Seed autonomous, self-powered file servers throughout the world. Allow anyone to upload/download information from them. Then there will be no way to ever limit information again.
I founded an award-winning startup a couple years ago whose software tells you what your potential energy savings are, using only your street address and zipcode as inputs, so I've been tracking developments like this closely. What the experts call "sealing the envelope of the building," or thoroughly insulating the structure, does give you the biggest bang for the buck (although the ROI for triple-paned windows, as the article suggests, just isn't there). But that's not terribly sexy because once the insulation's in it's hard to brag to the neighbors about something that's invisible. An array of solar panels or a cool wind turbine are much better for that.
And NYC's solar potential is decent, at 4.08. That means that on average NYC gets 4.08 hours of peak solar production every day. A 200 Watt panel in NYC would therefore produce 200 Watts/hr for 4.08 hours, or roughly 0.8 kwh/day. You need 15 of those panels to produce the 12kwh/day, or 440kwh/month, that the average family uses.
When you consider those kinds of numbers, it quickly becomes obvious that all the chatter about "stressing the grid" with increased demand for electricity is FUD. What they're really worried about is this, which is already happening in Germany with the solar capacity they have today. That is, the profit curve for the fossil-fuel powered utilities has been gutted by renewables because they make most of their moneye during the height of the day when the demand is highest, and coincidentally exactly when solar performs best.
Especially now that we have seen several times this year, thanks to Hurricane Sandy and the Superstorm last week, that the grid is not reliable everyone is reaching the collective 'aha!' moment that causes a huge shift in energy consumption behavior and that the fossil fuel companies are terrified of.
Of course, Germany and Denmark have strong green constituencies who support those policies, but there are realpolitik concerns at work too. A few years back Russia shut down the natural gas pipeline that ran through the Ukraine to Germany and central Europe because they wanted to play politics with the Ukrainians. Natural gas prices spiked in Europe overnight and put a serious crimp in its economy. The Germans, Danes, and many others got the wake up call and have been driving toward energy independence hard.
There are longer term benefits for those economies who move their energy base off fossil fuels: predictable energy costs. In economic terms, when you increase the predictability and stability of key inputs businesses can better plan and grow, in the same way that low inflation means businesses can better know what their borrowing costs and real revenues will be.
The thing is, if we allowed the free market to work, then AIG, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and all the big banks who participated in this would have evaporated overnight and regional banks who acted responsibly would have stepped in to fill the void. But the free market was not allowed to do its thing and we have a doubling down on crony capitalism that will fail again, bigger.
A lot of people like to pretend there's an all-powerful government out there that can suppress any dissent, but we've all seen the last 5 years just how little the people need to do for that illusion to vanish. Just look at how incompetent the government was at handling Hurricane Katrina, which was predicted well in advance and which they knew about for days before. Imagine if something unforeseen were to occur.
And at this point that's what's required to correct this situation.
Aerogarden is an appliance that grows fresh herbs on your countertop. It would be excellent to combine something like this with aquaponics so you can have a steady supply of both veg and fish in your kitchen. You can't be more of a locavore than that.
Philips had a concept called Microbial Kitchen a while back which included lights powered by methane as well as a stove that burns methane generated by composting kitchen waste. Devising appliances that cleave to that closed loop philosophy would be great.
It occurs to me that I don't use the food I have that efficiently. If I want to cook a specific recipe, I go out and get those ingredients. Sometimes I have leftover ingredients. Sometimes I wind up with random things I can't think of how to use until they go bad and I throw them away.
So a useful feature in my kitchen would be an engine that would know what ingredients I have and how much, and what yummy recipes I could make with them that night. Even better, have that engine suggest recipes based on my likes & dislikes the way that Pandora or Spotify or Netflix recommend new songs or movies based on your preferences. For bonus points, have the engine be able to figure out how to re-use the leftover pork ribs from two nights ago into a new and different recipe (that is not soup:-)
Put in a smart conveyor system like they have in the B&H camera store in Manhattan so you can move stuff in and out of storage and all over the house at a keystroke.
There's a deeper point in what you're saying, too. My kids don't know what Disneyland or Mickey Mouse is because Disney has been so adamant about locking away their content. The result is they are rendering themselves culturally irrelevant.
