Then there's the Democratic Socialists. The Bernie Bros. I don't see these guys getting anywhere. Nobody wants to pay for something else's medical care. Nobody want to pay for their schools. Sure, you can argue that such things benefit everyone (e.g. we could pay our national debt off in 10 years with the money single payer healthcare would save, look it up). But it still doesn't _feel_ right. Especially with a good chunk of the country bigoted against _somebody_. We're balkanized. We're not Americans. We're White Americans. Black Americans. Gay Americans. Christian Americans. But we're not Americans.
You are correct about Americans being fragmented. We had a lot more overt racism and demonization of different groups back in the 1950s but at least the American Dream, national pride, and national unity was a coherent idea shared by most people (even if it was not completely true).
On the topic of socialist policies, I DO want to pay for education of others. The children of today will be taking care of me when I'm old, and it is in my direct interest that they are not complete idiots. On the other hand, every time the government gets involved in paying private enterprises for things, costs skyrocket as people game the system. Expanding college education by subsidies or direct payments is a prime example. Health insurance is another.
The most cost-effective government services are those run without significant subcontracting, such as the Postal service, National Parks, etc. Government should provide services either directly without significant subcontracting, or not at all. The problem with this is that private companies are well entrenched, lobby for subsidies, and oppose government-run services that compete with them. Local government-run internet services are a prime example.
It's also pretty clear to anyone with a reasonable grasp of the English language that President Trump is prone to frequent odd outbursts and declarations that are sometimes completely incoherent and provably false. That should be cause for significant concern, whether you're conservative or liberal.
I oppose Trump but I wonder if some of the things he says aren't just trickery to keep people talking about his chosen topic. Every time he misstates a number or fact, that becomes another piece of news. In fact, it often becomes the News of the Day. It brings attention to the topic, and the news organizations dogpile on either supporting or proving it incorrect.
His detractors aren't going to change their opinion of Trump over the misstatement, his supporters likely won't, and Trump's chosen issue becomes the issue of the day, blocking out many other current events. It is a highly effective distraction technique. There were plenty of such distractions when the tax bill was going through congress, and any time negative news about Trump is circulating.
On the other hand, he might be completely crazy and any positive effects of that are simply coincidental.
Do you work at my last company?
We spent over a week hammering out work and time estimates for a large project because management demanded we were going to have a realistic schedule this time. No other work was done. We were in day long meetings knocking out feature requirements and possible work load and time estimates for it. In the end we hammered out a 10 month time estimate (basically the following March) - management turned around and said it had to be out by Christmas and took a "F- it we'll do it live" attitude.
We sat there afterwards with our jaws on the floor wondering a> Why they didn't stipulate Christmas as a hard deadline to begin with and b> why they made us waste a week on a schedule for an already looming deadline!
I would look at it this way- you took a week to plan the work that needed to be done in detail. That makes it a lot easier to prioritize requirements and cancel or delay them. If they had just given a deadline, the planning would probably be rushed and the project would not start off well organized. Unorganized projects often lead to unnecessary work, rework, and undefined and shifting requirements.
... it's trying to make those jobs easier by developing a suit with Ekso Bionics that takes the stress out of working long hours on a car assembly floor.
Sure, but they could also hire more employees, instead of making the remaining - I mean current - ones work longer and harder - I mean easier.
[the suits are] nothing like what you see in movies, as it simply uses hydraulics to redistribute weight so that workers can comfortably raise their arms above their heads for extended periods of time.
Sounds like bunches of fun. (Is it still a torture stress position with the suits?)
I am not an industrial hygienist, but if a suit applied uniform pressure to the legs, it may help to get more bloodflow higher up in the body and into raised arms. That could eliminate some of the discomfort of poor circulation in raised arms.
It's about upselling. I think that's 100% of it. But maybe we all have different buttons to press, and what gets me to think "I have to get a Roomba 960 or else there's no point in getting any Roomba at all" is different from what might make you decide to get a 960 or none at all.;-)
And everyone is doing it now. I bought a Neato Botvac about 3 years ago, and back then you had your choice of the base model or upgraded brush. Now their model chart shows 5 different models across 2 different product generations. But unlike the Roomba, there is almost no difference between the models except for battery capacity and all the various wifi features. If you just want a robot vacuum that maps the rooms (Roomba's multi-room feature), ALL the botvacs have that feature going back at least 3 generations.
