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Comment Re:Why Are We (the UK) Helping Ukraine? (Score 1) 346

What you say reminds me a lot of the violent husband: "Look at what you made me do !"
First of all those countries didn't want to join NATO, but the European Union. And even if they want to join NATO, maybe they should have a good hard look at themselves to see why other countries want to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Russia. And nobody said anything about nukes.
As for south american countries, if they want to associate with Russia, good for them, they have every right. And they are far enough !!!

Comment Re:Silly. (Score 1) 75

> The reason no one else has done this

The reason no one else has done this is because it's the first to use solid state batteries. It's not the first all-electric crewed aircraft. Not even close. Small fixed-wing aircraft (2-6 people) have been commercially viable for a few years now. They've been using all-electric (retrofitted DHC-2) commuter planes in Canada since 2019.

I wouldn't say the DHC-2 is "like building a bicycle out of cardboard" - it's a robust and proven commercial aircraft.

> You want to impress me

Suddenly it's like 2012 and electric cars again... lol.
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Comment Re:Probably not as useful. (Score 2) 103

To improve debit (total number of cars per minute) you can:
  • increase speed
  • increase the number of lanes
  • increase density (lower distance between cars)
  • decrease flow instabilities

Only the 1st one really gets you faster to where you want to go, but it's more complex than that. If you lower the speed you increase (4) which in turns increases (3)... There are density thresholds which behave like phase transitions in physics... It's fun to simulate.

Comment Re:Whose fault was it? (Score 1) 346

The bad faith in your post is incredible. After 70+ years of hostility it's not like we can warm up to russians immediately after a regime change. You need to put up some efforts into it like happened with Europe for instance: economic ties, then unification, along with political direction, military common ground, student exchanges, etc... After a few decades we can talk.

Comment Re:Oh look. (Score 0) 346

I used to think this was more or less true. But now I see it's been heavy-handed propaganda the whole time. To debunk it just look at the map of Israel over the last 80+ years. From nothing, to barely a dot, to growing and growing. Is that possible in an honest way, i.e. by purchasing land like you'd do in your own country ? No, it's been done by stealing it outright, piece by piece. No wonder the people it's been stolen from are pissed and trying to fight back, no matter how you call them. Israel is the only country which hasn't defined official frontiers; let that sink in.

Comment Re:Flywheel storage buffer (Score 1) 105

Let me help you out with that.

"If Texas were connected to either of the national grids, they would have been [in] compliance with federal standards for their infrastructure and would likely not have had the failure in the first place."

There. Let me break it down for you a bit more;

If { connected to the national grids } then { federal compliance = true }

If { federal compliance == true } then { reduce_disaster_probability() }

I then go on to explain that the entire reason they are using the HVDC interlink is to avoid needing to fix their shit in accordance with federal standards.

So again, where did I even imply that the HVDC link would solve anything? I'm being pretty explicit that the HVDC link will NOT solve anything, but it WILL saddle their neighbors with more troubles.
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Comment Re:Flywheel storage buffer (Score 1) 105

> where you started: no, neighbors were not going to help in Winter 2021

Please quote where I said such an interconnect would have had any impact on the 2021 disaster. What did I say to make you think that's my position.

What I said was, to quote myself, "leech off their neighbors when shit inevitably goes sideways again." You do realize that rolling blackouts are like an annual thing there, right? Despite being a "net exporter" they still can't always meet demand? That the *entire premise* of this /. article is they are trying to manage load shedding because they have ongoing problems maintaining a stable grid? YOU are the one that brought up the 2021 disaster, and I've only been continuing to reference it as an example of how mismanaged and intentionally neglected the Texas infrastructure is - which is a fact.

Everything else you wrote is moot because it's predicated on something I never said and a position I've never held. *shrug*
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Comment Re:Flywheel storage buffer (Score 1) 105

Thanks for demonstrating my point.

ERCOT suffered nearly double the shortfall of their neighbors. Now, if you continue to read that paper there's another key point:

"On the supply side, Texas has undertaken some efforts to protect its grid against more common summer weather demand spikes, but it has done little to protect itself against rarer winter freezes. However, these happen often enough that more winterization is warranted. Texas was advised to winterize by FERC after the 2011 freeze led to similar, albeit less catastrophic power outages of 4 GW."

They were warned to fix their infrastructure as an important part of preventing future problems. They did not. They still haven't. And instead of investing in robustness which is obviously and sorely needed, they are setting themselves up to lean on their neighbor's potentially strained (but not nearly as strained) infrastructure in a way that specifically lets them avoid those needed investments. This is what I mean by "making their problem everyone else's problem too."