The "content creators," who you and I know are really "content distributors," are cutting their own throats. By pricing themselves out of the market and making it increasingly difficult to do business with them, they are driving people to find substitutes. And these days there are lots and lots of substitutes.
Who cares about 'Innocence of Muslims?' It was a dumb, poorly made film. Though in parts it rather captured the spirit of the Koran with the incessant whining about how everybody better acknowledge Mohammed as the sole prophet of God OR ELSE. It rather reminded of me of South Park's send-up of Scientology, or Mormonism, or Catholicism, or Judaism, or any other religion under the sun.
Who cares? Grow the hell up, Muslims. Really. You are not the only religion on Earth, and your religion is as much fair game as anyone else's. The difference is, everyone else appears to be mostly adult enough to not lynch people for it.
I'm I insensitive? Who cares? But I am heartsick of every religious ninny of any stripe claiming religious exceptionalism.
Sorry to interrupt the FUD, but the Tesla supercharger stations supply the electricity from solar panels on their rooves. There is no emission shifting.
If you recharge the cars at your house or office, there may be some emission shifting, but we don't know for sure because we don't know where those facilities' electricity is sourced.
At a supercharging station it takes 30 minutes to recharge. On long road trips most people stop that long to eat, stretch their legs, etc.
Tesla is also building a network of supercharging stations, already having built quite a few in California. They say any Tesla car can recharge at them for free. And the best part is the electricity is supplied by solar panels on the stations.
It seems like they have definitively answered your range anxiety.
We the People have to move faster than bureaucracy and stupid people can. If we can end-run around these gatekeepers of the status quo then the future will be very, very bright. If not, it will be dystopian in the extreme and freedom will only be won with a shocking amount of blood.
If you are a technologist of any stripe who holds freedom above all other values, this must be your life's Calling.
I'm chomping at the bit to get a Tesla Model S now. Nissan Leafs are improving with each generation, and nearly every other major car maker has hybrid models, if not EVs. Do you really think that ICEs are going to be around in 13 years?
I know and appreciate that the oil companies are pulling out all the stops with their FUD and astroturfing campaigns (sheesh, just judging by this ridiculous conversation on Slashdot!), but the broader tides are turning decisively against the Age of Oil.
If this fellow and those who share his views are sincere, then they ought return all those things which Science hath given them. That means they don't even get to live the life of the Amish, because they still use simple machines like pulleys and gears and those could clearly not exist without Science.
Let them return their cars, their modern fabrics, their TVs and computers and cell phones. Let them not travel upon paved roads, for those are marvels of modern Science and engineering. Let them have nothing save that which was constructed by hand using tools of no greater sophistication than bronze implements. Let them herd sheep and goats and spin wool and till the soil and walk everywhere they need to go, communicating by speech and clay tablets.
If they do all those things, then it's fine by me if they serve in Congress and make decisions about matters of Science.
But if they don't, then they can GTFO and take their brain damage with them.
I have a different perspective on this. To me, it's a dick-measuring contest where the "authorities" are putting Joe Q. Citizen in his place for daring to point a marker at them. It doesn't feel terribly different from what the cops do to citizens who videotape their conduct during protests--beat them silly.
The TSA, TIA program, Echelon, [Fatherland | Motherland | Homeland] Security Department, pervasive surveillance, and many other recent erosions of our freedoms have set this country on a swift tilt to totalitarianism. Note: I didn't say "Obama" or "Bush" or any other partisan attribution because it's a bipartisan effort on behalf of the government and those who control it to keep the rest of us down.
Unless those aforementioned parties straighten out and fly right in a hot hurry, I suspect they will soon long for the days when the only things being pointed at them were laser pointers and cameras.
Yes, yes, the U.S. government outguns any amount of rednecks with rifles, but the rednecks and other less-than-red necks outnumber the entire armed members of the U.S. government by orders of magnitude, and the number of soldiers willing to drop napalm on suburban Houston, though still greater than we would hope, is still far less than the government would like to pretend.
at the event along with my wife and kids and 15 other people I invited to come along. All of them loved it. I found it less earth-shattering and more corporate than the year before. For example, the bio-hackers were absent, which was sad because they blew the possibilities wide open for me last year. Also, gone were the people who built furniture out of scraps or bicycles out of bamboo, carbon fiber, and resin. Many of the smaller but brilliant projects you can usually find inside in the Hall of Science were absent.