Not to mention that these robot vacuums need more maintenance than normal vacuums. I have a 10 year old Wal-mart upright vacuum that has had no problems whatsoever- the washable filter has been washed dozens of times and the non-washable one looks brand new. Our botvac needs a new battery every August (anniversary of purchasing it) and the brush is usually in tatters after 1 year also.
No, it didn't. A capitalist tax plan went through, but not his.
He didn't run for and didn't get elected to Dictator of Legislature, which seemed to come as a shock to him.
All US Presidents have the same problem (or benefit). Most Americans do not fully understand the responsibilities and powers of the executive branch. Aside from being compander of the armed forces, the ability to pardon people, and making a speech once a year, most other responsibilities are complicated, nuanced, and difficult to explain how a candidate might improve them within the limitations of a sound bite.
As a result, I can not think of a presidential candidate who did not make promises they would have little or no power to deliver on. That strategy apparently works. Anyway, any candidate who tried to correct a journalist asking questions about non-extent executive powers would probably be accused of dodging the question.
To be forced to assimilate into a system in which they have no individuality is completely out of line with man's nature.
Depends completely where you were born and grew up. Americans are very individualistic and routinely flout the law if they deem it unjust or unreasonable. German society has a strong bias towards following all rules and laws. Japanese and Korean societies are much more conformist.
It starts with the schooling. Children in France, Japan, and Korea are taught how to be French, Japanese, and Korean. Japanese schools could be described as communistic with the children (even kindergarteners) taking turns at janitorial tasks. Japanese teachers are authoritarian lecturers and student discussion is limited. For Japanese people, the majority of citizens already belong to a society where they have very little individuality. From the average American point of view, many Japanese and Koreans would be considered to be slaves to their company, toeing the company line without question and voluntarily working slave hours for no additional compensation.
Recycling aluminum is much less energy intensive compared to smelting ore. Recycling is cheaper.
Yes, there is plenty of ore, and aluminum is not hazardous so can be landfilled without issue. But that is not the entire picture.
It's funny because Trump has spent one day in four on a golf course. Or is it not supposed to be irony?
I'm not a Trump supporter but that information isn't very useful unless you consider who is on the course with him. It could plausibly be the equivalent of a treadmill desk if he is meeting with people and discussing official business. But we will probably never know since the Mar-a-Lago visitor records haven't been released.
The resiliency of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal intermodal container) at each substation. These could act like your home UPS, fixing blackouts of a few minutes, when they occur. This also would make the grid much more able to use wind and solar sources, without so much need for standby diesel systems currently in place.
This is really not necessary. The number of blackouts that have been caused by generation issues is miniscule. The last major one in the US was in 2003 and protections against such events have been greatly improved since then.
The most cost efficient way to connect the battery would be to tie into a power plant transformer, or a substation, which would not eliminate any failure modes. The substation still would need protection controls that shut it down in the event that downed wires are detected. Blackouts would not be reduced under most conceivable circumstances.
Many of the "last resort" standby generators run for only a handful of days a year, if at all. The pollution per kW may be high, but the aggregate amount is very low. I expect if you were presented with the cost to replace this existing infrastructure with batteries, you would not be interested in pursuing it.
The coal plant that failed was producing close to 600MW. The max output from the graph in the article showed the battery system inject less than 10MW max into the grid. Who pickup up the other 500+ MW? The other coal plant that came online within 6 secs. Basically all the batteries did was reduce the size of the brownout.
The "spinning reserve" generally picks up the demand. "Spinning reserve" consists of machines which are on the grid but not at full load. The spinning reserve should be a minimum of the sum of the largest individual generator + the maximum estimated demand change that could happen in around 10 minutes (the time it takes for a gas turbine to start up). Generally, all that is necessary to change spinning reserve into real power is for a valve to be opened further. For combustion or steam turbines, this can occur in less than a second, and is automatically controlled by the generator controller - the generator demand signal will increase as grid frequency decreases. Spread across many generators, the increase in output is not a significant shock to any individual generator.
