Oops, you probably meant having the researchers create a program that every time the worm calls in it sends back instructions to delete itself.

The answer to that is probably "liability": There are legal questions to be asked if they actually write anything to alter the computers that connect to that IP address in the worm's way, even if it would be purely beneficial. It could be considered illegal hacking, for example.
The next question is: They'd be doing this for free, but if they managed to screw up the delete program and it damages computers at all - they may be sued or even arrested.

So while setting up the server prevents anybody else from screwing with the worm in its original form and provides them their research data, actually clearing the infections is a case of "high risk for no gain".

That would require people to actually update their software.

Not my intent, though obviously the normal minimum wage worker has a minimal amount of agency, and a number of them are indeed dumb. Otherwise they wouldn't be a minimum wage worker. In addition, even much better paid workers still have limited agency.

1. We'd be talking about "franchise owner", not the manager.
2. When I was a minimum wage employee working at a franchise and elsewhere, I didn't have easy access to "corporate".
3. If they quit, unless they're associates outside of work as well, the information isn't necessarily going to spread that much.
4. The owner can always play up "not enforcing the contract clause" as a favor, not a necessity.

I think you're mistaking that it doesn't need to be a 100% effective tactic to be considered to be worth it by a shitty boss/owner.

Well, when you sit there and accuse me of being deceptive and using a fallacy, I'm going to argue back.

I'm also me. My positions are mine, not somebody else's.

Batteries, today, are now cheap enough to use in grid storage. The need for battery type technology has risen as well - making what we're willing to pay for it increase (demand increase, resulting in higher price point). The reduced cost and increased buying point has resulted in an increased amount of sales. From effectively zero to dozens a year.

It's basic economics that if the cost of production of grid storage compatible batteries continues to drop, if the overall performance improves*, that they'll be used even more. If the demand need for them increases - for example, what if a carbon tax is put on natural gas, significantly increasing the cost of natural gas peaking plants? What if solar power costs continue to drop - giving you periods where storing energy is effectively free?

*Just purchase price isn't enough. There's also questions of efficiency. A system that spits out 50% of the energy you put into it is going to be less attractive than one that does 90%. But if the storage is cheap enough, the prior might still make it. But multiplying the cost of every kWh you feed it by two, makes it a much tougher sell. Historically, efficiency was around 70-90%.

Gaslighting attempt spotted. You: posts after. Me: I had made ONE reply, consisting largely of me writing the exact same thing as my first post, when you accused me of motte and baily. While my defense might look like an impenetrable castle to you, because it consists of reasonable informed stances, that doesn't make it a motte and bailey fallacy. For one, you don't seem able to respond to what you see as my "motte" arguement and my "bailey" argument. That's something that should be easy to define, you know? You respond with more personal attacks and gaslighting rather than provide that simple information.

Good attempt, but if you're going to throw fallacy accusations around, it might help if you weren't using them as a playbook. Or maybe, remember that I'm not Shanghai. Note how I treat sodium as a possible way forward with grid storage, not a guarantee. I know there's a lot of competing technologies, which can each make sense in their own niche at the moment.

And it's a good thing my typing speed is "yes".

I think that I wasn't quite clear enough - I'm not saying that they actually take the employees to court. This is the equivalent of threatening a lawsuit. Which many $25k employees would be terrified of even though, as you mention, they're effectively judgement proof.

The idea isn't to sue, it's to keep them from quitting their shitty job for a slightly less shitty one down the street.

Given that most fast food stores are franchises, and that there's ~200k such stores in the USA, I would absolutely NOT put it past a fraction of them being asshole enough to attempt to do this, in order to keep their employees from quitting and seeking greener pastures elsewhere.

Somebody posted that Texas has "at will" employment, IE is "right to work", but that non-competes could be legal there. It read more like an opinion though.

https://www.texasnoncompetelaw...

"Supported by valid consideration (ie. something of value given to the employee)"

To me, that means something like, "they continue to pay you during the non-compete period."
There's also "need" - something like trade secrets. Which a fast food worker wouldn't have.

Given that I'm not the one who made that argument, it isn't a motte and bailey fallacy. My position remains exactly where it was.

