• Re: More respian developer insanity

    From Jan Panteltje@3:770/3 to jj@franjam.org.uk on Thu Jun 23 13:22:36 2022
    On a sunny day (Thu, 23 Jun 2022 11:10:49 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Jim Jackson <jj@franjam.org.uk> wrote in <slrntb8ihp.8h5.jj@iridium.wf32df>:

    On 2022-06-23, Jan Panteltje <pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote:
    So, I boot to the command line, as pi automatically
    I type
    amixer scontrols
    it shows me Capture and Master controls
    I type
    alsamixer
    it shows me Master control with stereo


    Then I type
    sudo su -
    Now I am root, still on the command line (so no X )

    I type
    amixer scontrols
    it shows me Headphone only
    I type alsamixer
    It shows Headphone control as MONO!!!!!

    Someone PLEASE FIRE the idiots who set root to mono!!!! and Pi to stereo with DIFFERENT controls
    Now modify all your code developers!!!!
    How do I set alsa to stereo like pi has?


    I assume the difference between pi and root, is because the creators of
    pios do not expect users to user the root account - they discourage it.
    So if you use pios and go "off-piste" you are expected to know what you
    are doing. I accept that, as I'm always doing things that don't fit the RPI >setup - like removing systemd, and pulseaudio and using my own desktop setup.

    I did a quick google for "configuring alsa on PiOS" and there seem to be >several places that might help. Good luck.

    Yes
    Thanks
    Will google for it

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  • From Jan Panteltje@3:770/3 to Shot on Thu Jun 23 13:22:36 2022
    On a sunny day (Thu, 23 Jun 2022 13:15:35 +0100) it happened Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote in <20220623131535.4723c75089fab3681c2d6f7a@eircom.net>:

    On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 09:07:42 GMT
    Jan Panteltje <pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote:

    Someone PLEASE FIRE the idiots who set root to mono!!!! and Pi to stereo

    I suspect they did nothing to root but set up alsa the way they
    wanted it on the pi user and so generated user specific configs instead of >system wide ones. So root wound up with a set of system defaults probably >designed to imitate the original Sun audio (8Khz mono PCM IIRC).

    with DIFFERENT controls Now modify all your code developers!!!!
    How do I set alsa to stereo like pi has?

    I would go looking for the system wide alsa controls and set
    things up by hand in there. Then I'd remove the user customisations for pi >(or just the user).

    Yes,
    point is , among many other things, that those raspian tinkerers and also
    some library developers are not really application developers.
    Example why this pissed me off in a big way, xpsa spectrum analyzer I wrote gets,
    when it starts, the volume setting (for the radio mode) from alsa by parsing amixer output
    and sets the GUI slider to that, and in reverse sets amixer Master control to control volume.
    Parsing amixer fails as it sees mono syntax, anyways FM stereo fails too etc. Same for xmpl media player I wrote.
    I wrote about close to a hundred Linux applications
    Maybe not so bad for people who wrote just one, but modifying many each time some idiot changes basics is a nuisance
    Example: library maintainers: libform maintainer suddenly removed middle and right mouse button from the library
    I did give feedback.. have about 20 or more programs that use it..
    so I compiled an old version of the lib and gave it a different name and link against that.

    In the old days... OK REALITY
    I have a PC with Xfree old version of Linux, oss for audio and all things run perfectly on it.
    THERE IS NO EXTRA FUNCTIONALITY IN NEWER LINUX RELEASES
    but if you think booting slower and all sort of insane twiddles then yes.
    The old oss sound system: I had nice 6 channel (6 languages) stuff I wrote
    but when alsa came audio became a mess and still is: /dev/dsp was the way to go.

    Just always some kids that think they invent something better without understanding the old stuff
    No wonder the whole world is hacked :-)
    Look at computer languages, now everybody is into python or something...
    Too lazy to learn C? Python is a mess.

    Yes you are right, will have to see where booting to pi does the alsa stereo thing..

    But really EVERY new release of raspian has changes that break things, from EEPROM shit
    to audio mess, many things.
    Poor application developers
    And poor users!!!