In this case, it seems that the Australian grid did not have adequate spinning reserve, which is why the frequency dropped. Many power stations are set to shut down in the case of large frequency variations (for machine protection), which caused the coal power station to shut down.
If a power source goes offline, wouldn't you see a slump in voltage? Why the decrease in frequency?
Large generators are voltage controlled by the Automatic Voltage Regulator, or AVR. To simplify a complicated system, the rotor in large generators does not contain permanent magnets, but is instead an electromagnet. When output voltage drops, the AVR increases the current to the rotor coils. This keeps the voltage constant.
The frequency is a function of how hard the generators are pushing the grid, and how hard the grid pushes back. Again, the AVR at each power station has controls which attempt to push a little harder when frequency is less than desired, and slack off when frequency is too high. However, due to several potential safety issues in (including resonance in rotating equipment, grid failure detection, risk of overfluxing the generator, etc), the power plant control system is often set up to shut the machine down when the frequency is out of a certain range. In most cases this is set to something like +/- 0.2 to 0.5 Hz outside of normal grid frequency. This appears to be why the coal power station shut down.
Since a battery does not have rotating equipment or a generator, they are likely not fundamentally constrained by frequency limitations for machine protection. Some people would make a case that batteries are helpful for grid stabilization in this kind of situation. However, such issues are very rare in large, well-run power grids anyhow. The last time such an event happened in the US was in 2003, and many regulations and countermeasures have been put in place since then.
Real-estate is mainly an inflation hedge in the long term. It is helpful for diversification, and it can be something useful for survival, and it is a good way for people that can't save otherwise to be forced into it. It is a poor investment if you need to sell in less than 5-6 years, or if you end up buying a much bigger house than your present needs dictate to accommodate long-term family plans.
Agree completely except for the last point- "or if you end up buying a much bigger house than your present needs dictate to accommodate long-term family plans."
We waited until our kids were 5 and 3 before buying a house this year. Transitioning from a 2BR apartment to a 4BR house can be a very time consuming (or costly, if you don't do the work yourself) undertaking. We have spent too many long evenings trying to make the house habitable (previous owner had very naughty dogs). We could have spent this time with the kids. If we had bought when they were younger, the "must-fix" items would have been taken care of before they started walking.
As though that were some positive feel good thing, like the others mentioned.
(Not to mention, seriously? You can't figure out how to make a sign? But you want to influence serious things?)
People who are dissatisfied with others telling them what to do are just searching for a more controlling and manipulative person to tell them what to do.
Most papers in my industry fall along the lines of âoeWe tested our proprietary weld filler / spray-on coating against some others, and ours is superior for this limited and specific applicationâ. These are more for marketing than scientific advancement, and are not useful for citing (especially if you are a competitor playing the same game!)
There are entities in my field that are âoeindependentâ and arenâ(TM)t in the business of actually using the product. Their papers tend to be more useful for citing, but they are also usually behind their own âoegive me a bunch of money for access to our papersâ paywall and are not published widely and usually donâ(TM)t have DOI records. Maybe this is typical for âoethe real worldâ once you get outside of the acedemia bubble.
Let those new outlets get their own clicks the hard way, instead of having FB and Google funnel people straight to them. Spoiler alert: I won't see their articles anymore.
Is it good for healthy societies to have one or two giant for-profit companies controlling most of the news people see? There are three forseeable outcomes-
1. The aggregator manipulates which stories are shown based on payments by the news organizations, or by 3rd parties
2. The aggregator tries to show the user exactly what they want to see, and hides articles they do not want to see
3. Combination of the above
How did gold become the foundation of everything until the banksters finally took over?
Gold is and hasn't been worth as much as we've made it for centuries. We based a system around it and that made it valuable. It has a silly jewelry value but that isn't what made it so expensive.