There were, in their place, many, many more corporate sponsors.
So I say, last year I witnessed 9 different revolutions in the offing. This year, only two. A pox upon corporate America, and all the evil it brings. May it die a thousand deaths in ignominy.
I was in the new Tesla dealership in the Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island on Sunday. The Model S is a good sized sedan. I did see 5 grown adults sitting in it. The car itself looks great, like a Bentley, I thought. I learned of the constellation of supercharging stations there, which put in a nail in the coffin of range-anxiety ninnies.
But letting you recharge for free? That's genius. A swift kick in the nuts to both the oil and traditional auto industries. More power to Tesla! God how I'd love to see the fossil fuel people utterly collapse in a year in the face of such disruptive vision.
You're living the dream. Thanks for posting such a strong testimonial. I keep saying, "What if we stopped shipping $365 billion/yr overseas to buy oil and spent the money here?"
Have you posted info about how you went off-grid? I've been thinking about doing the same thing but there's not much cut-and-dried info out there that I've been able to find.
We live in Brooklyn, in Park Slope. We have a car, because it's vastly easier to move our small children around (plus their strollers and diaper bags and toys and snacks, etc, etc) in a car than it is to heft all that up and down the stairs in the subway and ignore the glares of other riders because you're taking up too much space in the car. Same goes for the bus. Once a kid is old enough to carry their own backpack, sure, the need for the car drops a lot. But as someone who has traditionally been anti-car, there are legitimate reasons to have one even in NYC. Now, if you don't want to lose your mind on an on-going basis, you ought to pick a car that is small so you can find more parking spaces you can fit into.
I visited the new Tesla store in Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island yesterday. According to them, you can fully charge the car overnight from a regular outlet. A full charge will take you 300 miles. Americans drive an average of 29 miles/day, which means in one night's charge you can drive for 10 days.
Tesla is building a network of supercharging stations across the country along interstate highways, too. So for your daily commute, you're covered. For your Thanksgiving trip to grandma's house, you're covered.
As far as everything else, there are these big cables running everywhere that carry the stuff called electricity, which happily is the same stuff you fill your batteries up with.
Oh. I see. So, when the Bridgestone tires I bought fail catastrophically, then you would jump up and point your finger at me, saying, "Aha! See?! You ought to have done your research on the expansion coefficient of steel-belted radials *before* you bought those tires. Well, I did, because I'm a know-it-all Poindexter, so I. have. no. sympathy. for. you."
OK. In the real world, in technical fields you have to run 24/7/365 just to stay even with the people in *your* field. You don't have time to micro-manage every step of the chain between what you do and the end market (whatever that is). So saying that, gasp, a cancer researcher might have not fully vetted a mere domain registrar like GoDaddy before paying for their services and therefore it's his fault is puerile at best.
You didn't try very hard to get the lay of the land, if you're saying those things about NY. NY is a great place to raise kids. Lots for them to see and do and be stimulated by. The neighborhood I live in is bursting at the seams with young families. They have phenomenal playgrounds to play at, like the sort of stuff I used to dream about as a kid. They have massive parks to play in, classes to take, activities to do. If you prefer lower-density neighborhoods, there's always Staten Island, Far Rockaway in Queens, Riverdale in the Bronx, or NJ.
And for adult interests like art, culture, and cuisine I can walk to world class cuisine, any kind of cuisine, in less than 5 minutes from my house and pay less than you would at McDonald's. And the art and culture you can usually get for free, especially in the summertime when they have free concerts and performances galore.
I grew up out West in the 70's and I know all the stereotypes about the big, bad city, and I can tell you that not one of them is true.
Slashdot Mirror
Seed autonomous, self-powered file servers throughout the world. Allow anyone to upload/download information from them. Then there will be no way to ever limit information again.
