sugar_in_your_tea

sugar_in_your_tea , 3 hours ago to Technology in 24 of the best free alternatives to the most popular paid software

Yeah, just use the one built-in to Windows, or don't use Windows.

sugar_in_your_tea , 3 hours ago to Technology in World's first bioprocessor uses 16 human brain organoids for ‘a million times less power’ consumption than a digital chip

And ends.

sugar_in_your_tea , 3 hours ago to Technology in World's first bioprocessor uses 16 human brain organoids for ‘a million times less power’ consumption than a digital chip

And CEOs should love it since they only go up.

sugar_in_your_tea , 5 hours ago to Technology in Small modular nuclear reactors get a reality check in new report

Yes, NuScale wasn't scrapped due to lawsuits, I was more referring to the delays to Blue Castle, which was delayed for 3-ish years due to lawsuits.

NuScale is a pretty small operation promising something like 300-400MW. Blue Castle is a lot larger promising ~1500MW.

nuclear is expensive

Initially, yes, but amortized over the life of the plant, it's pretty cheap. It has a high upfront cost and relatively low operating costs. And one of the big operating costs (waste disposal) won't be an issue here, the larger issue is water access for cooling, and that's political (farmers don't want to give up water rights).

My main concern is seismic activity, since if we get an earthquake, it'll likely be very violent. That increases initial costs, but doesn't really impact ongoing costs. Utah just doesn't like throwing large sums of money around, hence the political pushback.

We're still >50% fossil fuels, so I'll support anything that replaces that. I like hydrogen (in development), geothermal (in development), solar (expanding), and wind (seems to be slowing), but that's not going to be enough. Even if all of those were operating today, we'd still be using significant amounts of fossil fuels. I think we will still need nuclear, we have the space and demand for it.

sugar_in_your_tea , 5 hours ago to Technology in Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week

At home, it's whatever ships with my Linux distribution. I use it mostly for web dev testing (I dev on Firefox, test on chromium) for personal projects, and for my kids to play certain games (Firefox works most of the time for that).

Brave was created because firefox kicked a homophobe out and he wanted to make a browser.

Sort of, but I don't think that's really telling the whole story.

Brendan Eich was the CEO of Mozilla for many years and was the initial creator of JavaScript. He was ousted because he made a private donation to block gay marriage legalization in California. There is no evidence that he was or is a homophobe, just that he didn't believe that gay marriage was something that state should legally recognize. By all counts, he was pleasant to work with regardless of sexual orientation, the issue was that someone found out about his donation. He didn't harm anyone and wasn't unfair, he just made a private donation.

I think he was a great CEO, and Mozilla needs a technical CEO imo (in fact, everything started going downhill around when he left). I disagree with him politically, but if I avoided every product where I disagreed with the executive team politically, I'd have to avoid pretty much every product (and quit my job).

So I need a better reason to avoid Brave. I'm not sure what the plan is for their cryptocurrency, and I honestly see it as more of a gimmick than anything. It's easy to disable, so whatever, it existing doesn't impact me.

I also don't actively recommend it to anyone, I always recommend Firefox or a Firefox derivative. The only time I recommend it is if someone needs a Chromium-based browser and wants ad-blocking, and Brave works well for that. If they just need Chromium and don't need ad blocking, I recommend Chromium.

If you have a better alternative, I'm interested. I literally just need a Chromium-based browser that works on macOS (what I use for work) with proper ad blocking. I don't need to sync anything, it'll only ever exist on that one device. I also need something for Linux, and open source is more important than ad blocking there.

I'm also interested in Brave Search since it uses its own index. I currently use DDG, but search results are kinda crappy so I'm looking for alternatives.

sugar_in_your_tea , 5 hours ago to Technology in Small modular nuclear reactors get a reality check in new report

Yeah, I just saw that news, which apparently happened end of last year. The public wants nuclear (or at least a non-coal base power), but projects keep getting delayed or scrapped due to local lawsuits or local governments pulling financial support.

Geothermal is cool, and apparently there's an active project. It should produce 400MW, which is pretty significant, but still a pretty small fraction of total capacity (~9.5GW).

If the Blue Castle project ever finishes, it'll supply ~1.5GW power. That, with geothermal, could take up ~1/4 of the total energy generation, which would be a really good start. I'd also like to see hydrogen production as a "battery" source (produce from solar, burn at night). Looks like that's under development as well.

Lots of interesting things are happening now, I just wish they started 10+ years ago...

sugar_in_your_tea , 6 hours ago to Technology in Small modular nuclear reactors get a reality check in new report

Perception seems fine, every poll I've seen going back 10 years has been positive for nuclear power. Everyone seems to want it, they just don't want it in their backyard.