In a perfect world, the cost or value of anything represents all the costs needed to produce, process, and transport that item. Gold isn't that bad of a commodity to measure wealth- it does not rust or otherwise deteriorate (in typical conditions) over time, reasonable quantities can represent significant value, and the industrial demand (demand which is not jewelry related) is reasonably non-volatile. And you can actually use it as a low-resistance, non-corrodible coating. I am not a gold nut, but I would say that gold is on average better than a piece of paper which has intrinsic value far less than the actual valuation.
If the valuation of gold was significantly higher than the cost of mining it, mining companies would be making great profits. This does not appear to be the case- from 2003 to 2013, 3 of the largest gold mining companies had several years of losses, even when considering various different accounting methods. The stock price and dividends of these companies also are not particularly spectacular. I can't think of a great reason that such companies would cook the books or spend money unnecessarily so as to be less profitable than they could be. Therefore I would conclude that gold may be overvalued at times, but it is generally not unreasonably overvalued considering the cost of production.
Case #2 in point, Google's execs regularly fly their Boeing 767 into and out of government owned Moffett Field rather than "fight the lines" at San Jose International a mere 4 or 5 more miles down the road.
Not sure that is a great example. Google leases the field from NASA and operates it. I've never leased an airport before, so I'm not sure if 1.16 billion dollars for a 60-year lease (and Google taking over the maintenance costs) is a good or bad deal for NASA.
If I read it correctly, the longer we run bitcoin the larger the cost associated with transactions (network, computation). How is that sustainable?
At that point MasterCard and Visa look great with their 2% processing fee.
Perhaps a more important question is regarding tumbling. If transaction fees are high, does this make tumbling uneconomical? If so, then all the people using bitcoin to launder and hide money will stop using it. And that is about the only valid purpose for bitcoin that I see at this point.
I think the app just relays entered information. The Japanese pizza guys probably aren't entering fake info to make it appear like they are working hard and following procedure.
Domino's Japan is an entirely different company than the USA. They ride 3-wheel scooters that tilt around corners. The pizza has a much higher relative cost, and it tastes better than the US versions of the same pizza. They aren't playing by the same corporate playbook, it is not just cultural.
In related news.... the average BTC transaction fee is now at $6 USD, and climbing fast. Could be worse, however. Two weeks ago, it spiked above $19.
Does anyone seriously think that BTC is being used for anything except speculation? It sure isn't being used for "money". You've got people buying BTC using their credit cards, and converting their savings to BTC. It's a classic bubble.
It's gonna be nasty, and when the bubble pops the transaction backlog will be huge as people try to dump their BTC before they lose everything. Transaction fees will shoot through the roof. Boom or bust, the Chinese mining pools will make money hand over fist.
Even $100 is pretty cheap for a large international transaction. Arguable $1000 is a cheap for certain transactions that someone would want to hide. You won't be using bitcoin to buy a pack of bubble gum, but certain people will use it.
They misjudged the size of the pool of fools. The sharp rise of the last few months is a sure sign the crash is near. At the moment, those that have invested are frantically trying to get more to invest, because a $10'000 coin is worth nothing if nobody buys it. But the remaining pool of fools is dwindling fast.
I'm sure there are a lot of fools who own bitcoin, but I'm also sure that there is hidden wealth being moved around and money laundering. Bitcoin isn't the be-all-end-all money laundering cure, but it is a good addition to any decent money-hiding scheme. And as long as that remains the case, it will have value.
It's beginning to feel a lot like late 2000 again. Those who were around then will remember how much hype there was around technology, and how the various stock market indices were constantly hitting new highs. Profit was the last thing that businesses were thinking about; it was all about growth. Even the most outlandish ideas were taken seriously. The future outlook was nothing but pure optimism.
Then it all came crashing down just a few short months later.
Just look at the outrageous valuations of so many Silicon Valley companies. Look at this cryptocurrency nonsense, where performing a single transaction requires more energy than an average American home uses in a month. Look at the nonsense coming out of moz://a, especially the silly Rust programming language and the terrible Firefox 57 release.
There are a lot of people who will be in for a very rude awakening, and it could very well be happening much sooner than they expect!
