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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • This is one of the biggest frustrations with nuclear power. The first power plants had issues (mostly due to them being bomb factory designs). We learnt from that, and designed better ones. They never got built. They were swamped in red tape and delays until they died.

    Decades later, China comes in and just asks nicely. The designs work fine. China now leads the way, built on research we left to rot.

    It’s also worth noting that there is a big difference between a fusion power plant and a fission one. China is doing active research on it, as is the west. There’s quite a friendly rivalry going on. We have also basically cracked fusion now. We just need to scale it up. The only big problem left is the tokamakite issue. The neutron radiation put off by the reaction transmutes the walls. Using radioactive materials as a buffer is an idea I’ve not heard of. I’m curious about the end products. A big selling point of fusion is the lack of long term waste. Putting a fission reaction in there too might lose that benefit.












  • The same way your mortgage is backed up by your house. If you default on your mortgage, the bank can take your house in foreclosure.

    Rather than sell shares to raise the money, Musk has backed his borrowing with Tesla shares. Basically, if he doesn’t pay back the loan, the banks get the shares. Unlike houses, shares can change value quite quickly. If the value of the loan exceeds the value of the shares, then the banks start to get VERY nervous. They will call in the loans to get what they can, before things get worse. This could crash the share price further, since they will want to offload the shares as soon as possible.

    Musk is extremely rich. However, like most extremely rick people, his money is tied up in shares. If Tesla falls fast enough, he could end up owing more than he has in assets. As soon as his creditors pull the plug, he becomes bankrupt.





  • 5g is a lot more capable and flexible compared to older generations. The main one is a massive increase in capacity, for the same frequency allocations. Compounding with this is that it can be directional. This allows several phones to use the exact same channel simultaneously, so long as they are positioned at different angles to the tower.

    5g also uses more frequency bands, allowing even more data to be moved around. Unfortunately, 2g has most of the lower frequencies, higher frequencies carry more data, but have less penetration into buildings.

    Finally, 5g allows for priority and context awareness. E.g. the police can have their phones prioritised, or VoIP calls given priority over video streaming. It can also trade bandwidth for range. This allows a tower to either reach further to cover a larger area, or focus down, to provide more bandwidth locally.

    In theory 5g could have a similar range to 2g. However, that rarely happens. It requires it using the lower frequencies, that 2g currently uses, and well as dropping its data rate to improve range. Most of the time it’s optimised for shorter range, and more towers using higher frequencies. This gives impression of a far smaller range. But give a huge increase is available bandwidth.




  • Imagine widgets are $10 in country A, but a company in country B can make and sell them for $8. Buyers are likely to buy the cheapest (all else being equal). A 100% tariff would turn $8 into $16. Company B still only gets $8, but they now look far more expensive to customers in country A.

    They are designed to price out external competitors to local companies. This can be used to protect industries. Steel is a good example. China can make steel far cheaper than the rest of the world. However, steel plants take a long time to build and get producing. You generally don’t want a potential rival to have control of the materials you need for war production.

    Another legit use is to account for local regulations. If you require local companies to pay in a carbon credit system, an external company could undercut them from abroad. A tariff would help level the playing field.

    None of these apply to what trump is doing. He’s swinging a claymore mine around like a toy hammer. It causes huge damage to all involved.