I founded an award-winning startup a couple years ago whose software tells you what your potential energy savings are, using only your street address and zipcode as inputs, so I've been tracking developments like this closely. What the experts call "sealing the envelope of the building," or thoroughly insulating the structure, does give you the biggest bang for the buck (although the ROI for triple-paned windows, as the article suggests, just isn't there). But that's not terribly sexy because once the insulation's in it's hard to brag to the neighbors about something that's invisible. An array of solar panels or a cool wind turbine are much better for that.
And NYC's solar potential is decent, at 4.08. That means that on average NYC gets 4.08 hours of peak solar production every day. A 200 Watt panel in NYC would therefore produce 200 Watts/hr for 4.08 hours, or roughly 0.8 kwh/day. You need 15 of those panels to produce the 12kwh/day, or 440kwh/month, that the average family uses.
When you consider those kinds of numbers, it quickly becomes obvious that all the chatter about "stressing the grid" with increased demand for electricity is FUD. What they're really worried about is this, which is already happening in Germany with the solar capacity they have today. That is, the profit curve for the fossil-fuel powered utilities has been gutted by renewables because they make most of their moneye during the height of the day when the demand is highest, and coincidentally exactly when solar performs best.
Especially now that we have seen several times this year, thanks to Hurricane Sandy and the Superstorm last week, that the grid is not reliable everyone is reaching the collective 'aha!' moment that causes a huge shift in energy consumption behavior and that the fossil fuel companies are terrified of.
Germany has advanced its clean energy capacity because it has maintained a clear and consistent policy of incentivizing it for over a decade. It is paying off. Last year they set a record by generating half of weekend electricity demand with solar. Denmark has managed something similar with wind power, getting 24% of its electricity that way.
Of course, Germany and Denmark have strong green constituencies who support those policies, but there are realpolitik concerns at work too. A few years back Russia shut down the natural gas pipeline that ran through the Ukraine to Germany and central Europe because they wanted to play politics with the Ukrainians. Natural gas prices spiked in Europe overnight and put a serious crimp in its economy. The Germans, Danes, and many others got the wake up call and have been driving toward energy independence hard.
There are longer term benefits for those economies who move their energy base off fossil fuels: predictable energy costs. In economic terms, when you increase the predictability and stability of key inputs businesses can better plan and grow, in the same way that low inflation means businesses can better know what their borrowing costs and real revenues will be.
The thing is, if we allowed the free market to work, then AIG, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and all the big banks who participated in this would have evaporated overnight and regional banks who acted responsibly would have stepped in to fill the void. But the free market was not allowed to do its thing and we have a doubling down on crony capitalism that will fail again, bigger.
A lot of people like to pretend there's an all-powerful government out there that can suppress any dissent, but we've all seen the last 5 years just how little the people need to do for that illusion to vanish. Just look at how incompetent the government was at handling Hurricane Katrina, which was predicted well in advance and which they knew about for days before. Imagine if something unforeseen were to occur.
And at this point that's what's required to correct this situation.
Aerogarden is an appliance that grows fresh herbs on your countertop. It would be excellent to combine something like this with aquaponics so you can have a steady supply of both veg and fish in your kitchen. You can't be more of a locavore than that.
Philips had a concept called Microbial Kitchen a while back which included lights powered by methane as well as a stove that burns methane generated by composting kitchen waste. Devising appliances that cleave to that closed loop philosophy would be great.
It occurs to me that I don't use the food I have that efficiently. If I want to cook a specific recipe, I go out and get those ingredients. Sometimes I have leftover ingredients. Sometimes I wind up with random things I can't think of how to use until they go bad and I throw them away.
So a useful feature in my kitchen would be an engine that would know what ingredients I have and how much, and what yummy recipes I could make with them that night. Even better, have that engine suggest recipes based on my likes & dislikes the way that Pandora or Spotify or Netflix recommend new songs or movies based on your preferences. For bonus points, have the engine be able to figure out how to re-use the leftover pork ribs from two nights ago into a new and different recipe (that is not soup :-)
Real men build sky yachts.
Put in a smart conveyor system like they have in the B&H camera store in Manhattan so you can move stuff in and out of storage and all over the house at a keystroke.
