California restricted non-compete agreements in 1872 and banned them in the 1940s.

The ban is one reason the Silicon Valley phenomenon happened in California. Startups can hire with fewer restrictions, ideas spread faster, and employees are more productive because they can easily move to a better-fitting job.

California does a lot of stupid stuff, but got this right.

It's all in assembly, but the program is small.

There are three RCA-1802 CPUs onboard.

They are 8-bit processors. The instruction set is straightforward. It's not difficult to program.

The RCA-1802 is notable for being the first CMOS CPU and was likely picked for that reason since CMOS uses much less power than NMOS, which was the prevailing technology at the time.

There are rad-hard RCA-1802s, but I don't know if Voyager used those. Rad-hard semiconductors are fabricated with depleted boron, which has a much smaller neutron cross-section.

640 bytes ought to be enough for anyone.

I think the GPP meant Tesla producing sodium batteries for grid or home storage, not for vehicles.

Sodium doesn't make sense for vehicles.

But if we use sodium for static storage, a lot more lithium will be freed up for EVs.

Wholesale prices are negative.

That is not passed down to the consumer level.

When PG&E is trying to shed excess power, they are still charging me the normal high daytime rate. I have no incentive to help them soak up the surplus.

That's millions of people.

Lots of people do that too.

If you invest in a mining rig, will you want to leave it idle 98% of the time?

Same for an osmotic purifier. They are expensive and need steady baseload power to be cost-effective.

Neither is effective as demand peakers.

Hydrogen generators are cheap and can suck up a lot of power, but you need to store the H2 and find a market for it.

Batteries are not currently cost-effective.

We need sodium batteries for grid storage.

RTFA. The brownouts are in the summer. The excess solar is in the spring.

Wind turbines, hydro, stored energy, gas, and nuclear (Diablo Canyon recently received a 5-year license extension).

Desalination plants are expensive. It's silly to build one and then only run it for 50 hours per year when energy prices go negative. You wanna run it 24/7, but then it's baseload and contributes nothing to solving the surplus energy problem.

AI data centers are even more expensive. They need clean, reliable baseload power.

Adding more solar is good. We need more.

TFA talks about prices going negative, but that happened 21 days last Spring and only for one or two hours. 98% of the time, it isn't a problem.

There are many solutions:

1. Storage: Pumped hydro and/or peaker batteries.

2. Long-distance HVDC to sell the surplus to other states.

3. Variable pricing. I currently charge my EV from 2-4 AM, when prices are lowest. I'm happy to switch to mid-afternoon charging if PG&E gives me an incentive.

Most economists believe that inflation is over-estimated, so median incomes have actually risen even more that the official figures.

Poor food choices are a completely different topic.

There's plenty of quality food if you want to buy it, and it's cheaper as well. Potatoes cost less than potato chips, carrots cost less than candy, and water is cheaper than soda.

The healthiest food is available in the neighborhoods with plenty of immigrants.

In other news, you're more likely to receive a longer prison sentence if the judge hasn't had lunch yet.

So the assignments on the top of the stack, which were the last to be turned in, received the lowest grades.

That doesn't seem totally unfair.