Nice idea, but it assumes some kind of rule of law - albeit with stupid laws.
If you annoy the dictatorship by playing "wrong" music or in any other way, they will probably find that you are breaking the law regardless (if they care about formal procedures, which may or may not be the case for oppression in Russia).
Methinks ESA likes xkcd, which has prior art on the usage of giraffes as a non-metric measurement unit. In this case, for how high a human may throw an object using muscle power alone. The giraffes are required to do some acrobatics for the better throws
Ukraine is doing relatively OK for the circumstances, thank you. The Russian invasion is for sure not driven back yet, but they are certainly not losing either. And they have decimated the Russian military capabilities to a great extent - alas to a high cost. What happens now depends on our support. Stopping smuggling of military-useful equipment to Russia and placing much greater restrictions on any company or nation that facilitates the Russian invasion would also be quite useful.
Sure, I can see that the inconvenience for you having to switch to a less polluting motor vehicle (or riding a bike or using public transit) are larger than the direct improvement in air quality for you from exactly you switching. However, we as a society *have* to be able to handle such situations, where the individual does not gain directly from doing something desired, but the sum of each such individual action or non-action making a huge difference.
Like climate change, where the ability to grow crops, live comfortably or avoid huge refugee crises is at stake. Or air quality, where thousands of people die each month in conditions related to pollution. We have to be able to ensure that one persons actions does not impact others negatively, even if the mechanism is through the sum of small actions, not individually directly disastrous actions (like drunk driving).
Can only answer for Sweden. It's usually taken to some regional processing place, where plastic covers and less valuable stuff is removed (ideally also for recycling but probably mostly being burned). It's then sorted, with the extra nasty stuff (like mercury valves, anything of risk containing asbestos or PCB) being removed and handled to dangerous waste processing. Steel parts are sent for steel recycling.
Circuit boards, cables, electric motors and anything with non-ferrous metals is sent to a big smelter facility (once I saw a whole train loaded with seemingly old landline telephone parts). Here copper, silver, gold and other metals are extracted by electrolysis and other processes.
It's not perfect, but it at lest helps reducing the amount of mining needed.
Because language design, not only implementations, also may have bugs that preferably should be fixed?
Granted, actual security bugs are mostly in concrete implementations, but some some features - like for example PHP database API:s making SQL injection easy are more or less a security bug in the design. (long time since I used it, so perhaps changed now).
And for versions to become deprecated is also a matter of effort to maintain. For open source, it's easy - if you like the old design better, you are free to fork it, and keep a maintained version and ecosystem running. Or find someone already providing such a fork.
Sorry, missed - and some local solar power on private and public building rooftops.
Yes, Swedish electricity production is almost completely fossil-free. Hydro is largest, with nuclear second but a growing amount of wind power and some local . The only fossil fuels are some very rarely used emergency power stations (mostly used a few hours each year), and some combined heat and power plants burning waste containing fossil-based material (like plastics not sorted out for recycling).
Here is a nice site from the national electricity network operator, showing generation and export in near real-time for all Nordic countries:
https://www.svk.se/en/national...
Reply from Sweden. I'm not directly involved in the project, but active in climate policy in general.
Electricity in northern Sweden is mostly hydro power, but with several large-scale wind farms added recently, and with further potential also for off-shore wind. I would not say electricity is "abundant", but relatively available. Much is exported to the south (and to Finland), but the capacity is limited (and the upgrading is a long-term project). We usually have lower electricity prices in the north for this reason.
This makes a good supply for producing hydrogen by electrolysis. Especially when the hydrogen can be stored for some weeks, it's a good way to use possibly fluctuating wind power efficiently network-wise. Changing all of the steel production to hydrogen will however need more (renewable) generation capacity.
At the depot you can't have overhead wires otherwise unloading the freight/containers becomes a high risk (and tension) exercise so you need a last mile diesel loco. Which is why a lot of freight here in the UK is still moved by diesel loco even though a lot of the network is wired though we have bought some hybrids locos recently though obviously they cost more.
Not really. A usual way (speaking from Sweden, with 95% or so of rail tonnage is hauled electrically) is having section of overhead wire that can be switched off (and secured in off-mode). For unloading from the top (timber, gantry cranes at interchange terminals) you can simply have a wireless section where the cars are located, but overhead wire where the engine usually stops.
Sorry if I disappoint you, but "Big environment" and "Big fair trade" are still tiny compared to any Big business of any sort. Friends of the Earth Europe, one of the largest environmental organizations, only have a dozen people employed at their very modest Brussels headquarter, for example.
Companies trying to make a profit by promoting a green image is something completely different.
Still, Python seems to have managed it far better than Perl 5 -> Perl 6. Most large projects (like Django) seems to have made the transition, and it was possible to have libraries working under both Python 2 and 3 (with Python 2 support now mostly being dropped).
One thing we *could* do - if we like to help parenting - is guaranteed and generous parental leave for all parents, and stricter penalties for firing people getting children. As well as affordable daycare. And perhaps even some single payer health insurance, so that you don't risk financial ruin if your child has diabetes or similar.
Yes, powering 11% sound like marketing speech. Especially in a country with so reliable solar input.
The technology itself however, could possibly have interesting and relevant applications even if the hype is unrealistic.
Something generating wave power with no moving parts would be more interesting. Or at lest no water-facing moving parts.
True. Mechanics + salt water is demanding.
However, the local electricity price may not be 30 cent. At some remote locations electricity is far more expensive. Yes, a wind turbine (far above most salt water spray) + batteries and perhaps solar sounds more reasonable. But perhaps something in the local energy requirements profile make it worthwhile. In special circumstances - like for example buoys with navigation lights - I imagine wave power could be a good choice.
Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with none.
