A blogger, Destin, talked TVA into letting him film the refueling process at Browns Ferry in Alabama. Browns Ferry is a three unit boiling water reactor plant. The design is essentially the same as the reactors at Fukushima. The hour and 45 minute video is overly long; and Destin’s narration can be a little grating at times; but overall he does a great job. It’s worth your time.

We also get a pretty good feeling for the plant’s safety culture. //

much of the video is taken up by Destin’s going through various check points, each manned by 3 or 4 people sitting around watching screens. While there are scores of people on the refueling floor, only a handful seem to be actually doing something to the plant. The actual shifting of the fuel bundles is done by a three person team, and is largely automated. At one point, a lady berates Destin’s guide who outranks her for letting Destin walk down a stairs facing forward. The stairs were narrower and steeper than normal. The rule is you have to treat it like a ladder.

Destin is told not to step on the floor drains. The problem is the moisture might contaminate his shoes, and set off alarms. The radiation in the drain is not from the plant. It’s normal background, naturally occurring radon and daughters. Nuclear plants don’t produce radon. On the way out, Destin’s camera fails to clear a check. So they disassemble the camera and put each piece into the detector separately, to allow the pieces out of the plant. Once again the source is background radon. //

On a positive note, TVA should be congratulated for allowing this visit. It should be commonplace. If I were king of the world, I’d have a glassed in viewing gallery, high in every reactor’s refueling space. During outages, I would invite everybody to walk through and get a look at what’s going on. Most of the people will come out as enthusiastic about nuclear as Destin.

The second 1974 Power Engineering article that Nick Touran has uncovered is Senior Editor Olds’ discussion of the massive jumps in power plant capital costs between 1965 and 1974 Power Plant Capital Costs Going Out of Sight.

The AEC required plant owners to report their estimate of the capital cost of any nuclear plants under construction, and update those estimates annually. Olds’ article is largely based on that data. All his dollar figures are in nominal dollars, the dollar of that year.

Figure 2. USA fossil plant costs bottomed out in 1966.

The paper is graced by a number of hand drawn, beautifully lettered graphics. Figure 2 shows that prior to 1967 fossil plant capital costs were falling reaching a low of $100/kW in nominal dollars in 1966. But in 1967, the cost jumped nearly 20% to $118. Unfortunately, Old does not take the fossil figures any further forward. But if he did he would see that 20% per year escalation continue unabated through 1974, Figure 3. //

Thanks to nuclear’s factor of 100,000 advantage in energy density over fossil, a technology that did not exist 15 years earlier, was working its way down a steep learning curve, and in 1967 was fully competitive with coal, when coal was as cheap as it ever was. Nuclear was insulated from both oil price and fossil pollution regulation.

But in 1967, a new omnipotent player emerged. In 1954, Congress had given the AEC complete and unfettered control over nuclear, both nuclear weapons and nuclear power. As Truman put it, atom power was “too important to be made the subject of profiteering”. The AEC had to both implement Mutually Assured Destruction, and promote and regulate nuclear power. The first responsibility included making sure everybody was petrified of the bomb.

bungalowbernard Ars Praetorian
5y
404

Each KG of coal produces about 8 KWh of electricity - to produce 8 MWh in a year is literally just Steve throwing a shovelful into the hopper once a day.

InteractivePolls @IAPolls2022
·
CBS POLL: Do you favor or oppose requiring proof of citizenship (e.g., passport or birth certificate) to register to vote?

🟢 Favor: 66%
🟤 Oppose: 34%
——
• Dem: 43-57 (-14)
• GOP: 93-7 (+86)
• Indie: 61-39 (+22)
• White: 68-32 (+36)
• Black: 60-40 (+20)
• Hispanic: 63-37 Show more

InteractivePolls @IAPolls2022
·
CBS News Poll: Do you favor or oppose requiring people to show valid photo ID before they are permitted to vote?

🟢 Favor: 80%
🟤 Oppose: 20%
——
• Dem: 65-35 (+30)
• GOP: 95-5 (+90)
• Indie: 79-21 (+58)
• White: 80-20 (+60)
• Black: 80-20 (+60)
• Hispanic: 77-23 (+55) Show more
6:42 PM · Mar 19, 2026

Advanced Password Generator
It is a program for creation the passwords. Its advantages are:

• Creation of euphonic passwords - there is no other programmes with such feature.
• Random and keyword-based passwords.
• Dynamic charset change.
• Create list of passwords.
• Small size (69 Kb only).
• Both DOS and Windows version.

Blackman's Random Generator is the software for large random and pseudorandom sequences generating with capabilities to estimate and improve sequences' characteristics.

Program's advantages are:

• Several random and pseudorandom sequences generators.
• Filters set for improvement of random sequences characteristics.
• Set of tests and others sequence quality rating techniques.
• Enhanced result exports capabilities.
• Great performance.
• Minimal size.
• Multilingual interface.
• Detailed help system.

