I think the global numbers are low, honestly, and that's mostly down to this misadventure in Iran. Countries that had to ration oil and gas are seeing people flee to solar panels and Chinese EVs.

I actually kinda think that's what's going on already, tbh. My Ioniq 6 gets 100% of the claimed range at 90% charge, as near as I can tell. They've definitely fudged it a little.

Used EVs are such a good buy. My Ioniq 6 came with 40k km on it, and that's basically brand new. Certainly the interior and exterior look pristine, and without many wearing parts, the thing rolled off the lot with 100% of the claimed range (actually, a bit more) and hasn't given me any trouble at all.

It costs me about $2/100km of driving. I've seen petrol and diesel up to $2/L here on bad days, and even in a very efficient car, you need 5L/100km.

(One hiccup: someone literally stole my charging cable while the car was charging in my driveway. My fault, though. I didn't see the setting to keep the cable locked to the car unless the doors are unlocked. They just disconnected the power and it unlocked itself. But L2 chargers are so cheap, I'm only paying a 30c premium over home charging.)

Actually, yeah. Their reputation is on the line, and they won't survive as a company if they're wrong. It's not anonymous, it's not a think-tank generating faux reports to bolster some politician's opinion. Their name is now attached to this information, and if they're lying, that's it for them. They're not big enough to eat that kind of bad press and come out okay on the other side.

Valid concern, though the reality is that'll just leave the door open for 3rd party battery swaps. I bought my EV used knowing that the battery would probably outlast the body of the car, but in the off-chance that it doesn't, I'm actually a bit hyped for the potential to put a better battery in, with either longer range or less weight (though I assume a lighter battery would mess with the driving dynamics the car was designed for).

The peak demand comes -- right at the time we'd be getting near-peak from solar.

Why isn't the USA focusing more on having people fit solar to their houses with a battery and inverter. This would take the load off the grid during these peak-sun/peak-demand periods and sure-up the grid.

This is one of the few times that the output of renewables tracks demand so why not?

Image models take a lot more memory, as one would expect. If you want to run a text-only generative model for coding or knowledge, or as a database for all your books or manuals or whatever, that works great. Fits in 8GB of memory, has more than enough context for simple projects. The more memory and CPU you have, the better it gets.

You've just got the most expensive use case that takes a lot more hardware. It's still not actually out of reach per se (or it wasn't, before the price increases) but the outlay to start is much bigger.

You're right, it's NOT free, it's SOMETHING YOU ALREADY PAID FOR.

The really insane thing is that the USA spends more money per capita than ANYONE and still gets worth healthcare coverage and worse overall results, with lower life expectancy. There's even this effect where rich people don't get as good care as average people in other countries for a number of common conditions or procedures, because the whole system is so bad you can't even PAY for great service.

But that aside:

Solar is so gobsmackingly cheap, it'll pay for itself in almost zero time. The real cost is the grid, but generating enough power is so stupidly trivial it hurts. You put a solar panel out in a field and it collects electricity and that's the end of the story. You pay for that panel once every 20-30 years and it generates electricity for you. You don't dig things up out of the ground or fight wars, you just let it collect the electricity.

Technology Connections did an excellent video on renewable energy, and using just the figures for putting solar panels on corn farms that produce corn for ethanol and not food, his back of the envelope calculation was that you could produce 7700 TWh of electricity a year, which is considerably more than the 4100 TWh that the US grid currently produces.

The reality is there doesn't need to be any energy crisis at all. AI data centres don't even need to be an environmental problem, you can just hook solar panels and batteries up and run them and they'd even use less water than the corn fields that were displaced for the solar farm.

The whole discussion is ridiculous. More solar panels. Solar panels everywhere. It's effectively free. The only reason governments don't do it is so they can keep lining their pockets with oil and gas industry kickbacks.

Here's the video link to the right time stamp, if you want to check what I'm saying and review his math.

https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM?s...

The reason there are extreme left candidates is that the Democrats picked the ONE candidate they will run in the main election. At best they will pick an average Democrat, but because they are NOT using RCV they will probably pick an extremist who appeals to the greatest fraction (far less than 1/2) of them. In RCV there would be a bunch of Democrats and Republicans and others running in a SINGLE election. Yea you can vote for your favorite extremist as #1, but you will also rank people in the middle higher than your opposing side, and since this happens in both directions, the center will win.

It is obvious that opponents of RCV are resorting to outright LIES now. Pretty low.

Sterilization probably is not needed for the Moon. Most things die and we have already contaminated it plenty anyway.

I agree there is something fishy about this. Not only will it leave the 2 landers on Mars without a test platform on Earth, it will also leave PROMISE without a test platform on Earth! I'm also surprised the test platform has a working RTG generator when there probably is a wall outlet it could have used instead, though perhaps they wanted to be absolutely authentic.

Last I checked power plants are not free.

You are lying. It is not becoming. Ranked choice would prevent the extreme left candidates we are getting. You know that.

Also I believe various ranked-choice algorithms will elect centrists, even if the extremes are not equidistant from the center. The main problem is that the candidates have to be distributed in a way that matches the population, it may be that only extremists want to get into politics. In that case ranked-choice will choose the extremists nearest the center and still be an improvement.

I would agree MAGA has moved much more to the right than the "DSA" candidates have moved left. However they have both moved away from the center.