Any watermark worth its chebyshev filters isn't going to be a few static frequencies. More likely it'd be an image or QR code periodically overlaid onto the power spectrum. Like the "Aphex face" in Aphex Twin - Windowlicker.

They all sound easily identifiable at present, due to the fact that ML models disgard phase information of the audio in their training datasets. They train only on MEL spectrograms, at least all the papers I've seen from Facebook or Google etc; these use the power-spectrum only, when training. Disregarding half of the information in the phase spectrum is not for free. It's just that they cannot easily train with the phase spectrum information, because they're chaotic and any averaging over training batches would only increase the noise of this chaos. Ultimately this gives the synthesized outputs a really fuzzy, mushy sound, never crisp, since phase information is "reconstructed" (conjured) from the Griffin-Lin algorithm.

Oh yeah, I realize now that cost is super low because I used the battery's rated number of cycles rather than age to depreciate them. That is probably not realistic, so expecting 5-8 years (rather than the 48 years they'd last if only down to the # of cycles), is going to mean the cost is probably > $3000 per year. I tried to find real data points for expected battery lifetime; it was not easy to find at the time, especially these Chinese battery banks.

Wind for home power is for all intents and purposes, a scam. They rate the power for those devices at 11 m/s wind speed, which is about 3x what you can expect on average, even for a windy area. The wind turbines barely generate a watt at 3 m/s, if they even cut in at that speed. The power drops with the 3rd power of wind velocity, so it's an abysmal output of maybe 30 watts in normal windy circumstances, 40W in high winds, and this for a turbine rated at 800W.

For the solar system in Fredericton, it was about $1100 CAD per year assuming some subsidies for the panels, and getting them and the batteries from China via Alibaba (you figure out the shipping yourself, a hassle, but saves many thousands compared to NA sources). If you want to stick with continental US brands, I'd say it's likely a factor of 4 to 8 higher.

Here's the simulation:

This seems like a reasonable factor to measure. It could just be Ubuntu, but I have to wait several minutes before Firefox becomes responsive and starts acting on my prompts. Before I ditched Chrome, I remember that it at least started promptly.

The smart ones know it's not economically competitive with better alternatives. Solar panels on cars? What good would that do, do you think? You need some perspective...Per day, you're getting maybe 2 kilometers of range with 2 square metres of panels (way more than the exposed skin of a car). Some dudes on youtube were talking about how they wanted solar power option to fold out on the back of their cybertruck. I did the math, which you should do; it would take about 140 days to charge the truck with full sun.

Rapid growth in renewables does not imply a reduction in fossil fuels. Batteries at utility scale are $400 / kw installed. You're looking at 160 BILLION in batteries if you want to go full solar in California (the solar would cost about 30 billion). And the batteries have to be replaced every 10 years or so. You could take that same 210 billion and build 40+ nuclear plants, that last 40 years! Which have comparable lifecycle emissions as solar.

"Just". Maybe it's less in California, but in Fredericton you're going to need about 100 square metres of solar panels to supply a house and electric car. About 50 Kwh of batteries, to tolerate a 3-day cloudy stretch. I modelled this with real solaricity data, incorporating panel efficiency degradation, backup generator for the worst 1% of situations etc etc. These batteries don't last all that long, 5-8 years, so it's not really decoupling yourself from anything, you can't fix the stuff yourself, and need to keep paying big money.

Grid power is insanely cheap and maintenance free when you compare it with realistic alternatives at the same power usage.

You've given a good example of how humans spout nonsense, which thankfully is not what ChatGPT does. It's remarkably useful and clear, if sometimes a bit verbose. If you cannot find a use for it, you may be a monk or nun, or more likely just incompetent.

Most of the points are well made but this has no justification:

"Value" means that which is demanded. It's not intrinsic; there's absolutely no such thing as intrinsic value. You need someone to want your metal for it to have value. If they stop wanting it, you cannot do anything with it. Industrial uses of precious metals have a value too, but pennies on the dollar. So you're most certainly still exposed to what other people want.

Now I'll give you a real justification: these precious metals will always be in demand so long as there is commerce. It is an insurance policy against alternative commercial transaction media like fiat currency, should they fail. People will always need this medium of transaction so long as there is trade, as bartering has several efficiency problems I'll not get into. Precious metals have unique properties that fulfil this need like lack of tarnishing / rusting, and means of identification.

This summary doesn't specify how much of their own company shares they have in their treasury to spend. Probably don't know that's a thing that matters.

Great examples and arguments. Presumably when you say billion you mean million, but everything else makes sense.

Companies can exclude certain expenses from their EBITDA calculation that are significant and meaningful, such as depreciation and amortization. Not just interest, which by and large has been cheap these past years, but principal loan repayments -- those are considered 'amortization'. So your company can take on huge debts be looking at $1B of more outflows compared to the previous year and it won't be reflected in the EBITDA. (disclaimer: not an accountant, this is my best understanding as a layperson)

Why not just use net income? I mean you can see why CEOs don't want to if it can't be as easily manipulated, but why don't investors insist that any financial arguments are made with net income metrics?

Did you not do the math for your area before committing to go off grid?

Never was, never will be. If there's lawlessness, there's no absolute "freedom from". It's might makes right, and you're never mightiest.

If there's lawfulness, there's no absolute "freedom to". Stop using this logic bomb of a word.