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Thu Jun 23 13:30:34 2022
    On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 13:15:35 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 09:07:42 GMT Jan Panteltje
    <pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote:

    Someone PLEASE FIRE the idiots who set root to mono!!!! and Pi to
    stereo

    I suspect they did nothing to root but set up alsa the way they
    wanted it on the pi user and so generated user specific configs instead
    of system wide ones. So root wound up with a set of system defaults
    probably designed to imitate the original Sun audio (8Khz mono PCM
    IIRC).

    with DIFFERENT controls Now modify all your code developers!!!!
    How do I set alsa to stereo like pi has?

    I would go looking for the system wide alsa controls and set
    things up by hand in there. Then I'd remove the user customisations for
    pi (or just the user).

    ... or simply set up another user, initiallly with default settings, and
    ignore 'pi'. Then its easy to modify your user to yse the settingds you
    want.

    I do not use 'root' apart from doing system-wide things like startup/ shutdown/system update and making whole system backups. I've been working
    this way since I first used a multi-user, multi-tasking OS (ICL's George
    3) in 1970 and prefer to keep the system management:development separation
    for both security and finger-trouble damage limitation reasons.

    That's made sense for OSen I've had a sysadmin role on since then (George
    3, OS/400, various Unices, VOS and Guardian as well as Linux), but some people's experience and security requirements evidently can and do differ
    from mine.


    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Thu Jun 23 16:51:28 2022
    On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 13:30:35 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 13:15:35 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

    I would go looking for the system wide alsa controls and set
    things up by hand in there. Then I'd remove the user customisations for
    pi (or just the user).

    ... or simply set up another user, initiallly with default settings, and ignore 'pi'. Then its easy to modify your user to yse the settingds you
    want.

    That just gets them right for the new user, setting the system
    default sane makes them right for all users by default including the one
    you add in a few months when you've forgotten all the tweaks.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Thu Jun 30 19:16:52 2022
    On 30/06/2022 13:19, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 23:56:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    On 29/06/2022 14:13, Martin Gregorie wrote:
    On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 14:36:03 +0200, Deloptes wrote:

    Did you put also the two words climate change in your search?

    No, of course not: TNP referred to Robert Brown as a physicist, so of
    course I looked for a physicist with that name and didn't find one.
    Replacing the 'physicist' search term with 'climate change' got just
    two hits for "Robert Brown":
    ]

    https://scholars.duke.edu/person/rgb

    Thanks for that: it turns out that his published work is connected with Heisenberg's model of ferromagnetism and not a lot else. IMO this makes
    his comments about climate modelling interesting but scarcely definitive.


    His remarks are about a problem in physics and the modelling thereof.

    He knows far more about that than any 'climate scientist', most of whom
    are practically innumerate.


    --
    Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the
    gospel of envy.

    Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

    Winston Churchill

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to TimS on Fri Jul 1 19:35:24 2022
    On 1 Jul 2022 18:13:06 GMT, TimS wrote:

    The relationship (if any) between CO2 and temperature is what is
    being modelled. The connection between those models and reality is what
    is in dispute.

    Nicely expressed.

    Indeed, but since roughly 1800 the average temperature in the UK does in
    fact correlate quite well with increases in CO2. Note, no climate models
    are needed to see this correlation. See Figure 2 in

    https://skepticalscience.com/The-correlation-between-CO2-and-
    temperature.html

    which shows pretty good correlation, but also note the the text points out
    that if you only look at a short time period, (Figure 1 on that page
    covers less than a decade) than weather variation dominates and there is
    little visible correlation between the two data sets.

    Also note that these two data sets are measurements and that there is no climate model involved.

    For temperature trends from 20,000BC - 2016, see https://xkcd.com/1732/
    and note that this also follows the same trend. XKCD may be a satirical
    strip, but the author's background is in engineering and AFAICT he doesn't
    piss about with the numbers on this type of chart.



    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to A. Dumas on Fri Jul 1 20:57:58 2022
    On 01 Jul 2022 at 21:37:54 BST, A. Dumas <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:

    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
    For temperature trends from 20,000BC - 2016, see https://xkcd.com/1732/
    and note that this also follows the same trend. XKCD may be a satirical
    strip, but the author's background is in engineering and AFAICT he doesn't >> piss about with the numbers on this type of chart.

