Not sure if it was clearly stated, but High Frequency Trading algorithms should take most of the blame. Computers ran by investment firms monitor social media and invest accordingly, so you don't have to actually watch the ticker with your finger on the button.
That's not HFT. For example, those groups could still do that even with five minute trading intervals as some have suggested here as a supposed "cure" for HFT. HFT would just mean that they could do it on the time scale of milliseconds.
A loan guarantee is not financing. The DOE has provided no money.
A loan guarantee, especially for a project that has significant downside such as Solano does, is a considerable value.
The loan guarantee means the private institutions get paid even if the project fails, true. But why should the project fail? This is proven tech that's cost competitive. It would take some true catastrophe for the loan guarantee to ever be called on.
$7 per watt is not cost competitive. As I noted elsewhere, you can get the same value for installed solar cells for around $2-4 per watt.
You're also assuming that the project isn't designed to fail. I doubt Abengen, the main manager of Solano, would be on the hook, if the project doesn't turn out to be profitable. Instead, their subsidiary would go bankrupt and the US government would be on the hook for the residual loan amount.
The observation supports the status quo. The current status quo was justified by the previous progressives who changed the status quo from what it was before to what it is today, including changing from not violating fundamental rules to violating them. For better or worse, the status quo has accepted the violation of those rules and as I noted the US is still above average as a country.
I don't get this. Some of these programs have subtle negative effects over long periods of time. For example, US Social Security has been kicking around for around 80 years and only recently did it start spending more than it took in. Now, it's a different dynamic than was present for the previous 80 years.
Similarly, the US won't immediately going to see all repercussions of violations of the US Constitution. Many of these effects are only seen in hindsight when legislation or regulatory agencies exploited the new vulnerability. For example, I doubt anyone in the 40s understood how the US government would exploit the Wickard v. Filburn ruling which expanded the application of the commerce clause.
Similarly, I don't think we'll immediately see the effects of Obamacare or of the Supreme Court ruling that upheld the individual mandate. So just because that stuff hasn't brought the US down yet doesn't mean that we should get all Pollyanna about the practice.
If you think the status quo is wrong, that something needs to be done now, the onus is on you to changed the status quo, again by pen or by sword.
That's fine as far as that goes. We're not acting in a vacuum where any statement is equally true and false. I find it very frustrating that people don't seem bothered by growing violation of law by the US government - at least when that violation goes their way.
But historically, some sort of opposition gets in and then the new, more disagreeable guys start exploiting that same loophole. People just can't seem to connect cause and effect - their guy making the rule exploit to the resulting blowback.
Batteries would increase the cost of the system considerably. I don't know what it'd be.
BUT here, you don't need battery storage because it's a utility-based system. The utility can put the extra power in pumped hydro storage or turn down their peaking and load following plants. Solar fits nicely into the usual scheme since it peaks near the time that demand peaks.
U of C and Texas A&M definitely aren't defense contractors. They're academic institutions.
They are both. Academic institutions often do work for various government agencies. And while it's a bit circular, the LLNL is one of the ways they're involved.
As far as I can tell: URS is a general contractor with interests in energy production. Bechtel is a company with a focus on energy production, and specialization in nuclear power. B&W is specialized heavily into nuclear power. All are government contractors for very specialized tasks within their respective fields, all of which include nuclear power, and I don't see how that has any bearing on their interest in LLNL.
Where are you going with that? I merely noted that there were a bunch of DoD contractors on that list.
What's impressive is that he did it while that capsule was strapped to the top of a not-especially-reliable missile.
Ok, why is that more remarkable than flying into space? It just means a greater tolerance for risk. Base jumpers and people who climb Mount Everest have that too.
Then, after the Singularity, we can send our machine descendents to explore the cosmos instead of human beings that require a whole biosphere to be sent with them.
Assuming we're still around to act in any sort of capacity.
I see several right there: Bechtel, U of C, Babcock and Wilcox, URS, Texas A&M. And the DOE does a lot of work for the DOD, though I wouldn't consider them a contractor.
Now, I see a story saying that they didn't really "break even" even in the limited sense that was claimed. Yet another case where skepticism (what you call "science denying") was warranted.
60 MW at a cost today of around $630 million. It supposedly produced 2.1 million MWH over its lifetime. Note this was the first nuclear plant (commercial power) of its type while there have been many solar power plants prior to Solano and the cost of installed solar cell based power is roughly $2-$4 per watt instead of $7.1. So it appears to me that we're taking roughly a factor of two increased cost for this particular design even over its obvious competitor.
