What seems very odd about the page of Huawei fiber-to-the-room products is how unambitious they are.

Sure, if you want to do ethernet at nontrivial distances or above 10Gb fiber is where it's at; but why are you selling fiber as the glorious enabling technology for a bunch of wifi 6 APs that will be lucky to actually need 2.5GbE; with 'power over fiber' cabling which presumably means pulling a bunch of copper anyway and is significantly length-limited?

There are, absolutely, circumstances where having fiber runs would be invaluable; it just seems like "a wifi AP in every room so the signal doesn't suck!" is basically the least fiber-relevant use case going.

Aside from the usual caveats about being 'on the cusp of', rather than having actually delivered; how revolutionary would '100 deepseeks' be?

I enjoyed watching Altman squirm at least as much as anyone, possibly more; but that didn't change the fact that deepseek developed an unexpectedly cheap way to do something that, so far, an entire industry is busy losing money on because the reality has had a desperately bad time living up to the hype.

If some of these 'deepseeks' end up delivering on things that matter more that could be an item of some interest; but if it's all doing questionably useful things somewhat more cheaply than the VC whisperers it should be hilarious to watch but not desperately relevant.

BYD have demonstrated a 5 minute charge, cars hitting the market this year. Nio has been doing battery swaps for years, approximately 2.5 minutes and you don't have to get out of the car, so actually considerably faster than pumping fossil fuel.

Today isn't a good time to build nuclear. It's been made obsolete by cheaper, safer, and much faster to build technologies.

It's also a very long term investment at a time when grids are rapidly changing, so it's not very attractive. 20 years before it starts paying back that investment, and the energy market will probably look very, very different by then.

China installed 91GWh of grid scale battery storage last year, doubling the total installed amount of the previous year. It will probably double again this year.

Even without feed in to the grid, or feed in controlled remotely in a virtual power plant set-up, it's still well worth doing. With a battery that can be charged both from solar and from cheap off-peak electricity (in the UK some suppliers give you a special discounted rate if you let them control when your battery charges, and your EV).

In fact one supplier, Octopus, just launched a scheme where you can get a discounted lease on an EV that they can control the charging of. You tell them you need X% by time T, and they ensure you get it by charging at a time of their choosing. They can also have the EV discharge some of its energy back into the grid at peak times, with a minimum SoC so you never find it has less than a certain amount of range in the battery. The first car on the scheme is a BYD.

Tesla has been using them since 2021, but other manufacturers have been using them longer and in far greater volumes too. The main issue with the Tesla ones is that they are still using cylindrical cells, instead of prismatic or pouch cells. Cylindrical cells are in theory able to deliver higher power, but in practice for a battery made up of so many of them... Well, Teslas don't charge as fast as rivals using other types of LFP cells, and acceleration is limited by the motors and grip.

The downsides to cylindrical cells include lower energy density and greater weight per Wh. They are also more of a pain to thermally manage. It's not really clear why Tesla sticks with them, when everyone else has mostly already ditched them for automotive use.

You can already get lead acid replacement batteries for cars that use LFP too.

https://www.fogstar.co.uk/coll...

Powerwalls are a massive rip off.

None of which changes the fact that France pays out the arse for its nuclear. That's why Germany didn't want to follow them, and besides in the time it has taken Germany to massively reduce fossil fuel usage with renewables they couldn't have built a single nuclear plant anyway. EDF is quoting 20 years, and they are the only ones willing to build in Europe, and the last one they quoted 20 years for has been delayed beyond that timeframe.

How long will it take to build and how much will it cost?

Presumably they have some guarantees that it won't be redundant by the time it is built.

Consider using a print shop for photos, and getting a laser printer for everything else. Brother are a good choice. No DRM nonsense, use 3rd party cartridges or refill your own. Good reliability and print quality. Very cheap.

Home batteries are insanely cheap now. 15kWh for about 1,500 Euro as a kit, 2000 Euro assembled.

It's a social justice issue though. People getting solar panels to reduce their energy bills, and a divide opening between people who are already better off and can afford their own roof, vs people who have to rent and can at most put a temporary panel on a balcony or something.

For companies and schools it's much easier because they can get a commercial loan. Payback is guaranteed over a predictable period, they have assets to borrow against.

One of the great things about the solar revolution in China is that it has helped a lot of the poorer people. There's also this incredible BBC article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/art...

EVs are cheaper than fossils in China, and that guy drives one as a taxi.

For smaller sites they charge the batteries off peak for the morning rush. Solar complements it. Of course the way electricity grids work, the panels don't have to be at the site anyway.

They don't power the chargers directly from solar of course, they charge the batteries and use the grid, but some sites do have enough space to cover daily use. Think large canopies like they have at petrol stations.

In case this doesn't get picked up...

What sort of stuff do you need to print? If it's kids I'm going to assume they will want colour. A colour laser isn't a bad idea, they are robust and the Brother ones are known to accept 3rd party cartridges. You can also refill the carts yourself. Generally speaking Brother printers are the best. Reliable, cheap, no DRM nonsense, and no pointless bloatware.

The only real downside is that they don't do photos as well as inkjets. They are okay, but not print shop quality with a glossy finish. You may find it's cheaper to just pay a shop to print your photos, rather than having your own printer.

Otherwise I have heard that Canon inkjets that use tanks instead of cartridges are okay, but have never tried one myself.