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LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

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Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#411

Post by kmeisthax »

svnt wrote: post #253
arcticbull wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not informed on the specifics on these cases, but I generally view that (many/most) prisoners have a debt to society for breaking the social contract and serving the community by making it safer is a generally positive activity. Yes -- but -- by undercutting the wages you would have to pay people outside, it lowers the pay of the non-prison laborers. This hurts that community. You can achieve the same result by…

> You can achieve the same result by paying them prevailing wage. This has the extra benefit of giving them some saved up money to start a new life when they get out, helping them avoid falling back into a life of crime to make ends meet. I don’t see how you can do this, because you turn punishment into privilege. If the way to firefighter pay is through a jail cell you create all kind of problems around perverse inc…

This also has to be balanced against the perverse incentive to construct bullshit laws to justify mass incarceration to get more prison slaves. Not a hypothetical either; this actually happened, because the US Constitution actually says very little about human rights.

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#412

Post by baq »

saagarjha wrote: post #306
rvnx wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it curious that some people here consider it as slavery ? It is an optional activity if I understand right. It seems rewarding to do a training to become a firefighter and join the team, than to idle in prison. It is a volunteer role. Many people in the world become volunteers in the firefighters, a lot are unpaid. They do it for reasons beyond money (making friends, feeling useful, helping people, etc). A pri…

Volunteering to do work so you can shorten your sentence is slavery, yes.

Not volunteering and not shortening your sentence… isn’t?

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#413

Post by mturmon »

Twisol wrote: post #116
rvnx wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks down, yes the marketing website is fine, but the scientific tools seem to be down. It would be reasonable that they are locally hosted, like close to the sensors.

Well, most of the actual sensors are in space ;) but yes, telemetry collected via the DSN gets routed through JPL first. Also, in addition to the SSD website linked upthread, the NAIF site [0] (where the SPICE library and kernels can be downloaded) also seems to be down. It would not surprise me in any way if some of these facilities are hosted on-prem and are in a power-down state due to the fires. (Speaking of the…

You’re correct. The lab management sent out a message to this effect mid-day Wednesday. Many public-facing servers were taken down purposely due to the fires. Part of the lab HPC was also powered down, not sure what its status is now. The head nodes were up earlier today.

There are generators for other critical servers, and in particular the DSN operations have been moved temporarily to another location so they could continue.

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#414

Post by aaronbrethorst »

throwup238 wrote: post #353
culi wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry for your loss. Are you lucky enough to be in a place where insurers in California are still operating? Hopefully you can at least get financial situation taken off your mind

> Are you lucky enough to be in a place where insurers in California are still operating? California has had a state fire insurer (FAIR) of last resort for over fifty years and fire insurance is practically mandatory for mortgages so there aren’t many places that are excluded. It’s entirely funded by premiums and has never been bailed out by state or federal funds. It’s not like the National Insurance Flood Program t…

[flagged]

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#415

Post by lm28469 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #31
trhway wrote: post #21

One can imagine an IR monitoring (satellite or high flying drones like Reaper, one drone can see an IR source like a tank from 100km, so it would take just a few drones to monitor the the whole state for fires) with [almost] automated immediate dispatching of the fleet of drones (not small quadcopters, more like WWII size bombers) once the fire is detected. Would be much cheaper than having multi-billion dollar fires…

> it would take just a few drones per the whole state What are you basing this on? Being able to see something once you know it’s there is a different problem from detecting it in the first place.

It's the classic tech cultist mentality, they imagine the world is just like their little code base and it's just a matter of tweaking a few lines to solve the problem.

They're the real world "ignore friction, air resistance, &c." of kids physics exercises books.

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#417

Post by esalman »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #41
esalman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no air support to contain fire because of dangerously high wind. Asking for drones now is like a dumb person's idea of cheap science fiction.

I think they’re talking about dousing when it first lights. That isn’t “a dumb person’s idea.” But it is presently beyond our capabilities, to say nothing of the huge privacy problem it would entail.

The reason I said it is a dumb idea is because OP has no idea about the current weather conditions. If the conditions are right, such as tonight when the Santa Ana winds have died down, you don't need fancy drones because firefighters are capable of doing things like this- https://x.com/ArtCandee/status/1877210056493539499

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#418

Post by baq »

sgustard wrote: post #296
thepasswordis wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never allowing the forest to burn, which is a part of its natural cycle, is a form a drastic climate change for the forest. Proper management of the forest means selecting a time to do these burns. If we don't select a time, mother nature will select one for us. Yes, global temperature rise is real, and could potentially have had some effect on the fire. Completely disrupting the natural cycle of the forest is a much…

I was curious to learn why we "never allow the forest to burn", given that Cal Fire for example has a whole department of Prescribed Fire. Sounds like the problem is lawyers and property owners: > One of the primary obstacles to increasing the pace and scale of beneficial fire use in California is the difficulty for practitioners to obtain adequate liability coverage, although the rates and losses from escapes are ve…

> Sounds like the problem is lawyers and property owners:

Some of them might change their mind now that they’re owners of some acres of charcoal.

You cannot not choose a time - it’ll get chosen for you. Schedule should be known, cost included in taxes, risks known when property was acquired, liabilities limited in state or federal regulation. Weather doesn’t care about lawyers.

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#419

Post by baq »

mulmen wrote: post #228
dawnerd wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do. And we have setbacks you must maintain and keep brush cleared. But there's still only so much you can do.

"There's only so much you can do" doesn't mean "we have done what we can" or even "we have done enough".

Shouldn’t have built expensive houses for a start

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#420

Post by baq »

mturmon wrote: post #310
Mistletoe wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>very little that can be done in these situations I don't agree with that. People can choose to not live there. There is an entire country to live in and we keep crowding in what seem to the worst places to live and then act surprised when it goes badly. Climate change is going to make some places uninhabitable, that's why we tried to prevent it, but no one cares.

> … we keep crowding in what seem to the worst places to live … Malibu? Pacific Palisades? These are among the most pleasant places in the world to live. People are not going to stop wanting to live there — this isn’t a lost cause like a low-lying area exposed to floods. We have to find ways to mitigate the very real fire risk.

You can pour concrete over all the shrubbery. Won’t be as nice, though.
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