Many tech companies seem incredibly overvalued, but their business model may not be "make/do product/service, obtain currency". Some companies seem to exist only to stay afloat long enough for Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple to acquire them.
Other companies (particularly Tesla) seem like they may remain afloat regardless of the underlying financials. Giving money to Tesla may have a better $ / "environmental return" compared to entities like Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Foundation, or the Sierra Club. If significant numbers of investors are only investing for the "environmental return", the stock price may not matter as much compared to traditional companies.
Some would argue that even the S&P 500 is overvalued. There are many recent articles arguing on both sides of that question, but I like this one since it walks through all the math and you can draw your own conclusions.
Regarding cryptocurrencies- they will exist as long as people need an electronic mechanism to hide/launder money and are able to use it for those purposes. We are in a new guilded age and there is plenty of wealth that needs to be secretly hidden or moved around. Money laundering costs money, bitcoin (even with large transaction fees) may be worthwhile to such people.
And it has been used for typical city-wide distances for a long time. Where the heat comes form is unimportant as long as it is available with reasonable dependability or there are fallback alternate heat sources. This whole system was probably available from a catalog already. May have been an European catalog, but still.
These kinds of systems are usually 1-off designs, even in Europe. The engineering calculations are fairly trivial and most of the components are commodity items such as piping, heat exchangers, pumps, etc. Bidding and designing such a project is not that difficult, if sufficient space is available for equipment. Projects constrained by land use or existing infrastructure are considerably more difficult. Executing the project is the tricky part- it requires good project management from the beginning to the end.
I have come to realize that almost all large projects are not difficult because of the underlying technology, but the problem of organization and managing the project correctly.
Slashdot Mirror
Then there's the Democratic Socialists. The Bernie Bros. I don't see these guys getting anywhere. Nobody wants to pay for something else's medical care. Nobody want to pay for their schools. Sure, you can argue that such things benefit everyone (e.g. we could pay our national debt off in 10 years with the money single payer healthcare would save, look it up). But it still doesn't _feel_ right. Especially with a good chunk of the country bigoted against _somebody_. We're balkanized. We're not Americans. We're White Americans. Black Americans. Gay Americans. Christian Americans. But we're not Americans.
You are correct about Americans being fragmented. We had a lot more overt racism and demonization of different groups back in the 1950s but at least the American Dream, national pride, and national unity was a coherent idea shared by most people (even if it was not completely true).
On the topic of socialist policies, I DO want to pay for education of others. The children of today will be taking care of me when I'm old, and it is in my direct interest that they are not complete idiots. On the other hand, every time the government gets involved in paying private enterprises for things, costs skyrocket as people game the system. Expanding college education by subsidies or direct payments is a prime example. Health insurance is another.
The most cost-effective government services are those run without significant subcontracting, such as the Postal service, National Parks, etc. Government should provide services either directly without significant subcontracting, or not at all. The problem with this is that private companies are well entrenched, lobby for subsidies, and oppose government-run services that compete with them. Local government-run internet services are a prime example.
It's also pretty clear to anyone with a reasonable grasp of the English language that President Trump is prone to frequent odd outbursts and declarations that are sometimes completely incoherent and provably false. That should be cause for significant concern, whether you're conservative or liberal.
I oppose Trump but I wonder if some of the things he says aren't just trickery to keep people talking about his chosen topic. Every time he misstates a number or fact, that becomes another piece of news. In fact, it often becomes the News of the Day. It brings attention to the topic, and the news organizations dogpile on either supporting or proving it incorrect.
His detractors aren't going to change their opinion of Trump over the misstatement, his supporters likely won't, and Trump's chosen issue becomes the issue of the day, blocking out many other current events. It is a highly effective distraction technique. There were plenty of such distractions when the tax bill was going through congress, and any time negative news about Trump is circulating.
On the other hand, he might be completely crazy and any positive effects of that are simply coincidental.