This is not how investment in technology works. Solar thermal is still moving down the cost curve and hasn't been deployed to nearly the scale of rooftop PV, but has the potential to massively undercut (at the utility scale, with thermal storage). These investments help the technology reach that point.
The problem is that's not how investment in technology works. Spending a vast amount of money for little gain is not investment, it's a huge gamble. Because whatever gains come about have to be worth a $2 billion expenditure.
They could have spent $20 milllion for a 2.8 MW prototype. Then you'd have ample justification for the claim that it is an investment because it would at worst a small loss if things don't go well. Small downside and the same upside as the $2 billion project.
It also created 2,000 jobs! At $1 million per job, that's quite the bargain. Yet another story where someone felt the need to report jobs "created or saved". Having seen so many of these blurbs in recent years, I think the act of reporting this metric is a strong indication of a fiscally unsound project.
It'll be interesting to see what happens to the parent company, Abengoa. They're exhibiting some Worldcom-like behavior right now (heavy acquisitions and infrastructure building fueled by borrowing, plus declining cash flow).
but then again, the culture there doesn't seem to value the labor of its citizens, nor the lives of its citizens as much as 1st World nations do
Makes you wonder which culture will prevail at the end of this century. Being able to do large scale infrastructure now for a fifth the cost of the first world equivalent is a huge advantage and IMHO more than outweighs their relatively low valuation of labor and lives (assuming the latter is even a disadvantage in the first place).
Of course, you have to add in the billion and billions in decommissioning fees and nuclear waste storage and uranium mining and transportation and security and....
And you have to consider the time value of that, given how fast China's economy is growing. For example, if China would continue to grow at the extreme rate of 8% per year (after inflation), then a 10 billion dollar Fukushima-like disaster cost in 40 years is worth half a billion of today's dollars. High economic growth results in a strong discounting of future costs.
Which is as it should be of course. For example, if I make a reservation to stay at a firetrap motel that subsequently burns down, it is the motel operator/owner, not I, who is held for the crime of negligence because of his responsibility in running a firetrap motel.
That's not the story here since we're not speaking of "firetraps". Keep in mind that private residences also have to obey the rather strict fire regulations of NYC (or surrounding areas). We're also not speaking of just "pop up motel landlords" since the Attorney General subpoenaed records of all people who rent through the site. It could be quite a few people affected by this.
That remains to be seen. As noted by other poster, violations have been going on for far longer than the last few decades. Yet... the US saw a general upward climb and stayed near/at the top despite various violations (even the por on welfare). Even if it's taken down a few notches, it'll still remain relatively high.
Ok, so how does that observation extend to a future with ever increasing disregard for that law? A country can handle a certain level of corruption and lawlessness, but at some point, enough will have gone wrong that it's going to harm the country's ability to provide services and stability.
Though perhaps this time around, the US will actually default and the country will quickly drop to 3rd world status. It might go poof like the USSR did. Never say never. But if that's the case, there's really nothing we can do. There's no magical solution to "keep it that way". As the Founding Fathers said, it's a Republic if you can keep it. They didn't answer how.
One doesn't need a magical solution. A government and people who observe and respect the law combined with some degree of fiscal responsibility (enough that debt increases are mostly lower than rate of growth of GDP). I think also some understanding and respect for business should be in there, since they're the ones paying the taxes, employing the people, and generally making society work.
The rush to the lowest common denominator. How about we cull from the top, eliminate those who want to push us into the rush to the lowest common denominator and see what happens then.
You haven't changed the lowest common denominator by doing that. Instead, merely by sending substantial business to the LCD we have increased the LCD. At some point, the developed world might become part of the LCD for various reasons. In that case, you'll be relatively happy that someone else is throwing you some business.
Any executive worth his/her weight in warm spit would look at the problems Foxconn is constantly having and give a hard second look at producing equipment in the states.
These "problems" aren't so for Foxconn. An ammoral government-backed business turns cheap labor and resources into high value products. It's not teaching the lesson you think it is.
Tesla has revolutionized car manufacturing, so could the electronics industry.
Tesla's tricks work just as well in China and a lot of the costs would be cheaper. The difference is that Elon Musk lives in the US not in China.
Slashdot Mirror
Not sure if it was clearly stated, but High Frequency Trading algorithms should take most of the blame. Computers ran by investment firms monitor social media and invest accordingly, so you don't have to actually watch the ticker with your finger on the button.
That's not HFT. For example, those groups could still do that even with five minute trading intervals as some have suggested here as a supposed "cure" for HFT. HFT would just mean that they could do it on the time scale of milliseconds.
