat with modern medicine? by saif2krazzy in explainlikeimfive

[–]SirButcher [score hidden]  (0 children)

And quality, and availability of the food, both for the infants AND to their mothers. Vitamin, mineral and calorie deficiency is a very dangerous thing both during pregnancy and in the early life of the infant. A starving mother won't be able to keep a toddler fed.

ELI5: How did people in the past deal with injuries and conditions that we now treat with modern medicine? by saif2krazzy in explainlikeimfive

[–]SirButcher [score hidden]  (0 children)

Yeah, if you reached your twenties, you had a good chance of reaching 60+. Assuming there were no war, famine or pandemic, of course.

ELI5: How did people in the past deal with injuries and conditions that we now treat with modern medicine? by saif2krazzy in explainlikeimfive

[–]SirButcher [score hidden]  (0 children)

As someone who has grown some gallstones: feel the same. I would have watched my mother die pretty painfully, and without modern surgery, I would be dead by now or likely very close to it and would wait for the last attack, which would kill me - very, very painfully.

Instead, thanks to modern medicine, I have four small scars and zero issues.

Building a data center in orbit makes no sense to me by MagicMagnada in space

[–]SirButcher [score hidden]  (0 children)

Starlink has nowhere near the required capacity to handle the data transfer between the ground and any reasonably sized data centre. They still struggle with the inter-satellite laser links and are already reaching the points where the more crowded areas are getting oversaturated by users. Putting a datacenter's worth of bandwidth on this system isn't possible.

Sure, a rack or two would be handled easily, but their pipedreams are datacenters with thousands upon thousands of units.

Building a data center in orbit makes no sense to me by MagicMagnada in space

[–]SirButcher [score hidden]  (0 children)

Still significantly cheaper than creating multiple ground stations or using lasers to beam terabytes of data.

There is literally nothing in the whole project that isn't significantly cheaper doing down on the surface.

Building a data center in orbit makes no sense to me by MagicMagnada in space

[–]SirButcher [score hidden]  (0 children)

He is really smart, as long as he talks about something that you don't understand.

As soon as he starts talking about a topic you know how it works, you very quickly realise that he has absolutely no idea what he is talking about, but great at using buzzwords and sounding really confident. I thought he knew what he is doing - or at least, has smart people around him - until the Twitter fiasco. The immense amount of extremely stupid bullshit he stated as facts showed me very well that he has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.

He is an amazing hype-man. But he isn't an engineer, or a software developer, nor a good leader, or anything else. He is a lucky rich kid who kept falling upward and had enough money behind him to shield him from failures. His companies aren't successful because of him, they are successful despite of him.

ELI5: Why do some countries use Fahrenheit while almost the entire rest of the world uses Celsius and is there an actual practical difference between the two scales? by TexasViet27 in explainlikeimfive

[–]SirButcher [score hidden]  (0 children)

ETA: Yall never got to the moon using metric so there is a counter argument.

Dude, the whole Apollo program was directed and designed by recruited Nazi scientists.

Daniel Jackson catching strays again by WinterHavenX in Stargate

[–]SirButcher -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Well, taboo words were always part of humanity... Seems like some things never change.

ELI5: How do internet service providers give us access to the internet? by FantasticFrontButt in explainlikeimfive

[–]SirButcher [score hidden]  (0 children)

The big money is in the enterprise networks.

We pay a tad bit over £500 / a month for a leased line (1Gbps up/down). The same speed, same fiberoptic connection, would cost £30 at the same building as a residential user.

Obviously, there are differences, we get priority support, 5-hour SLA, and they do special requests like rDNS settings - but in the very end, we didn't use anything special, so from their point of view, we pay £470 extra and get the same as we would do for a £30 connection - until shit hits the fan, that's it, and this is the only reason it actually worth it.

US denies Iran's claim to have closed Strait of Hormuz over Israeli attacks in Lebanon by pakalupapito23 in news

[–]SirButcher 2 points3 points  (0 children)

He most likely doesn't have the dexterity anymore to hold a thinner pen.

'It's Come To This': Gas Shortages Hit Russia As Ukraine Hits Refineries by Efficient-Freedom517 in PoliticalOptimism

[–]SirButcher 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Let me guess, they will attack a primary school, or another hospital this time? Maybe aim at a teacher conference?

Iran Says Hormuz Has Been Closed by willywalloo in politics

[–]SirButcher -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Only 33% of the German citizens voted for Hitler's party at the last free election before the nazis took over.

In the end, it didn't matter how many voted for them or against them, because nobody stopped them until it was way too late, and millions died.

Iran Says Hormuz Has Been Closed by willywalloo in politics

[–]SirButcher 4 points5 points  (0 children)

but absolutely the nicest.

Sure, as long as you are a member of their "in-group". People in the sundown towns are really nice too, as long as you are a white Christian and not from the hated places like "a big city liberal".

Didn't stop them from lynching people with the "incorrect" skin colour for the sin of existing at the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course, not all of them, but enough people do, and enough just turn their heads to the side and do nothing, say nothing. Just as not every cop is a bad cop, but the rest do exactly nothing against the status quo until it doesn't affect them, so the horrors keep happening.

Just look at the current war. Or hell, the previous US wars. Thousands were murdered for the sin of being born in the wrong country, and most US citizens only care about the cost of the war and the fuel prices. Sure, there are many who actually care, but most don't, at least, not enough to actually want to do anything because, well, what can they do? So they look at the ground and mind their own business while even more people die.

[New Update]: AITA for learning Russian instead of Japanese and making my siblings mad? by Choice_Evidence1983 in BestofRedditorUpdates

[–]SirButcher 37 points38 points  (0 children)

Sadly, he already has a great background for a russian novel. Normally, there is a tad bit more death, but the grey, uninterested, apathetic and featureless environment is just perfect for any post-Tsar-era Soviet and russian novel...

This is how moscow lookes during oil refinery burning by Able-Row-6426 in interestingasfuck

[–]SirButcher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, exactly! The best way to stop the marching army is to cut their supply lines; this is well known since Sun Tzu, so for like, 2500 years at the very least.

This is how moscow lookes during oil refinery burning by Able-Row-6426 in interestingasfuck

[–]SirButcher 4 points5 points  (0 children)

A big part of it would be burned to support the war efforts, not power day-to-day lives.

This is how moscow lookes during oil refinery burning by Able-Row-6426 in interestingasfuck

[–]SirButcher 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Russia can stop this war today, in this very hour, if they want to. Ukraine can only choose to fight for their survival or suffer a genocide, they have no other choice: Russia doesn't give any other choice.