The Blue Castle project was (is?) a proposal for a nuclear plant in eastern central Utah, which is pretty far from any urban center and buffered by a mountain range. They won a lawsuit regarding water rights more than 5 years ago, but there have been no updates on it for 5-ish years.

There's a SMR project in S. Idaho that was active recently, Unfortunately, it seems to have missed subscription targets, so it's unlikely to move forward. I don't know where those subscriptions are supposed to come from (I'm interested), but I'm guessing it's cities buying in and many dropped out due to financing not being certain.

A lot of the pushback is from politicians, not residents. The popular support is there, but our legislatures and local governments are pretty conservative and unwilling to take risks.

sugar_in_your_tea , 6 hours ago to Technology in How a fed up carpenter found his stolen power tools — and 15,000 others

I highly doubt that. This was in a relatively low crime part of town, in a city with very low crime (about half the national average), and this particular road would only be used by local residents. It's somewhat popular because it's the only thru road for a mile or so in either direction with a school and a park, but there's also just houses for a mile or so in either direction.

Traffic is relatively low, the street is wide (one lane in either direction, but there's room for two), pedestrians are rare (everyone drives), etc. So most people seem to go 35 despite it being a 25 zone (there's a speed check sign at one end).

If they're looking for drugs or warrants, they'd have better luck elsewhere. We're a constitutional carry state (no permit needed to conceal carry), so guns are fairly common and totally legal unless you're a felon or a minor.

This was on the last day of the month, so I think they're just filling quotas.

sugar_in_your_tea , 17 hours ago to Technology in All Santander staff and '30 million' customers in Spain, Chile and Uruguay hacked

Just let me use TOTP like my email does.

sugar_in_your_tea , 17 hours ago to Technology in New ASUS router firmware now requires a user to be 16y or older and will restrict features and even security upgrades if you opt out

Yup, that's what I use. Mikrotik router and Ubiquiti AP. Ubiquiti APs are kind of a pain, but they work well once configured, and I honestly haven't had many problems with Mikrotik.

The nice thing about this setup is I can replace one thing without replacing the rest. If I want to upgrade to 10 gigabit ethernet, I don't need to mess with the wifi, I just need to upgrade the router. Or if the wifi isn't strong enough, I can just get another AP. If I want to do something fancy, I can probably do it with the software on the router.

sugar_in_your_tea , 17 hours ago to Technology in New ASUS router firmware now requires a user to be 16y or older and will restrict features and even security upgrades if you opt out

Then don't use ASUS, pick a brand that's supported.

sugar_in_your_tea , 21 hours ago to Technology in Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week

I use that on my personal computer, but at work I'll occasionally hit sites other than what I'm debugging, and Chromium has ineffective ad-block, whereas Brave has reasonable ad-block. I can't control the network at work like I can at home, so I can't really rely on something like a pi-hole or whatever.

As a web browser with an embedded ad-blocker, it works fine. I'm not going to stop using something because someone distasteful is using it, I'll stop using it if it no longer meets my needs. It blocks ads and renders as Chrome would, so it works well enough for me.

I disable the crypto nonsense and pretty much only use it for debugging work stuff. Sometimes that means I need a JSON formatter or something, and those sites are riddled with ads w/o an ad-blocker.

sugar_in_your_tea , 1 day ago to Technology in Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week

Give it a shot! Worst case scenario, you just go back.

sugar_in_your_tea , 1 day ago to Technology in Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week

Why do you need to migrate 20 years of data? Do you actually look at anything more than a month or two old?

That said, Protonmail has "Easy Switch" to copy emails and whatnot.

The harder part for me is Drive, since there just isn't a competitor that's anywhere near as good in terms of overall experience. I'm going to try out OnlyOffice, but I know there are a few features I just won't have anymore.

sugar_in_your_tea , 1 day ago to Technology in Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week

Here's what I did:

1. switch to Firefox - works with all the Google crap, so it's an easy switch
2. get a slim wallet - I don't need Google Wallet at all anymore, I just keep the two cards I use for everything easily accessible
3. install GrapheneOS on my Pixel phone - can install sandboxed Google crap if you want (I do it in a separate profile)
4. YouTube - install ad-block and use Grayjay on my phone to make it easier to watch non-YouTube channels
5. forward all gmail to a new account (I picked Tuta, but Protonmail is probably better for most) - easy to configure forwards in gmail, and then I just give out my new email to family and friends; plan is to keep gmail for spam once I'm no longer getting important emails sent to my new email

I'm still stuck with Google Drive though. As you said, it's just so convenient. I'm trying out OnlyOffice with a self-hosted NextCloud instance, but there's a lot of sacrifices. I have some complex spreadsheets, and switching to literally anything else loses features (I like the GOOGLEFINANCE() feature).

But yeah, I wish Google didn't suck, they have some really convenient products, I just don't trust them anymore.