    On his wiki page it does say engineer but also that his degree is a BS in physics. By trade he was a NASA software and robotics engineer for a while, maybe that's why? I thought engineer was a protected title in the US but no idea what the requirements are.

    What do you mean by "protected title"?

    --
    Tim

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  • From A. Dumas@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Fri Jul 1 20:37:54 2022
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
    For temperature trends from 20,000BC - 2016, see https://xkcd.com/1732/
    and note that this also follows the same trend. XKCD may be a satirical strip, but the author's background is in engineering and AFAICT he doesn't piss about with the numbers on this type of chart.

    On his wiki page it does say engineer but also that his degree is a BS in physics. By trade he was a NASA software and robotics engineer for a while, maybe that's why? I thought engineer was a protected title in the US but no idea what the requirements are.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Munroe

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Sat Jul 2 05:52:26 2022
    On Fri, 1 Jul 2022 19:35:25 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    On 1 Jul 2022 18:13:06 GMT, TimS wrote:

    The relationship (if any) between CO2 and temperature is what is
    being modelled. The connection between those models and reality is what
    is in dispute.

    Nicely expressed.

    Indeed, but since roughly 1800 the average temperature in the UK does in
    fact correlate quite well with increases in CO2. Note, no climate models
    are needed to see this correlation. See Figure 2 in

    https://skepticalscience.com/The-correlation-between-CO2-and- temperature.html

    Figure 2 is the longest period shown 1964-2008, which follows the period of steady temperature fall from roughly 1940-1970.

    One of the finest examples of correlation is the long term one that
    Al Gore used - but on close inspection the temperature curve leads the CO2 curve by 800 years.

    which shows pretty good correlation, but also note the the text points
    out that if you only look at a short time period, (Figure 1 on that page

    Yet it only covers short time periods. For climate long means tens
    of thousands to millions of years. Look at the frequency if ice ages and interglacials for example.

    Also note that these two data sets are measurements and that there is no climate model involved.

    No just data selection.

    For temperature trends from 20,000BC - 2016, see https://xkcd.com/1732/
    and note that this also follows the same trend. XKCD may be a satirical strip, but the author's background is in engineering and AFAICT he
    doesn't piss about with the numbers on this type of chart.

    I've seen them criticised heavily - but then I've seen everything
    in this field criticised heavily.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From Bob Martin@3:770/3 to TimS on Sat Jul 2 06:12:56 2022
    On 1 Jul 2022 at 20:57:59, TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:
    On 01 Jul 2022 at 21:37:54 BST, A. Dumas <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:

    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
    For temperature trends from 20,000BC - 2016, see https://xkcd.com/1732/
    and note that this also follows the same trend. XKCD may be a satirical >>> strip, but the author's background is in engineering and AFAICT he doesn't >>> piss about with the numbers on this type of chart.

    On his wiki page it does say engineer but also that his degree is a BS in
    physics. By trade he was a NASA software and robotics engineer for a while, >> maybe that's why? I thought engineer was a protected title in the US but no >> idea what the requirements are.

    What do you mean by "protected title"?

    Reserved for train drivers?

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  • From Mike Scott@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sat Jul 2 11:39:32 2022
    On 02/07/2022 05:52, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    Yet it only covers short time periods. For climate long means tens
    of thousands to millions of years. Look at the frequency if ice ages and interglacials for example.

    I've seen it suggested that "climate" per se does not actually exist:
    and that weather conditions are just fractal in nature. I'm not arguing
    this one either way.

    I do remember a museum (m. of London possibly, IDR) that had two
    displays - one about recent global warming ("man made" of course), and
    one showing the vastly higher temperatures in the past. Seemed ironic.

    And of course in any case, correlation !=> causation. I suspect you
    could correlate recent "climate" changes with increases in the South
    Atlantic magnetic anomaly, for example. Cause/effect/unrelated??

    --
    Mike Scott
    Harlow, England

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  • From Mike Scott@3:770/3 to TimS on Sat Jul 2 11:46:22 2022
    On 01/07/2022 19:12, TimS wrote:
    but Newtonian mechanics works extremely well.
    It works very poorly in regions of high gravitational pull (Neutron
    stars, black holes ...), at high relative speeds and at very small scales
    (eg. tunnel diodes).
    Yeah, I know that. See the precession of Mercury for the most significant effect in the Solar System. But even there you have to wait years for the effect to be noticeable, and I suspect NASA is happy to use Newton for any spacecraft. Fortunately there are no neutron stars or black holes near.


