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Comment Re:Shocking! Indeed! :-) (Score 1) 108

Me from 2000: https://dougengelbart.org/coll...
        "Powertech -- Twenty years to widespread fuel cells, PV, wind, microturbines, etc.
  Source: My general reading in this area, like my previous post on energy issues. ..."

The referenced energy post by me from 2000: https://dougengelbart.org/coll...
        "The current land area used in the US related to fossil fuel mining, refining, storage, and distribution is roughly 1% of the US land area. So, it is not fair to say renewables would use a similarly large amount of area and disregard this amount of space used by conventional techniques. For example, the area under existing power lines in the US (for right of ways - a huge expanse) is sufficient to generate all electric power used in the US if it was covered with photovoltaics. ... Recent advances in photovoltaics (especially combining light collection of visible spectrum piped to interiors with power conversion of remaining wavelengths) may soon make them much more competitive. ...
        There are no easy answers, but remember the incredible number of people who use energy (all of us) and the large numbers of people who are already involved with the energy industry in some way. So, there are many people to implement solutions. Don't be too overwhelmed by large numbers and costs. If fossil fuel and nuclear solutions were fairly priced today in terms of external costs like tax subsidies, environmental damage, and military requirements, we would see an immediate switch to alternatives and more energy efficient technology.
          For that reason, I am quite hopeful for our energy future -- especially if developing countries can be given advanced technology, rather than having them simply duplicate the current antiquated American fossil fuel infrastructure. Unfortunately, the politics and finances of development often entail developing nations being sold the technology that no one wants anymore in the developed world (like for example DDT or old nuclear reactor and dam designs).
        We need to figure out ways to prevent that from happening with energy technology the same way it has happened in the past with other technologies. ..."

Me from 2010: https://groups.google.com/g/op...
        "As I've said before, if you look at the exponential growth of renewables, in twenty to thirty years we will be completely running off renewables. This [questionable "Net Energy Limits and the Fate of Industrial Society"] report is like a report in the 1980s saying there is no way that most people will own cell phones because only about a million people a year are buying cell phones and it would take seven thousand years for everyone to get a cell phone at that rate. But now half the Earth's population does have cell phones? What happened? Exponential growth."

Ray Kurzweil also predicted exponential solar growth back in 2000 or so.

So yeah, who would have thunk it?

I mean, it's not like there might have been financial incentives for industry groups to provide misleading predictions, right?
"Why Does the IEA Always Underestimate Solar Energy's Rapid Growth?"
https://247wallst.com/energy/2...
        "Using data from the agency's World Economic Outlook (WEO) for 13 of the past 16 years, Hoekstra graphed the actual growth of solar PV installation (the thick black line on the following chart) against the IEA predictions from the WEO. The starting point for each year's new prediction moves higher and in some years sharply higher. Hoekstra notes that "every single time since the future of photovoltaics was first predicted in the IEA WEO in 2002, the WEO has assumed the sector would hardly grow or even contract, even though this runs contrary to the observed reality."
        Because the IEA's WEO is a widely used source for policy makers around the world, consistently underestimating the growth of solar PV when the data say otherwise discourages investment in solar and can hold back even faster growth. ...
        Hoekstra, in a blog post last June, offers some possible explanations for the IEA's low and inaccurate predictions: ... The IEA could have been captured by the old fossil energy order in terms of thinking or interests. This could be conscious or unconscious. I would guess largely unconscious because I'm a firm believer in Hanlon's razor. ..."

Comment Re:Less legacy infrastructure, Easier to run local (Score 1) 108

All of your pseudo-'concerns' are being dealt with, by whatever method is most appropriate for the locality.

As far as solar panels in Tornado Alley, go ask the operators of the giant solar and wind farms being constructed in Texas. Besides, there's nowhere in Africa which gets tornadoes or hurricanes like the southern US anyway.

Comment Re:Less legacy infrastructure, Easier to run local (Score 1) 108

One of the issues with integrating renewable energy into the North American grid is the 'sunk cost' of all that cruft of installed hardware. Another is the accounting/tax requirements, and yet another is the organizational structures of the US energy system. Transformers are expected to last 20+ years for example, no executive is going to forgo their quarterly bonus by replacing "dumb" transformers that haven't been fully depreciated for "smart" ones that can deal with variable energy flows.

There aren't any of those obstructions in Africa. Much of the continent is essentially "green fields" construction, which is always an order of magnitude easier to deal with.

Portables (Apple)

Dell Rivals Apple's MacBook Neo With $699 Touchscreen XPS 13 Laptop (bloomberg.com) 58

Dell has introduced a redesigned $699 XPS 13 aimed squarely at Apple's budget MacBook Neo, offering a premium aluminum design, touch display, backlit keyboard, Wi-Fi 7, 512GB of base storage, and various other configuration options. Dell's machine costs more than Apple's entry model but tries to justify the difference with lighter weight, better display specs, and upgrade paths Apple doesn't offer. "The XPS 13 begins at $699 -- students can purchase it for $599 -- while the MacBook Neo costs $599 and drops to $499 for education buyers," notes Bloomberg. From the report: Dell's product allows for more configuration, with up to 32GB of memory compared with the Neo's nonupgradeable 8GB of unified memory. Its display can also produce a wider spectrum of colors and supports refresh rates up to 120 hertz, while Apple reserves its best screens for the pricier MacBook Pro line.

The inclusion of a backlit keyboard should allow for easier typing in dark conditions. Dell has also tossed in other nice-to-have upgrades over the Neo like more robust Wi-Fi 7 wireless networking. As for battery life, Dell is touting "up to 17 hours of streaming" versus a comparable 16 hours on the Neo.

Still, the XPS comes with compromises of its own: Unlike the Neo, there's no built-in headphone jack, which means owners will need to rely on its quad-speaker audio system, use Bluetooth earbuds or plug a headphone adapter into one of the two USB-C ports.
You can learn more via Dell.com.

Comment Re:Why not risc-v? (Score 1) 73

To what end (for the consumer)? NVIDIA is targeting a PC so they are targeting the most commonly used OS (Windows) which has a perfectly functioning ARM build + x86 emulation layer already.

There's a LOT more work in doing something with RiscV than ARM right now as the latter has proven itself in software support already.

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