And batteries do indeed make sense today - that's why they're being installed, I mean, the first BESS in the USA was installed in the town I was living in at the time - Fairbanks, AK. And it uses NiCad batteries.

Nope. I restated and rephrased. You're the one that constructed the strawman.
My FIRST POST stated the so called "retreat" position.
1. If battery costs are cut in half again, they'll challenge pumped hydro: Note how this is an IF. I'm not guaranteeing it, I just think that it's a real possibility.
2. Batteries now make sense for part of the solution: Given that they're already being installed, I don't think this should be all that controversial.
3. While past returns are not a guarantee of future returns, we do know that, for example, development for sodium-ion batteries is ongoing, and that's projected to be 10-20% less than lithium-ion, and lithium-ion keeps getting cheaper and cheaper. It probably helps that I didn't mention a timeline for it to happen.

I'm not defending your strawman position for me, but I'm fully willing to defend my actual one.
For example:

I mentioned zero magic about grid storage, batteries, or EVs. Given that you're the one bringing magic into it, I rest my case: You're creating a strawman to argue against.
Or, at least, properly identify my supposed position, using what I actually posted, as well as the backup. Keeping in mind that it should be a major difference, not just shades from attempted rephrasing of stuff.

You can't take a point that was "maybe" in my first post, treat it like I declared it a sure thing, then accuse me of being the one to commit the fallacy. Sure, you can debate on whether or not they'll be able to cut the cost of batteries in half again, but keep in mind that I was just treating it as a "maybe." I think the odds are good for them managing it, but it isn't guaranteed, especially on some sort of short timeline.

Yes, indeed there are. That looks like a hefty lever to me, but it's only rated at 4 liters an hour. Enough to keep you alive, of course, but it also will go through 20 liters to produce that 4.

Can you get 800 PSI on a handheld tool? Yes, you just need a big enough lever. Looking, you can get over 2000 PSI using a manual car jack.

Also, remember my mentioning that you can do lower pressures as long as you're willing to accept lower throughput? You can work a RO system down as low as 60 psi, but at that low of a pressure, your throughput is going to be low for the amount of media needed, and you will have to flush most of the water. When you do RO, you generally get your freshwater flow and a wastewater flow that is saltier than the input. Only a percentage of the water is desalinated. You need higher pressures to do higher percentages, because the more salt, the harder it is.

Let's see, first thought is "How high would the water column need to be?"

Wiki on RO desalination

Brackish water: 225-376 psi
Seawater: 800-1180 psi. (Note: This might actually liquify some atmospheric gasses)
1 foot of water = 0.43 PSI.

Brackish water would require a ~700 foot tower
Seawater: ~2,302 foot tower.

Tallest water tower, the Union Watersphere, ~212 feet. I'm thinking a tower isn't going to cut it.

On the other hand, I live on a well. My tank doesn't depend on height for pressure - it has an air bladder that you compress to provide the pressure. That should work, though for seawater you might need to pick a gas that won't liquify at the necessary pressure.

There's a big difference between what I said and the strawman you constructed to attack.

Me: "Batteries now make sense for part of the solution" and "cut the cost in half again, it'll threaten pumped hydro"
You: "if only we discover some utterly revolutionary technology..."

1. The major revolutions have already happened.
2. LiIon prices ~1/7th the price per kWh they were 20 years ago. Asking for another halving? Not really that big of an ask, I think, with things like sodium ion batteries in the works.
3. Intermittants can indeed totally work, it just requires proper engineering. Such as having energy storage systems, more load shedding abilities. Which EVs tend to be ideally suited for.

Yes, it took specific legislation to ban them in blue states. However, "right to work" laws, as present in red states, already banned them, just not explicitly, more "your employment contract cannot bind you after you cease working for that employer".

IE, what I've seen a couple times, they have to keep the employee "employed' for the non-compete period, including paying them.

Well, I suppose I could have shoved an "annually" in there. Sometimes I have a problem with missing words, and slashdot is harsh on that - I need a few hours to days to get what I've written out of my head so I don't insert them automatically, thus completely missing it. Lacking the ability to edit my posts...