All published programs are made by the author of this site and their status is freeware. You may free use them and distributed without the commercial purpose. Software is distributed without any warranties whether expressed or implied. No responsibilities for possible damages or even functionality (right or wrong) can be taken by author.

• Blackman's E-mail encoder - prevents detection of your e-mail address by spam-bots.
• Advanced Password Generator - passwords generator with small size but huge facilities. For example, it can generate euphonic passwords and passwords by keywords. It is easy to setup charset used for their creation. Lists of passwords can be created.
• Blackman's Random Generator - is the software for large random and pseudorandom sequences generating with capabilities to estimate and improve sequences characteristics.
• Phone card reader - software for reading phone cards. This standard includes almost all types of phone cards which used in Russia and Europe.
• Blackman`s Book Reader - Simple e-book reader. Has low system requirements. Automatically unpack files from archives, has "Boss key".
• Blackman`s eBook Converter - a program for transformation books to the convenient format. It automaticaly reformates book, creates table of contents and font selection, saves results in following formats: HTML, RTF, TXT.

some sysadmin • March 9, 2026 2:55 PM

Different tools for different use-cases. My org self-hosts a vaultwarden instance with account recovery auto-enabled. If our admin accounts were to be compromised, it’d be game over for the whole org. (well, provided our SIEM also failed at alerting us that multiple vault recoveries were taking place in a short amount of time)

As a sysadmin responsible for a 300-ish users network I simply cannot afford to have a password manager that does not have central management and most importantly an account recovery feature in case of forgotten passwords.

Our initial rollout was KeepassXC on test users (30 people) and a fourth of them forgot the master password within 2 weeks. At this point I’m either taking a central vault with potential backdoors or I’m ok with letting users store their passwords in a plain text .docx.

In private though KeepassXC all the way.

Multiple accounts

Sync all your Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox accounts
Selective syncing

Sync only the files you need and save your local space
Plug n' sync

Sync your network & external drives, SD cards, and thumb drives
Keep your file structure

Sync any file or folder from anywhere in your local storage
Distribution support for Linux

Work with your cloud files locally whether you're on Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora.

The Bitwarden vision is to imagine a world where no one gets hacked. We carry this forward in our mission to help individuals and companies manage their sensitive information easily and securely. Bitwarden believes that:

Basic password management for individuals can and should be free. We provide just that, a basic free account for individuals.

Individuals and families should take an active role in their security using TOTPs, emergency access, and other supporting security features.

Organizations can greatly improve their security profile through organizational password management and secure sharing.

The 1920 Jones Act shouldn’t even exist anymore.

The act only allows U.S.-flagged and built ships “to transport cargo between U.S. ports.”

The ships must also be “mostly owned and crewed by Americans.”

Not a shock that President Woodrow Wilson (I hate that guy) signed the Jones Act into law. He wanted to encourage U.S. shipbuilding after World War I.

Yeah, well, it hinders competition, leading to higher costs for goods and higher operational costs.

Fewer than 100 vessels comply with the Jones Act. //

broomhandle in reply to MarkS. | March 18, 2026 at 4:52 pm
The Jones Act is a classic example of cronyist protectionism: it imposes heavy government mandates on private commerce (U.S.-built, U.S.-crewed, U.S.-owned ships for domestic routes) in the name of “national security,” yet delivers concentrated benefits to a small, politically connected maritime lobby while dispersing higher costs across American consumers, businesses and energy users.

This violates principles of limited government, free enterprise, and fiscal responsibility. Instead of fostering genuine competitiveness through innovation and open markets, it creates an uncompetitive, high-cost industry shielded from foreign (and even domestic) competition, driving up shipping expenses that ripple into everyday prices for goods, fuel, and groceries.

The national security rationale is particularly weak: the U.S. merchant fleet has shrunk dramatically under the Act’s watch, not grown stronger, and modern logistics plus targeted subsidies or direct naval investments could secure sealift needs far more efficiently without burdening the broader economy. In short, it’s textbook rent-seeking that harms the many to prop up the few, contrary to the preference for market-driven strength over regulatory favoritism.

While US government agencies remain the top targets for Iran's cyber weapons, all of the security professionals we interviewed told us that American businesses are more at risk.

"The NSA is really, really good at defensive operations, and so I don't see...the attacks going against government assets, I see them going after civilian assets," said Coffman, who served more than 35 years in the US Army and is now president of Forward Edge-AI, which provides AI and cybersecurity services to US government, defense, and critical infrastructure sectors.