    But GPS requires general relativistic corrections for time in order to function. A quick check suggests that GPS satellites advance about
    38usec per day relative to a ground-based clock. That's 45usec ahead
    because of gravity, and 7usec back because of (special relativistic)
    motion considerations.

    <https://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/pogge.1/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html>


    --
    Mike Scott
    Harlow, England

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sat Jul 2 15:46:48 2022
    On 02 Jul 2022 at 16:26:04 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On 2 Jul 2022 14:53:11 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 02 Jul 2022 at 14:51:37 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net>
    wrote:

    On 1 Jul 2022 18:12:15 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 01 Jul 2022 at 16:43:48 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> >>>> wrote:

    It works very poorly in regions of high gravitational pull
    (Neutron stars, black holes ...), at high relative speeds and at very >>>>> small scales (eg. tunnel diodes).

    Yeah, I know that. See the precession of Mercury for the most
    significant effect in the Solar System. But even there you have to
    wait years for the

    Perhaps electromagnetism is a more significant effect. I was amazed
    when we did the calculations (Cambridge maths entrance exam preparation) >>> that the relativistic correction for the repulsive force of the moving
    electrons (at all of a few mm/s) was precisely enough to account for the >>> magnetic force generated between two wires by the current flowing in
    them.

    Is that General Relativity? The gravitational business for Mecury is.

    No special (do not ask for calculation details it was more than four decades ago) - as for Mercury IUSC Special Relativity gets it closer than Newton but General Relativity gets it spot on.

    These days the puzzler is the behaviour of galaxies - hence dark
    matter, dark energy and suchlike kludges, at least they look like kludges
    to me but the maths involved is way beyond anything I ever touched.

    To me they feel like the same sort of kludges that those who in earlier times insisted that the Sun's and planetary orbits be perfect circles around trhe Earth had to resort to in order to fit observed reality. At some point someone will come up with a new paradigm and we'll all be going, "Oh yeah, why didn't
    I think of that?"

    Mind you, quanta were initially introduced as I recall to solve the ultra-violet catastrophe but then took on a life of their own.

    --
    Tim

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to TimS on Sat Jul 2 16:26:04 2022
    On 2 Jul 2022 14:53:11 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 02 Jul 2022 at 14:51:37 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On 1 Jul 2022 18:12:15 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 01 Jul 2022 at 16:43:48 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net>
    wrote:

    It works very poorly in regions of high gravitational pull
    (Neutron stars, black holes ...), at high relative speeds and at very
    small scales (eg. tunnel diodes).

    Yeah, I know that. See the precession of Mercury for the most
    significant effect in the Solar System. But even there you have to
    wait years for the

    Perhaps electromagnetism is a more significant effect. I was amazed when we did the calculations (Cambridge maths entrance exam preparation) that the relativistic correction for the repulsive force of the moving electrons (at all of a few mm/s) was precisely enough to account for the magnetic force generated between two wires by the current flowing in
    them.

    Is that General Relativity? The gravitational business for Mecury is.

    No special (do not ask for calculation details it was more than four decades ago) - as for Mercury IUSC Special Relativity gets it closer than Newton but General Relativity gets it spot on.

    These days the puzzler is the behaviour of galaxies - hence dark matter, dark energy and suchlike kludges, at least they look like kludges
    to me but the maths involved is way beyond anything I ever touched.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to TimS on Sat Jul 2 17:49:12 2022
    On 2 Jul 2022 15:46:49 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 02 Jul 2022 at 16:26:04 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    These days the puzzler is the behaviour of galaxies - hence dark matter, dark energy and suchlike kludges, at least they look like
    kludges to me but the maths involved is way beyond anything I ever
    touched.

    To me they feel like the same sort of kludges that those who in earlier
    times insisted that the Sun's and planetary orbits be perfect circles

    Yep very similar - glue bits onto the theory until it works.
    Inflation in the early universe is another one - it did what ? why ? and
    the in stopped ? why ?

    around trhe Earth had to resort to in order to fit observed reality. At
    some point someone will come up with a new paradigm and we'll all be
    going, "Oh yeah, why didn't I think of that?"