There's a deeper point in what you're saying, too. My kids don't know what Disneyland or Mickey Mouse is because Disney has been so adamant about locking away their content. The result is they are rendering themselves culturally irrelevant.
The "content creators," who you and I know are really "content distributors," are cutting their own throats. By pricing themselves out of the market and making it increasingly difficult to do business with them, they are driving people to find substitutes. And these days there are lots and lots of substitutes.
Who cares about 'Innocence of Muslims?' It was a dumb, poorly made film. Though in parts it rather captured the spirit of the Koran with the incessant whining about how everybody better acknowledge Mohammed as the sole prophet of God OR ELSE. It rather reminded of me of South Park's send-up of Scientology, or Mormonism, or Catholicism, or Judaism, or any other religion under the sun.
Who cares? Grow the hell up, Muslims. Really. You are not the only religion on Earth, and your religion is as much fair game as anyone else's. The difference is, everyone else appears to be mostly adult enough to not lynch people for it.
I'm I insensitive? Who cares? But I am heartsick of every religious ninny of any stripe claiming religious exceptionalism.
Sorry to interrupt the FUD, but the Tesla supercharger stations supply the electricity from solar panels on their rooves. There is no emission shifting.
If you recharge the cars at your house or office, there may be some emission shifting, but we don't know for sure because we don't know where those facilities' electricity is sourced.
It's right there on their site:
http://www.teslamotors.com/models
At a supercharging station it takes 30 minutes to recharge. On long road trips most people stop that long to eat, stretch their legs, etc.
Tesla is also building a network of supercharging stations, already having built quite a few in California. They say any Tesla car can recharge at them for free. And the best part is the electricity is supplied by solar panels on the stations.
It seems like they have definitively answered your range anxiety.
We the People have to move faster than bureaucracy and stupid people can. If we can end-run around these gatekeepers of the status quo then the future will be very, very bright. If not, it will be dystopian in the extreme and freedom will only be won with a shocking amount of blood.
If you are a technologist of any stripe who holds freedom above all other values, this must be your life's Calling.
It is mine.
I'm chomping at the bit to get a Tesla Model S now. Nissan Leafs are improving with each generation, and nearly every other major car maker has hybrid models, if not EVs. Do you really think that ICEs are going to be around in 13 years?
I know and appreciate that the oil companies are pulling out all the stops with their FUD and astroturfing campaigns (sheesh, just judging by this ridiculous conversation on Slashdot!), but the broader tides are turning decisively against the Age of Oil.
If this fellow and those who share his views are sincere, then they ought return all those things which Science hath given them. That means they don't even get to live the life of the Amish, because they still use simple machines like pulleys and gears and those could clearly not exist without Science.
Let them return their cars, their modern fabrics, their TVs and computers and cell phones. Let them not travel upon paved roads, for those are marvels of modern Science and engineering. Let them have nothing save that which was constructed by hand using tools of no greater sophistication than bronze implements. Let them herd sheep and goats and spin wool and till the soil and walk everywhere they need to go, communicating by speech and clay tablets.
If they do all those things, then it's fine by me if they serve in Congress and make decisions about matters of Science.
But if they don't, then they can GTFO and take their brain damage with them.
I have a different perspective on this. To me, it's a dick-measuring contest where the "authorities" are putting Joe Q. Citizen in his place for daring to point a marker at them. It doesn't feel terribly different from what the cops do to citizens who videotape their conduct during protests--beat them silly.
The TSA, TIA program, Echelon, [Fatherland | Motherland | Homeland] Security Department, pervasive surveillance, and many other recent erosions of our freedoms have set this country on a swift tilt to totalitarianism. Note: I didn't say "Obama" or "Bush" or any other partisan attribution because it's a bipartisan effort on behalf of the government and those who control it to keep the rest of us down.
Unless those aforementioned parties straighten out and fly right in a hot hurry, I suspect they will soon long for the days when the only things being pointed at them were laser pointers and cameras.
