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Comment Re:We need them, but (Score 1) 241

My voltage doesn't vary much at all no matter how much power I'm pushing. And, unfortunately, I couldn't set my inverters to derate if I wanted. I'm fighting with the installer over access to configure/manager my inverters. They offer quite a good repair/service warranty and also a production guarantee, and won't give me control without voiding both of those so I'm debating which I care about most.

Comment Re:We need them, but (Score 1) 241

(I somehow replied to myself instead of you. What am I, some sort of /. n00b?)

I agree carbon capture and sequestration is important but I haven't seen anything that looks good at scale yet.

And there won't be unless we motivate research into it.

When there is a decent solution it would be ideal at times of surplus generation when power is otherwise unable to be used

Indeed! This is an ideal use for overprovisioned capacity.

At the small scale I have an issue where in summer my solar surplus is more that my rural grid connection can handle so when my hot water is heated and the house and car are charged I end up with the solar inverters derating

Wow. I generate way more than I use in the summer, but my (also rural) grid connection can absolutely take it just fine. I have 200A service with a 150A breaker (so, about 37 kW), but my generation peaks at about 20 kW. My bigger problem is that if I try to charge my house batteries (20 kW) and my car (12kW) and run my AC (4 kW) and the steam generator (9 kW) and run basic house loads (2 kW) and run my welder (10 kW) that's 57 kW or about 235A. In practice I don't ever do all of those things at the same time (and rarely charge batteries from the grid), so I've never actually tripped the main breaker, but I could do it easily if I tried. I imagine it will happen someday. I could swap the breaker, but the wiring from the main panel isn't big enough to have the proper safety margin at 200A. Running new wiring would be... a big project, likely involving tearing up and replacing a big chunk of my driveway. So, 150A will have to do.

I have not found a good use for such surplus power yet, but carbon capture would be ideal.

Me neither. I ran the math on doing some BTC mining (I think BTC is a scourge on the planet, but I'm happy to take money) but it didn't pencil out. Free power is great for mining, but the cost of the rigs is high enough that you really need to keep them humming 24x7, and I don't have enough battery capacity for that.

Comment Re:We need them, but (Score 1) 241

I agree carbon capture and sequestration is important but I haven't seen anything that looks good at scale yet.

And there won't be unless we motivate research into it.

When there is a decent solution it would be ideal at times of surplus generation when power is otherwise unable to be used

Indeed! This is an ideal use for overprovisioned capacity.

At the small scale I have an issue where in summer my solar surplus is more that my rural grid connection can handle so when my hot water is heated and the house and car are charged I end up with the solar inverters derating

Wow. I generate way more than I use in the summer, but my (also rural) grid connection can absolutely take it just fine. I have 200A service with a 150A breaker (so, about 37 kW), but my generation peaks at about 20 kW. My bigger problem is that if I try to charge my house batteries (20 kW) and my car (12kW) and run my AC (4 kW) and the steam generator (9 kW) and run basic house loads (2 kW) and run my welder (10 kW) that's 57 kW or about 235A. In practice I don't ever do all of those things at the same time (and rarely charge batteries from the grid), so I've never actually tripped the main breaker, but I could do it easily if I tried. I imagine it will happen someday.

I could swap the breaker, but the wiring from the main panel isn't big enough to have the proper safety margin at 200A. Running new wiring would be... a big project, likely involving tearing up and replacing a big chunk of my driveway. So, 150A will have to do.

I have not found a good use for such surplus power yet, but carbon capture would be ideal.

Me neither. I ran the math on doing some BTC mining (I think BTC is a scourge on the planet, but I'm happy to take money) but it didn't pencil out. Free power is great for mining, but the cost of the rigs is high enough that you really need to keep them humming 24x7, and I don't have enough battery capacity for that.

Comment Re:We need them, but (Score 1) 241

Just because we can't magically address all causes of CO2 and pollution in general doesn't we should blindly ignore the issue.

Indeed. We should also, however, recognize that emissions reductions can never get us to net-negative CO2 and that is where we need to get. We should be investing heavily in research into carbon capture and sequestration, because it is the ultimate long-term solution to greenhouse gas emissions, the thing that will allow us to actually reverse global warming.

In the meantime, as you say, we should start by looking at the CO2 emissions sources that allow us to most quickly and cheaply reduce our emissions. The easiest area is electricity production... made even easier by the fact that wind and solar are the cheapest technologies we have for producing electricity, in many cases even when the cost of battery storage is included. And of course as we convert electricity production to non-emitting sources, we should electrify as much as we can the other areas where we burn fossil fuels.

But we also need to be investing in carbon recapture, because some things are going to be hard to convert and, as I pointed out, only recapture can get us to net-negative. We should also be researching geoengineering techniques, such as methods of reducing insolation. Geoengineering isn't a solution (e.g. reducing insolation does nothing to fix ocean acidification), but it may be a necessary short-term measure, and we should be prepared, having already done what we can to understand it in case we need it, and before we need it.