    I've seen one candidate that apparently avoids all the kludges, but
    it made my head spin horribly.

    It was as best I can tell a fusion of graph theory with iterated function theory using iterations over the space of possible graphs
    constrained by the fact that we exist - at least I think that was it. There were derivations of Schroedinger's wave equation and the Einstein's General Relativity tensors (apparently deriving from the same thing) but at my peak
    of mathematical skill (a long time ago) it would have taken me weeks to work through it all to and see if it made any sense.

    I did start to get the impression that the approach was the mathematical physics equivalent of digging numerical relations out of the
    bible and deriving conclusions from them, it appeared to be able to lead anywhere but I could easily have been misinterpreting what I was reading.

    Mind you, quanta were initially introduced as I recall to solve the ultra-violet catastrophe but then took on a life of their own.

    The most ironic part of that is Einstein's Nobel was for his work
    on the photoelectric effect which is one of the key results backing the
    quantum mechanics theories he never believed.

    My take on quantum mechanics is that the maths works but all the explanations seem completely off the wall, although there are at least some formulations which avoid the very problematic observer.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to TimS on Sun Jul 3 14:36:30 2022
    On 02/07/2022 16:46, TimS wrote:
    On 02 Jul 2022 at 16:26:04 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

    On 2 Jul 2022 14:53:11 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 02 Jul 2022 at 14:51:37 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net>
    wrote:

    On 1 Jul 2022 18:12:15 GMT
    TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

    On 01 Jul 2022 at 16:43:48 BST, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> >>>>> wrote:

    It works very poorly in regions of high gravitational pull
    (Neutron stars, black holes ...), at high relative speeds and at very >>>>>> small scales (eg. tunnel diodes).

    Yeah, I know that. See the precession of Mercury for the most
    significant effect in the Solar System. But even there you have to
    wait years for the

    Perhaps electromagnetism is a more significant effect. I was amazed >>>> when we did the calculations (Cambridge maths entrance exam preparation) >>>> that the relativistic correction for the repulsive force of the moving >>>> electrons (at all of a few mm/s) was precisely enough to account for the >>>> magnetic force generated between two wires by the current flowing in
    them.

    Is that General Relativity? The gravitational business for Mecury is.

    No special (do not ask for calculation details it was more than four
    decades ago) - as for Mercury IUSC Special Relativity gets it closer than
    Newton but General Relativity gets it spot on.

    These days the puzzler is the behaviour of galaxies - hence dark
    matter, dark energy and suchlike kludges, at least they look like kludges
    to me but the maths involved is way beyond anything I ever touched.

    To me they feel like the same sort of kludges that those who in earlier times insisted that the Sun's and planetary orbits be perfect circles around trhe Earth had to resort to in order to fit observed reality. At some point someone
    will come up with a new paradigm and we'll all be going, "Oh yeah, why didn't I think of that?"

    Mind you, quanta were initially introduced as I recall to solve the ultra-violet catastrophe but then took on a life of their own.

    It is important to note that the Kantian view of the world - that
    science is no more the descriptions dreamed up that *happen to work*,
    rather than the *discovery* of *truths*, that the classical physicists
    averred - is becoming far more useful in terms of both cosmology and
    quantum level interactions.

    --
    "I guess a rattlesnake ain't risponsible fer bein' a rattlesnake, but ah
    puts mah heel on um jess the same if'n I catches him around mah chillun".

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sun Jul 3 14:39:36 2022
    On 02/07/2022 17:49, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    My take on quantum mechanics is that the maths works but all the
    explanations seem completely off the wall, although there are at least some formulations which avoid the very problematic observer.

    Have a look at - I think it is Steve Carroll - lectures on you tube.

    The one that made the most sense to me basically said 'the classical
    world we think we live in is just a fairly juvenile approximation to a
    world actually constructed of one vast quantum probability field. The
    rest is all in our minds'.




    --
    “It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on
    intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since...it is
    futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into,
    we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a
    power-directed system of thought.”
    Sir Roger Scruton

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sun Jul 3 14:32:44 2022
    On 02/07/2022 14:59, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Sat, 2 Jul 2022 11:39:32 +0100
    Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invalid> wrote:

    On 02/07/2022 05:52, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    Yet it only covers short time periods. For climate long means tens
    of thousands to millions of years. Look at the frequency if ice ages and >>> interglacials for example.