In this case, because the income tax is reconciled on an annual basis, that the poverty line numbers are on an annual basis, etc... I just had "annual" as just assumed to be obvious.

Spending above the poverty line being the part effectively taxed is part of the core idea though? I mean, do you want a core idea reduced to, as you put it earlier, a footnote?

Well yes. That's describing what would be taxed under the proposal.

Really, at this point it might have been faster to just hit up the site I linked and read the actual proposal. It would have answered all these questions.

I wouldn't call the breakthrough "recent", but batteries now make sense for at least part of the solution. If they manage to cut the cost in half again, it might start pushing things like pumped hydro into being uneconomic.

The real trick, I think, would be to have much more battery than necessary to soak up the negative power cost situations. That way, you use it for load balancing all the time - but you only charge up close to 100% when power starts getting close to negative, justifying the extra wear. Assuming they use a battery chemistry subject to wear - there are cheap batteries out there that are extremely durable that don't have significant wear from full charging, they're just too big and heavy for EVs.

I'd imagine that, at most, you'd idle the plant only when electricity is at the peak.

There's two major forms of desalination - distilling and reverse osmosis. Distilling I think has the lower equipment cost, but higher operating cost. RO is more expensive equipment wise, but cheaper energy wise - but you want electricity to run the pumps. Distillation can be run mostly on any heat, so straight resistive electricity is normally too expensive/wasteful for it.

The problem I see is that idling the RO system is an expensive waste of RO time. With Distillation, the efficient systems do all sorts of tricks to scavange as much heat as they can - such as cooling the outgoing water with the incoming water. Not necessarily kind to power interruptions.

However, depending on how severe the spikes are, it can still be worth it. Maybe you do a RO setup where it does less power intensive maintenance tasks when power is expensive. Or you might just turn the power of the motors down - you produce less water that way, but from what I remember, the loss is not linear. IE 50% power might produce 60% as much water.
With distillation, maybe you install alternate thermal sources, or maybe a thermal storage bank so that when electricity is expensive, you just don't use it - you can run the pumps and heaters and such later.

Permitting: Sounds like a California problem to me. Self imposed. Such a feature, if implemented by the car manufacturer, should be relatively cheap to permit.
Additional appliances and wiring needed: The requirement of additional appliances and wiring should actually be minimal. If you have a dedicated car charger, that should be all the equipment needed to to V2G. It should be mostly software changes. Maybe an inverter in the charger. That said, EVs generally contain a relatively massive 3 phase inverter designed to run the induction motor for the wheels. It's flexible enough that 50/60 hz@240V should be no problem for it.

And you go by laws of average for having vehicles plugged in. If there's money to be had, more people will try to plug in around those times, of course.

Hmm... Peak power is generally right after people get home from work and get to work on dinner and such.

Let's say that we're in a reasonable future world with the following characteristics:
1. Batteries, including BEV batteries, are considerably cheaper.
1a. However, powerwalls are still not entirely common.
2. Vast majority of cars on road are BEV.
3. So much solar has been installed that daytime power is cheaper than night time.
4. Infrastructure has caught up with the changes.
4a. The vast majority of people who drive to work can charge at work, during the day time.
4b. V2G is "standard".

So a standard user situation could be such:
They get up in the morning, do morning stuff, and drive to work in their EV. They then plug in at work, where they have roughly 6-8 hours to charge.
They drive home with a more or less full battery (we might knock off a few percent to preserve the battery more).
They plug in when they get home, because in ~20 minutes, electricity is about to get expensive as everybody else gets home and turns on everything - TV, computer, HVAC, stove, oven, microwave, etc...
Their vehicle automatically does V2G so the house doesn't have to pay those expensive rates. This works because BEV batteries have advanced to the point that they're cheap and durable enough that battery wear is not a significant expense.
Once that power spike is over, the car monitors electricity rates, and charges enough to meet the needs of the next day, with appropriate safety margin, if necessary.
The owner drives to work, the EV might be at half charge or so. Doesn't matter much, they'll top off at work during their shift, when power is cheap because the parking lot is covered in solar panels or such.