We have no control over the fucktards in the stock market
Sure, we do. Stop giving them money. If they really are losing money, then the problems will stop when they run out and can't trade anymore.
The markets have automatic correcting mechanisms for stupidity. Let's use them.
I see the discussion here. I must admit to having the same concerns as the replier to that post.
With thermal you get more than double the output when you double the scale.
How does that work? Isn't solar thermal restricted as well by how much sunlight energy you can intercept and focus?
A loan guarantee is not financing. The DOE has provided no money.
A loan guarantee, especially for a project that has significant downside such as Solano does, is a considerable value.
The loan guarantee means the private institutions get paid even if the project fails, true. But why should the project fail? This is proven tech that's cost competitive. It would take some true catastrophe for the loan guarantee to ever be called on.
$7 per watt is not cost competitive. As I noted elsewhere, you can get the same value for installed solar cells for around $2-4 per watt.
You're also assuming that the project isn't designed to fail. I doubt Abengen, the main manager of Solano, would be on the hook, if the project doesn't turn out to be profitable. Instead, their subsidiary would go bankrupt and the US government would be on the hook for the residual loan amount.
The observation supports the status quo. The current status quo was justified by the previous progressives who changed the status quo from what it was before to what it is today, including changing from not violating fundamental rules to violating them. For better or worse, the status quo has accepted the violation of those rules and as I noted the US is still above average as a country.
I don't get this. Some of these programs have subtle negative effects over long periods of time. For example, US Social Security has been kicking around for around 80 years and only recently did it start spending more than it took in. Now, it's a different dynamic than was present for the previous 80 years.
Similarly, the US won't immediately going to see all repercussions of violations of the US Constitution. Many of these effects are only seen in hindsight when legislation or regulatory agencies exploited the new vulnerability. For example, I doubt anyone in the 40s understood how the US government would exploit the Wickard v. Filburn ruling which expanded the application of the commerce clause.
Similarly, I don't think we'll immediately see the effects of Obamacare or of the Supreme Court ruling that upheld the individual mandate. So just because that stuff hasn't brought the US down yet doesn't mean that we should get all Pollyanna about the practice.
If you think the status quo is wrong, that something needs to be done now, the onus is on you to changed the status quo, again by pen or by sword.
That's fine as far as that goes. We're not acting in a vacuum where any statement is equally true and false. I find it very frustrating that people don't seem bothered by growing violation of law by the US government - at least when that violation goes their way.
But historically, some sort of opposition gets in and then the new, more disagreeable guys start exploiting that same loophole. People just can't seem to connect cause and effect - their guy making the rule exploit to the resulting blowback.
Batteries would increase the cost of the system considerably. I don't know what it'd be.
BUT here, you don't need battery storage because it's a utility-based system. The utility can put the extra power in pumped hydro storage or turn down their peaking and load following plants. Solar fits nicely into the usual scheme since it peaks near the time that demand peaks.
U of C and Texas A&M definitely aren't defense contractors. They're academic institutions.
They are both. Academic institutions often do work for various government agencies. And while it's a bit circular, the LLNL is one of the ways they're involved.
As far as I can tell: URS is a general contractor with interests in energy production. Bechtel is a company with a focus on energy production, and specialization in nuclear power. B&W is specialized heavily into nuclear power. All are government contractors for very specialized tasks within their respective fields, all of which include nuclear power, and I don't see how that has any bearing on their interest in LLNL.
Where are you going with that? I merely noted that there were a bunch of DoD contractors on that list.
What's impressive is that he did it while that capsule was strapped to the top of a not-especially-reliable missile.
Ok, why is that more remarkable than flying into space? It just means a greater tolerance for risk. Base jumpers and people who climb Mount Everest have that too.
Then, after the Singularity, we can send our machine descendents to explore the cosmos instead of human beings that require a whole biosphere to be sent with them.
Assuming we're still around to act in any sort of capacity.
Here's the link to the Slashdot story of which I spoke.
I see several right there: Bechtel, U of C, Babcock and Wilcox, URS, Texas A&M. And the DOE does a lot of work for the DOD, though I wouldn't consider them a contractor.
Now, I see a story saying that they didn't really "break even" even in the limited sense that was claimed. Yet another case where skepticism (what you call "science denying") was warranted.
60 MW at a cost today of around $630 million. It supposedly produced 2.1 million MWH over its lifetime. Note this was the first nuclear plant (commercial power) of its type while there have been many solar power plants prior to Solano and the cost of installed solar cell based power is roughly $2-$4 per watt instead of $7.1. So it appears to me that we're taking roughly a factor of two increased cost for this particular design even over its obvious competitor.