    I've seen it suggested that "climate" per se does not actually exist:
    and that weather conditions are just fractal in nature. I'm not arguing
    this one either way.

    That is AFAIK a correct observation, climate is weather on a long scale.

    And of course in any case, correlation !=> causation. I suspect you

    Therein lies the main problem. All the causal paths are complex,
    loaded with feedback and interact non-linearly, but if you say something
    like that to a policy maker they'll tell you to come back when can give
    them simple explanations that they can understand and convey. Hence the current dogmatic certainty.

    Hence the ease with which random dogmatic *claimed* certainty affects
    policy...

    --
    "The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll
    look exactly the same afterwards."

    Billy Connolly

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sun Jul 3 17:28:46 2022
    On 03/07/2022 15:43, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Sun, 3 Jul 2022 14:36:31 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    It is important to note that the Kantian view of the world - that
    science is no more the descriptions dreamed up that *happen to work*,

    "Happen to work" is a bit misleading. Science is a process designed
    to filter descriptions that work repeatably from those that don't, it's pretty effective at it too.


    No, its not misleading, its very accurate. There is no magic about
    scientific hypotheses other than they represent a compressed form of
    *accurate* knowledge. Their truth content however, is completely
    indecidable.

    rather than the *discovery* of *truths*, that the classical physicists
    averred - is becoming far more useful in terms of both cosmology and

    More simply the idea that when you have something that works it
    must be the truth turns out to be false. Provably so because there are multiple contradictory explanations that work as well as can be tested and they can't all be true.

    The Problem of Induction, in a nutshell.

    quantum level interactions.

    Whereas we're getting our noses rubbed into the fact that it will
    only be an approximation and even if we stumble on "the truth" we'll never know it or be able to prove it, we'll only know that it seems to work.

    Exactly. Our 'knowledge', is not the truth, it's just usable algorithms.


    --
    “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

    —Soren Kierkegaard

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Ahem A Rivet's Shot on Sun Jul 3 17:31:04 2022
    On 03/07/2022 15:54, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Sun, 3 Jul 2022 14:32:45 +0100
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 02/07/2022 14:59, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
    On Sat, 2 Jul 2022 11:39:32 +0100

    Therein lies the main problem. All the causal paths are complex,
    loaded with feedback and interact non-linearly, but if you say something >>> like that to a policy maker they'll tell you to come back when can give
    them simple explanations that they can understand and convey. Hence the
    current dogmatic certainty.

    Hence the ease with which random dogmatic *claimed* certainty affects
    policy...

    It is what is required to affect policy, nothing less would do the
    job. That's why anyone working at changing policy toes the line and never expresses doubts whether or not they have any.

    BTW have you seen the recent commercialisation of iron-iron flow batteries ? They appear to have really useful properties, very long lives
    and really low costs for long term bulk energy storage. Energy density is nothing to write home about but it's not too shabby either and tanks of
    iron chloride solution are cheap.

    Nuclear power is already way cheaper - despite attempts to render it
    impossibly expensive - than renewable energy WITHOUT the storage.

    I don't see the point in adding even more expense to it to solve a
    problem that nuclear power doesn't have.

    --
    "A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight
    and understanding".

    Marshall McLuhan

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Mike Scott on Mon Jul 4 10:30:02 2022
    On 04/07/2022 09:02, Mike Scott wrote:
    ....

        These days the puzzler is the behaviour of galaxies - hence dark
    matter, dark energy and suchlike kludges, at least they look like kludges
    to me but the maths involved is way beyond anything I ever touched.


    At the risk of flying a kite, I think we should note that (at least
    AFAIAA - I'm decades out of date on this stuff) most (all?) calculations
    are based in the assumption that ε0, μ0 (and hence c) have the same
    values everywhere and everywhen.

    We've only measured them within a remarkably small space-time region,
    yet extrapolate the observed constancy-within-experimental-errors to the entire universe throughout its history. Is that too arrogant an assumption?

    I can't help but wonder if the need for "dark matter" would go away if
    things weren't as constant as is generally held.