Canute and the Waves: A Misunderstood Story
Canute the Great (985/95 to 1035) was the most successful ruler of the Anglo Saxon period. At the height of his power he was King of England, Denmark, Norway, parts of Sweden, and overlord of Scotland. He put an end to Viking attacks on Britain and paid off the standing army, thus abolishing the enormous taxes which had been used to pay them. He reinstated the rules of King Edgar, an earlier, well-respected English king, and attended the coronation in Rome of the Emperor Conrad II, resulting in his reputation as a true partner to Europe. His achievements all but forgotten, Canute is now mainly known for a single misinterpreted story: Canute and the Waves. //

“But the sea carried on rising as usual without any reverence for his person, and soaked his feet and legs. Then he moving away said: “All the inhabitants of the world should know that the power of kings is vain and trivial, and that none is worthy of the name of king but He whose command the heaven, earth and sea obey by eternal laws”. //

The story is intended to illustrate his piety – a prominent feature in his kingship,” he says. “He knows his power is nothing besides that of God.”
(Westcott, Katheryn. “Is King Canute Misunderstood?” BBC News, May 2011.)

The problem Waterline Development encountered is that commercial AI models are ill-suited to multidisciplinary research, which requires synthesizing expertise from a variety of fields.

"No single AI model does this reliably," the company explains in a white paper [PDF]. "Frontier language models hallucinate under extended multi-step reasoning. They produce plausible answers that silently break when a problem crosses domain boundaries. At best this wastes time; at worst, it poisons critical decision making." //

Bednarski said Rozum is not focused on correcting LLMs to the extent they can be used for, say, critical engineering work like bridge construction. Rather, the goal is to empower researchers, engineers, and scientists so they can do their jobs better.

"We are focused on deterministic tool implementation (ex. RDKit for Chemistry), allowing engineers, scientists, and analysts a direct path to verify outputs in a format familiar to them by domain," he explained.

"Our system orchestration method is heavily focused on deterministic validation (code execution replicated, etc.) of outputs, which roots out hallucinations that plague all models at various times. We see further improvements to this in verifying the methods used in sources we cite as well."

MRC Video @mrcvideo
·
Beautiful! Best Actress winner Jessie Buckley uses her acceptance speech to praise marriage and promote motherhood.

A sharp contrast from last year's winner, Mikey Madison, who dedicated her award to sex workers.

10:02 AM · Mar 16, 2026

Jessie Buckley was a best actress nominee for the movie Hamnet, a period drama based on a fiction novel about William Shakespeare's family. The film explored Shakespeare's and his wife Agnes' marriage, particularly after the loss of their 11-year-old son, and how it shaped Agnes as a mother, as well as Shakespeare's writing. Buckley's portrayal of Agnes won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, but it is her acceptance speech that appears to be more popular than the actual film. //

Buckley's unbridled expression of love for her husband was not just heartwarming, but a biblical example of honoring her husband.

Fred, I love you man. I love you, she said.

You're the most incredible Dad, you're my best friend, and I want to have 20,000 more babies with you. I do, I do! //

Buckley also honored the writer and director of the film by saying, "To understand the capacity of a mother's love is the greatest collision of my life." Collision is probably the right word, because what I know of the mothers in my family and my life, this word embodies the massive impact of their great love for their children. A love that never goes away, no matter how old they get. One mom friend described her 18-year-old as her heart walking outside of her body. That's fierce.

Buckley ended her speech with an homage to mothers in the U.K. and all over the world. "It's Mother's Day in the U.K., so I would like to dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of a mother's heart."

This "beautiful chaos," Buckley described, illuminating that motherhood, and the passion and great love that drives it, is not supposed to be neatly packaged in illusory perfection or impossible milestones. It's meant to be messy and chaotic, as is much of life — at least the part that matters.

Robert Goddard, a Massachusetts-born physicist, launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket on this date 100 years ago.

It was not an overly impressive flight. The rocket, fueled by gasoline and liquid oxygen, rose just 41 feet into the air, and the flight lasted 2.5 seconds before it struck ice and snow.

Nevertheless, this rocket, named “Nell,” represented a historic achievement that would help launch the modern age of spaceflight. Three decades later, the first objects would begin to ride liquid-fueled rockets into space, followed shortly by humans. A little more than 40 years would pass before humans walked on the Moon.

To mark this historic moment, a few Ars staffers are sharing some of their most memorable launches. Please add yours in the comments below.

Technology like four-wheel steering and variable valve timing debuted in the Prelude.

Engineers have uncovered the mathematical rules fireflies follow to sync up their flashes. //

Such work could one day lead to insights into how the body’s cells sync to its internal circadian rhythm, or how neurons fire together in the brain, as well as the design of drone swarms communicating through synchronized flashes.

Our History

rsync.net began providing cloud storage for offsite backups in the fall of 2001, for our original corporate parent, JohnCompanies.

In 2005, we became a stand-alone firm dedicated only to offsite backup. We provide this simple product and nothing else.

Our Team

A new install of Thunderbird has the default folder view set to “Threaded” view and the sort order set to “Ascending”. Each folder can be setup to change the view to something different but what about changing all folders at once in Thunderbird?

Here is how to quickly change the view for all folders to “Unthreaded” and sort-by-date (descending) via the config editor.