This is not how investment in technology works. Solar thermal is still moving down the cost curve and hasn't been deployed to nearly the scale of rooftop PV, but has the potential to massively undercut (at the utility scale, with thermal storage). These investments help the technology reach that point.
The problem is that's not how investment in technology works. Spending a vast amount of money for little gain is not investment, it's a huge gamble. Because whatever gains come about have to be worth a $2 billion expenditure.
They could have spent $20 milllion for a 2.8 MW prototype. Then you'd have ample justification for the claim that it is an investment because it would at worst a small loss if things don't go well. Small downside and the same upside as the $2 billion project.
It also created 2,000 jobs! At $1 million per job, that's quite the bargain. Yet another story where someone felt the need to report jobs "created or saved". Having seen so many of these blurbs in recent years, I think the act of reporting this metric is a strong indication of a fiscally unsound project.
It'll be interesting to see what happens to the parent company, Abengoa. They're exhibiting some Worldcom-like behavior right now (heavy acquisitions and infrastructure building fueled by borrowing, plus declining cash flow).
but then again, the culture there doesn't seem to value the labor of its citizens, nor the lives of its citizens as much as 1st World nations do
Makes you wonder which culture will prevail at the end of this century. Being able to do large scale infrastructure now for a fifth the cost of the first world equivalent is a huge advantage and IMHO more than outweighs their relatively low valuation of labor and lives (assuming the latter is even a disadvantage in the first place).
Of course, you have to add in the billion and billions in decommissioning fees and nuclear waste storage and uranium mining and transportation and security and....
And you have to consider the time value of that, given how fast China's economy is growing. For example, if China would continue to grow at the extreme rate of 8% per year (after inflation), then a 10 billion dollar Fukushima-like disaster cost in 40 years is worth half a billion of today's dollars. High economic growth results in a strong discounting of future costs.
Which is as it should be of course. For example, if I make a reservation to stay at a firetrap motel that subsequently burns down, it is the motel operator/owner, not I, who is held for the crime of negligence because of his responsibility in running a firetrap motel.
That's not the story here since we're not speaking of "firetraps". Keep in mind that private residences also have to obey the rather strict fire regulations of NYC (or surrounding areas). We're also not speaking of just "pop up motel landlords" since the Attorney General subpoenaed records of all people who rent through the site. It could be quite a few people affected by this.
So what's the airplane equivalent of electroshock therapy or phrenology?
The complaints are not care/$ based.
In other words, care/$ is not quite as glaring a problem with those other systems as it is with the US system, but they all have that problem.
That remains to be seen. As noted by other poster, violations have been going on for far longer than the last few decades. Yet... the US saw a general upward climb and stayed near/at the top despite various violations (even the por on welfare). Even if it's taken down a few notches, it'll still remain relatively high.
Ok, so how does that observation extend to a future with ever increasing disregard for that law? A country can handle a certain level of corruption and lawlessness, but at some point, enough will have gone wrong that it's going to harm the country's ability to provide services and stability.
Though perhaps this time around, the US will actually default and the country will quickly drop to 3rd world status. It might go poof like the USSR did. Never say never. But if that's the case, there's really nothing we can do. There's no magical solution to "keep it that way". As the Founding Fathers said, it's a Republic if you can keep it. They didn't answer how.
One doesn't need a magical solution. A government and people who observe and respect the law combined with some degree of fiscal responsibility (enough that debt increases are mostly lower than rate of growth of GDP). I think also some understanding and respect for business should be in there, since they're the ones paying the taxes, employing the people, and generally making society work.
Any death other than the one of old age is terrible.
Old age is pretty bad too. I'm starting to think that this dying thing isn't a very good idea. Maybe we ought to stop doing it.
The rush to the lowest common denominator. How about we cull from the top, eliminate those who want to push us into the rush to the lowest common denominator and see what happens then.
You haven't changed the lowest common denominator by doing that. Instead, merely by sending substantial business to the LCD we have increased the LCD. At some point, the developed world might become part of the LCD for various reasons. In that case, you'll be relatively happy that someone else is throwing you some business.
Any executive worth his/her weight in warm spit would look at the problems Foxconn is constantly having and give a hard second look at producing equipment in the states.
These "problems" aren't so for Foxconn. An ammoral government-backed business turns cheap labor and resources into high value products. It's not teaching the lesson you think it is.
Tesla has revolutionized car manufacturing, so could the electronics industry.
Tesla's tricks work just as well in China and a lot of the costs would be cheaper. The difference is that Elon Musk lives in the US not in China.