    Bit like climate science in its way :-)

    SSHH!

    Einstein was faced with a dilemma. Or possibly a trilemma. The assumed
    absolute nature of space, and time, didn't gybe with the constant speed
    of light.

    Something had to give, and become variable. In the end it was space AND
    time that became relative.

    We dream up absolutes, apply them to the world, and if they seem to
    work, assume them to be ubiquitous.

    That's how we think.

    Doesn't mean it is how it is, at all.



    --
    If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will
    eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such
    time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic
    and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally
    important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for
    the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the
    truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

    Joseph Goebbels

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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Mon Jul 4 15:30:00 2022
    On Mon, 4 Jul 2022 12:56:54 -0000 (UTC)
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    Not what I meant at all - more solar would be better and so would geo- thermal, which looks as if its no longer being ignored.

    It's interesting how that term seems to have shifted.

    When I first encountered it geothermal was about running heat
    engines off the magma, which seems at first sight to be an enormous source
    of energy that it may even be beneficial to tap. Turned out to be a really
    good way to wear out equipment fast.

    These days geothermal seems to be more about pulling stored solar
    heat out of the ground a far more feasible prospect.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to All on Mon Jul 4 14:23:02 2022
    On 04 Jul 2022 at 13:56:54 BST, Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    On 3 Jul 2022 21:35:37 GMT, TimS wrote:

    https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/
    nuclear-wastes/treatment-and-conditioning-of-nuclear-wastes.aspx

    and see the section on vitrification.

    Thanks for that link. Most interesting.

    The issue of long term storage is a political one.

    Indeed, and seemingly being kicked into the long grass and otherwise
    ignored.

    Given the priority of the first reactors was plutonium for bombs,
    unsurprising that little or no thought went into how they would
    eventually be dismantled.
    This is not the case for modern plant.

    True, but not what I was on about: I was merely pointing out that they're still there and being treated as SEP (Someone Else's Problem).

    Well, I'm happy to burn more coal if you are.

    Not what I meant at all - more solar would be better and so would geo- thermal, which looks as if its no longer being ignored.

    In the UK, we're too far north for sensible solar, especially in winter when you need it most. Not much geothermal here either, I wouldn't have thought.

    The real problem with renewables here is in winter, when you can get periods
    of a week or more with a blocking high over most of northern Europe, leading
    to no solar and not much wind. That happens a couple of times a winter, typically.

    --
    Tim

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to TimS on Mon Jul 4 15:15:32 2022
    On 4 Jul 2022 14:23:02 GMT, TimS wrote:

    In the UK, we're too far north for sensible solar, especially in winter
    when you need it most.

    True, but wind and maybe tidal power are both fine in winter.

    Not much geothermal here either, I wouldn't have
    thought.

    You might also take a look at what is now being talked about for
    geothermal: new drilling techniques are being developed, giving the
    ability to tap much higher temperatures than have previously been
    considered. Here's an example of what's being discussed:

    https://geothermal-energy-journal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/ s40517-021-00203-1

    The real problem with renewables here is in winter, when you can get
    periods of a week or more with a blocking high over most of northern
    Europe, leading to no solar and not much wind. That happens a couple of
    times a winter, typically.

    Fair point, and I've seen estimates of recoverable uranium that would
    indicate that there's a lot less of that than many people assume.

    This seems like a reasonable summary (the original 2005 paper was updated
    last month :

    https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium- resources/supply-of-uranium.aspx

    but it may be a bit over-optimistic seeing who wrote it.


    --

    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From TimS@3:770/3 to All on Mon Jul 4 15:30:32 2022
    On 04 Jul 2022 at 16:15:33 BST, Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

    On 4 Jul 2022 14:23:02 GMT, TimS wrote:

    In the UK, we're too far north for sensible solar, especially in winter
    when you need it most.

    True, but wind and maybe tidal power are both fine in winter.

    Not wind, as I already said. Tidal? Only one place in the UK (the Severn estuary) where that would generate a lot. But then any tidal produces zero
    four times a day. So you need a backup, and there are no comparably sized
    tidal locations elewhere in the UK. So your backup has to be nuclear and you'd have done better, more reliably, to have only built the nuclear in the first place. No point in building two power stations and only getting the output of one.

    --
    Tim

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