This is the Prius hypermiler thing again.

Babies are impractical. They're noisy and they smell bad, except for their tiny pink toes which smell delicious.

All of this is held up by faith in the standard candle, which has recently been thrown into question. Type 1a supernovae might not be as consistent absolute brightness as previously believed. Without that? Shrug. We lack a yardstick to measure this.

If we knew how to deal with nuclear waste we would have done so. As of this moment effectively none of the US commercial nuclear spent fuel has ever been properly disposed of. In 77 years it adds up to a lot.

While China's CO2 output is the highest globally, per capita its output is just over half of the US. That's even without considering that much of China's output is as in this article, manufacturing pollution imported from other countries. The bill for this pollution should fall on the country that consumed the manufacturing output.

>the Nokia feature phone business from Microsoft, which had in turn bought the ailing brand in 2014.

No mention that Microsoft sent executive Stephen Elop to dismantle Nokia as its CEO in 2010. Nor that in 2014 as part of the deal to acquire Nokia's phone business leaving the rest of the company to soldier on, Nokia insisted that Microsoft repossess him.

Of how much invested? Published numbers show plans for $80B ai splash. Anybody got to-date numbers? I see $14B on OpenAI and $20B for Nuance Communications. That's $34B sunk.

Also, is this crowing about as reliable as any other marketing babble? They mean to sell this service.

Don't Look Up

Watch it again.

https://youtu.be/zicGxU5MfwE?s...

The Slashdot discussion from crossing 400 ppm in 2013:

https://news.slashdot.org/stor...

This year's monthly average peak so far, and a new record, was 430.51 ppm in May.

https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/tren...

AI ethics

Vibes and snake oil

Hmmmm

Understanding Lithium Battery Charge Cycles: A Complete Guide

A charge cycle refers to the process of discharging a battery and then recharging it back to full capacity. Technically, a complete charge cycle occurs when a battery has discharged to a certain percentage—commonly 100%—and is then charged back to its full capacity. However, it’s important to note that a charge cycle can consist of smaller partial discharges. For instance, if you use 50% of your battery one day and recharge it to full, then use 50% the next day and recharge again, that still counts as one full charge cycle.

So a charge from 0-100% is 1 charge, charging four times from 75%-100% is also 1 charge, and charging ten times from 90%-100% is also 1 charge.

Do note that some lithium batteries do not like to sit with a 100% charge for a long period of time, such as for my Model 3 the suggested daily charge limit is 80%. If I charged it five times from 60%-80% that would be counted as 1 cycle. On a trip it's OK to charge to 100%, just want to hit the road soon after reaching 100%.

Natural gas is still our biggest source of electricity* and heat in Texas, and it's production dropped nearly in half during the freeze:

Regional natural gas production (January 2020-February 2021)

A large portion of the decrease in natural gas production was from declines in Texas, which fell over 10 Bcf/d during the February 8–17 period. Unlike natural gas production infrastructure in northern areas of the country where below-freezing temperatures are more common and infrastructure is generally winterized, wellheads, gathering lines, and even processing facilities in Texas are more susceptible to freeze-offs during periods of extremely cold weather.

The nuclear plant south of me lost half its output:

How and why a nuclear reactor shut down in Texas cold snap when energy was needed most

One of two reactors shut down at the South Texas Nuclear Power Station an hour southwest of Houston, knocking out about half of its 2,700 megawatts of generating capacity.

Interestingly enough, even with all the frozen turbines wind was generating more power than expected when the grid collapsed:

Texas’ power grid crumples under the cold

Since wind in Texas generally tends to produce less during winter, there's no way that the grid operators would have planned for getting 30GW from wind generation; in fact, a chart at ERCOT indicates that wind is producing significantly more than forecast. [see chart, green line is what was generated, blue and red lines below it are what was forecasted]
...
An ERCOT director told Bloomberg that problems were widespread across generating sources, including coal, natural gas, and even nuclear plants.

My understanding is it was windier at the coast than expected and those turbines more than compensated for the frozen inland turbines.

* from ERCOT's Fuel Mix report for 2024

- 35% Gas-CC
- 24% Wind
- 13% Coal
- 10% Solar
- 9% Gas (not CC)
- 8% Nuclear
- 1% other

But what if how the world really works differs from the intention of the policy?