Here's some other choice quotes;

"In spring 2021, in the wake of the winter freeze, Texas experienced days of high temperatures and heavy demand that tested the ERCOT grid again, at a time when significant power generation was offline for maintenance and in some cases to repair damage from the storm." (Read; they don't maintain their shit properly)

"However, some politicians are worried that increasing interconnections between Texas and other grids could lead Texas to be subject to FERC regulation. Former Texas governor and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry signaled strong opposition to such an idea, arguing that âoeTexans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.â" (Read: We'd rather our citizens freeze to death or die of heat stroke than invest in our infrastructure, because "freedom")

"Demand side strategies in buildings and investments in energy efficiency throughout the state could reduce the need for electricity during periods of extreme cold or heat, thereby avoiding some of the strain in the first place. Texas consumes the most energy of any state in the country but ranks 29th in the country in terms of energy efficiency of its buildings. Investments in heat pumps, LED lights, drill-and-fill insulation, among other measures could diminish energy demand in Texas buildings, particularly important for low-income communities and communities of color" (Read: We don't really care about solving the problem, because "freedom," and also maybe just a pinch of classism/racism.)

I guess it's also worth noting that since this paper was published, the Southern Spirit HVDC project has increased from 2GW to 3GW.
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Comment Re:I want to see inexpensive plugin hybrids but .. (Score 1) 135

> Those are vastly outweighed by the inefficiencies that apply when an ICE engine is running under variable load

They absolutely are not an that's why nobody does it that way. Your "near doubling of efficiency" because of "optimal RPM" is an outright delusion. Maybe stare at a specific fuel consumption chart for a while until you notice specific fuel consumption is not very sensitive to RPM at all.

> And where is the power coming from to recharge the battery in the i3 or LEVC when it reaches that lower level? The engine!

The engine but only indirectly, because the engine does not charge the battery but provides supplemental power to move the car along. The correct answer is "regenerative braking" is what recharges the battery. This is important, because the vast majority of the power the engine produces goes to the useful and desired purpose of moving the car, rather than being wasted recharging a battery for... what purpose exactly? Why would you burn fuel now to store than energy in a battery to use later, when you could just use the fuel later as you need to? Something for you to think about.

> I *think* youâ(TM)re attempting to play some weird semantic game in which you say that unless the battery SoC actually increases, the battery is not being charged.

That's literally the definition of charging.

Also you might want to head back up tot he start of this thread and understand exactly where this conversation started before you decided to join.

> The tap is filling the bath at the same rate as the bath is draining, but it's absurd to say the tap isn't filling the bath.

Except that's not what's happening. A better analogy is you are actively pumping water from the bath into a bucket, and when the water in the tub gets too low you decrease how fast you're pumping out of it and start supplementing the bath water flow with a garden hose instead so you can keep filling the bucket at the same rate. You are replacing one source of water with another, completely different source.

Now imagine that if you tried to fill the bathtub from the hose you'll always and unavoidably spill about 20% of the water. Also, that hose water is really expensive compared to the bath water.

When you're done playing, you dump what's left in the bucket back into the bath even if some or all of that water originally came from the hose. That's your regenerative braking.
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Comment Re:Easy way to go to prison (Score 1) 98

> That is, the property may be privately owned, but retail businesses and the parking lots which are operating on private property are considered public spaces for all sorts of legal situations

If they can tell you to leave, and if you don't leave have you arrested for trespassing, then it's private property as it applies to recording laws. If they say "you can't film on this property" then you can't film on that property.

You seem to understand this and yet you're insisting it's not a thing.

> What do you mean by "right" in this context?

I mean you are not entitled to do it and doing it after you've been told not to by someone who has the authority to tell you (e.g. the property owner) the cops show up to have a chat with you.

Filming on private property without permission is illegal. Just because the official charge is trespassing doesn't mean it isn't - it's the reason you were trespassing. It is the cause of the trespass. Tresspass is more tan just physically being there, too; If you decide to stand across the street on a public (read: government owned) sidewalk and continue filming what's happening on that private property anyway? Potentially still trespassing. Because it's the act of filming that is the root cause, not where you're standing at the time.

That's why you don't have a "right" to do it.
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Comment Re:Flywheel storage buffer (Score 2) 105

> It's not "leeching"; it's bilateral trade that benefits reliability and markets.

So what would you call it if you say, joined in a carpool group where you took turns driving with your own vehicles, but one member had a notoriously unreliable car that you had to take extra turns in your vehicle to cover for?

This isn't about normal ebb and flow of energy. Texas gains a lot more out of this deal than anyone else, because their grid has lots of problems with their poorly maintained generation capacity. So rather than fix and maintain their shit, just rely on their neighbors to cover their ass.

> You're also ignoring that during the 2021 ERCOT outage, many of the neighboring states had severe outages and problems of their own.

[citation needed]

I mean, there's a difference between outages and a total collapse that leaves 32 people dead. Texas's problems were entirely predictable and avoidable - and I say that confidently because the exact same shit happened in 2011 for the exact same reason. Even before then they were warned their infrastructure wasn't properly prepared for a winter storm but those warnings went unheeded. Then after the 2011 storm the final report was like "Yeah maybe you should fix your shit properly?" and they didn't do it, so 2021 was another disaster. Guess what they still haven't done? Go on, guess...

Don't waste your time whiteknighting these dipshits. They're been told to winterize their infrastructure. They've suffered the consequences of not doing it multiple times. Now instead of fixing their problem, they're going to make it everyone else's problem as well so they can make more money.
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