Carbon reduction is good, but it's insufficient and I worry that we're not putting enough into other approaches. A large part of the reason is that people are afraid that attention on anything other than carbon reduction will harm the emissions reduction efforts. That's not a ridiculous concern, but it demonstrates a lack of understanding of the scale and scope of the problem.

Comment Re:Before someone says it (Score 1) 134

The only way it could work fairly is by having an independent unbiased group making the determination on what was clearly misinformation.

That would be ideal, but I don't think it's really necessary. Just keeping the list a subject of public debate is sufficient to prevent things from getting too skewed.

Comment Re:Before someone says it (Score 1) 134

That basically all of the people in the Western governments turned out to be raping minors and eating children

There is zero evidence of this, and the fact that you seem to believe it makes me dismiss everything else you might say out of hand, because you clearly either lack or don't engage critical thinking skills.

Comment Re:Before someone says it (Score 1) 134

That's the thing though. The biggest source of misinformation in ol' Blighty is Nr.10.

I don't think that would matter in practice. This law wouldn't let them specify what *news* is allowed, only what news sources, and there would be a huge stink if they tried to block the major real news outlets. They'd like to, I'm sure, but I really doubt that they'd succeed.

Comment Re:Before someone says it (Score 2, Informative) 134

It does demonstrate the problem with "misinformation" though. Some people will continue to insist it was true even years after it was proven false.

Russiagate was absolutely not "proven false". Mueller's report and both the House and Senate reports (from committees led by Republicans) thoroughly verified it.

Comment Re:You'll end up with an empty repository (Score 1) 169

All true - but also a young arrogant engineer who completely failed to read and learn from people who have entire closets full of computing awards (including Turing Awards) for a reason.

Well, not just one young arrogant engineer, also most of the maintainers of the major Linux distros in the world.

If it's really a bad idea, the blame doesn't really fall on Poettering. Many young, arrogant engineers have built things that were stupid, and their things got ignored by the world. Some smaller number of young, arrogant engineers have built things that were stupid but were able to convince their PHBs that they weren't stupid and they got deployed. I don't think that's how I'd characterize the leadership at Red Hat (I never worked there, but I have good friends who did), but let's suppose that they were clueless and that's why they deployed Poettering's stupid idea.

But then how do you explain why so many others looked at it, experimented with it for a few years, and then decided to adopt it, and even extend it?

The systemd opponents are loud and forceful on social media. The people who actually build the systems, however, disagree. And It's not just one or two groups who are somehow beholden to Poettering, nor is it people who don't know anything or have no technical stake in the decision.

You might want to consider whether you're living up to your nick here.

I don't personally care that much. I find it mildly annoying that the old scripts my finger muscle memory still wants to type by default don't always work... but honestly I rarely need them any more, because my systems Just Work. And I have to consider the possibility that systemd is part of the reason Linux requires so much less maintenance than it used to. There are multiple contributors here. A lot of it is that drivers have gotten a lot better and other aspects of the system have matured (like the audio subsystem :^)).

But given its broad adoption by nearly all open source and commercial Linux distros, Occam's razor says that it's probably better than sysvinit. Or BSD init. Or Upstart. Or OpenRC, or... <insert favorite system manager here>.

Comment Re: Cool Cool (Score 1) 88

Necessary? I thought we were talking about what was legal. My mistake.

Appropriateness of the response to the emergency is part of the legal considerations. Congress granted the power for a reason. Taking that and assuming it means arbitrary power is not operating within the law, not for Trump, not for Biden.

And you clearly misremember the legal posture of suspended payments and interest.

In what way? Please correct me.

Comment Re:The standard pro self-driving argument (Score 1) 59

If you want to make it a scientific number, you need to compare like against like. Same driving times, same driving conditions, same driving speeds, same roads (for example, Waymo avoids tricky intersections)

Bah. If a human driver increased their safety and reliability by avoiding certain situations, would you call them a worse driver for it?

Waymo would have to be transparent and open with their data.

They provide full access to the regulators, and they've allowed academic researchers full access. Putting it all online would be more transparent, but they're a business and they have up and coming competitors.

Comment Re: Cool Cool (Score 2) 88

Do you honestly believe that mass debt forgiveness -- after COVID was already over! -- was a necessary emergency response to the pandemic? Suspending payments (and interest) during the pandemic made perfect sense, and that was not struck down. I don't recall that it was even challenged.

No, the debt forgiveness clearly had nothing to do with the (already-ended) emergency, it was just an attempt to skirt the law, and the courts were quite correct to strike it down as executive overreach. If Biden wanted to do that, he should have lobbied Congress to change the law. He didn't do that, of course, because he knew Congress would refuse -- even though his party held both houses.

Comment Re:Cool Cool (Score 1) 88

Your comment mischaracterizes what has happened. The Supreme Court has absolutely bent over backwards to let Trump do what he wants in temporary rulings, including jumping in to to stay lower-court orders that no previous court would even have responded to. But their on-the-merits rulings, when they have to issue a full opinion, have been much less friendly to Trump. There have been some incredibly bad ones (e.g. immunity) but Trump has lost more than he has won in SCOTUS final judgements.

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