Yes, yes, the U.S. government outguns any amount of rednecks with rifles, but the rednecks and other less-than-red necks outnumber the entire armed members of the U.S. government by orders of magnitude, and the number of soldiers willing to drop napalm on suburban Houston, though still greater than we would hope, is still far less than the government would like to pretend.
at the event along with my wife and kids and 15 other people I invited to come along. All of them loved it. I found it less earth-shattering and more corporate than the year before. For example, the bio-hackers were absent, which was sad because they blew the possibilities wide open for me last year. Also, gone were the people who built furniture out of scraps or bicycles out of bamboo, carbon fiber, and resin. Many of the smaller but brilliant projects you can usually find inside in the Hall of Science were absent.
There were, in their place, many, many more corporate sponsors.
So I say, last year I witnessed 9 different revolutions in the offing. This year, only two. A pox upon corporate America, and all the evil it brings. May it die a thousand deaths in ignominy.
Please remember to wear your heat suit when venturing outside the vessel.
I was in the new Tesla dealership in the Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island on Sunday. The Model S is a good sized sedan. I did see 5 grown adults sitting in it. The car itself looks great, like a Bentley, I thought. I learned of the constellation of supercharging stations there, which put in a nail in the coffin of range-anxiety ninnies.
But letting you recharge for free? That's genius. A swift kick in the nuts to both the oil and traditional auto industries. More power to Tesla! God how I'd love to see the fossil fuel people utterly collapse in a year in the face of such disruptive vision.
You're living the dream. Thanks for posting such a strong testimonial. I keep saying, "What if we stopped shipping $365 billion/yr overseas to buy oil and spent the money here?"
Have you posted info about how you went off-grid? I've been thinking about doing the same thing but there's not much cut-and-dried info out there that I've been able to find.
We live in Brooklyn, in Park Slope. We have a car, because it's vastly easier to move our small children around (plus their strollers and diaper bags and toys and snacks, etc, etc) in a car than it is to heft all that up and down the stairs in the subway and ignore the glares of other riders because you're taking up too much space in the car. Same goes for the bus. Once a kid is old enough to carry their own backpack, sure, the need for the car drops a lot. But as someone who has traditionally been anti-car, there are legitimate reasons to have one even in NYC. Now, if you don't want to lose your mind on an on-going basis, you ought to pick a car that is small so you can find more parking spaces you can fit into.
I visited the new Tesla store in Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island yesterday. According to them, you can fully charge the car overnight from a regular outlet. A full charge will take you 300 miles. Americans drive an average of 29 miles/day, which means in one night's charge you can drive for 10 days.
Tesla is building a network of supercharging stations across the country along interstate highways, too. So for your daily commute, you're covered. For your Thanksgiving trip to grandma's house, you're covered.
As far as everything else, there are these big cables running everywhere that carry the stuff called electricity, which happily is the same stuff you fill your batteries up with.
Oh. I see. So, when the Bridgestone tires I bought fail catastrophically, then you would jump up and point your finger at me, saying, "Aha! See?! You ought to have done your research on the expansion coefficient of steel-belted radials *before* you bought those tires. Well, I did, because I'm a know-it-all Poindexter, so I. have. no. sympathy. for. you."
OK. In the real world, in technical fields you have to run 24/7/365 just to stay even with the people in *your* field. You don't have time to micro-manage every step of the chain between what you do and the end market (whatever that is). So saying that, gasp, a cancer researcher might have not fully vetted a mere domain registrar like GoDaddy before paying for their services and therefore it's his fault is puerile at best.
You didn't try very hard to get the lay of the land, if you're saying those things about NY. NY is a great place to raise kids. Lots for them to see and do and be stimulated by. The neighborhood I live in is bursting at the seams with young families. They have phenomenal playgrounds to play at, like the sort of stuff I used to dream about as a kid. They have massive parks to play in, classes to take, activities to do. If you prefer lower-density neighborhoods, there's always Staten Island, Far Rockaway in Queens, Riverdale in the Bronx, or NJ.
And for adult interests like art, culture, and cuisine I can walk to world class cuisine, any kind of cuisine, in less than 5 minutes from my house and pay less than you would at McDonald's. And the art and culture you can usually get for free, especially in the summertime when they have free concerts and performances galore.
I grew up out West in the 70's and I know all the stereotypes about the big, bad city, and I can tell you that not one of them is true.