A loom that learned to weave itself.

http://pattmayne.com

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Tens of thousands of radioactive fuel fragments escaped from the Dounreay plant between 1963 and 1984, polluting local beaches, the coastline and the seabed. Fishing has been banned within a two-kilometre radius of the plant since 1997.

    Since 2008, over 2,300 radioactive particles have been recovered from the seabed, with 351 removed by a remotely operated underwater vehicle this summer.

    The most radioactive of the particles are regarded by experts as potentially lethal if ingested. Similar in size to grains of sand, they contain caesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years, but they can also incorporate traces of plutonium-239, which has a half-life of over 24,000 years…

    The plant’s operator at the time, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, was fined £140,000.

    Oh that’ll teach em.

    I still think we should replace much of our fossil-fuel energy with nuclear, but let’s never call it “green.” Energy comes at an extremely high cost. This kind of thing makes it hard to advocate for nuclear (although I think we have safer methods now).












  • We try to discourage siloization of projects and emphasize cross-training

    This is how my work has been and it allowed me to touch every part of the repo while still a junior dev and gain lots of experience. So I also like that. But lately I’m trying to specialize more and go deep into things, and I like the idea of being an expert on something. So I appreciate the trade-offs.

    all bets are off with offshore contractors. Some want to learn, some simply don’t care and will do the bare minimum.

    As a guy who was replaced by offshore contractors, and who hasn’t had a single interview in 7 months while offshore contractors are (probably) still getting lots of work… I find this observation both heartening and disheartening.