Do you work at my last company? We spent over a week hammering out work and time estimates for a large project because management demanded we were going to have a realistic schedule this time. No other work was done. We were in day long meetings knocking out feature requirements and possible work load and time estimates for it. In the end we hammered out a 10 month time estimate (basically the following March) - management turned around and said it had to be out by Christmas and took a "F- it we'll do it live" attitude. We sat there afterwards with our jaws on the floor wondering a> Why they didn't stipulate Christmas as a hard deadline to begin with and b> why they made us waste a week on a schedule for an already looming deadline!
I would look at it this way- you took a week to plan the work that needed to be done in detail. That makes it a lot easier to prioritize requirements and cancel or delay them. If they had just given a deadline, the planning would probably be rushed and the project would not start off well organized. Unorganized projects often lead to unnecessary work, rework, and undefined and shifting requirements.
... it's trying to make those jobs easier by developing a suit with Ekso Bionics that takes the stress out of working long hours on a car assembly floor.
Sure, but they could also hire more employees, instead of making the remaining - I mean current - ones work longer and harder - I mean easier.
[the suits are] nothing like what you see in movies, as it simply uses hydraulics to redistribute weight so that workers can comfortably raise their arms above their heads for extended periods of time.
Sounds like bunches of fun. (Is it still a torture stress position with the suits?)
I am not an industrial hygienist, but if a suit applied uniform pressure to the legs, it may help to get more bloodflow higher up in the body and into raised arms. That could eliminate some of the discomfort of poor circulation in raised arms.
It's about upselling. I think that's 100% of it. But maybe we all have different buttons to press, and what gets me to think "I have to get a Roomba 960 or else there's no point in getting any Roomba at all" is different from what might make you decide to get a 960 or none at all. ;-)
And everyone is doing it now. I bought a Neato Botvac about 3 years ago, and back then you had your choice of the base model or upgraded brush. Now their model chart shows 5 different models across 2 different product generations. But unlike the Roomba, there is almost no difference between the models except for battery capacity and all the various wifi features. If you just want a robot vacuum that maps the rooms (Roomba's multi-room feature), ALL the botvacs have that feature going back at least 3 generations.
Not to mention that these robot vacuums need more maintenance than normal vacuums. I have a 10 year old Wal-mart upright vacuum that has had no problems whatsoever- the washable filter has been washed dozens of times and the non-washable one looks brand new. Our botvac needs a new battery every August (anniversary of purchasing it) and the brush is usually in tatters after 1 year also.
His tax plan went through.
No, it didn't. A capitalist tax plan went through, but not his.
He didn't run for and didn't get elected to Dictator of Legislature, which seemed to come as a shock to him.
All US Presidents have the same problem (or benefit). Most Americans do not fully understand the responsibilities and powers of the executive branch. Aside from being compander of the armed forces, the ability to pardon people, and making a speech once a year, most other responsibilities are complicated, nuanced, and difficult to explain how a candidate might improve them within the limitations of a sound bite.
As a result, I can not think of a presidential candidate who did not make promises they would have little or no power to deliver on. That strategy apparently works. Anyway, any candidate who tried to correct a journalist asking questions about non-extent executive powers would probably be accused of dodging the question.
To be forced to assimilate into a system in which they have no individuality is completely out of line with man's nature.
Depends completely where you were born and grew up. Americans are very individualistic and routinely flout the law if they deem it unjust or unreasonable. German society has a strong bias towards following all rules and laws. Japanese and Korean societies are much more conformist.
It starts with the schooling. Children in France, Japan, and Korea are taught how to be French, Japanese, and Korean. Japanese schools could be described as communistic with the children (even kindergarteners) taking turns at janitorial tasks. Japanese teachers are authoritarian lecturers and student discussion is limited. For Japanese people, the majority of citizens already belong to a society where they have very little individuality. From the average American point of view, many Japanese and Koreans would be considered to be slaves to their company, toeing the company line without question and voluntarily working slave hours for no additional compensation.
Recycling aluminum is much less energy intensive compared to smelting ore. Recycling is cheaper. Yes, there is plenty of ore, and aluminum is not hazardous so can be landfilled without issue. But that is not the entire picture.
It's funny because Trump has spent one day in four on a golf course. Or is it not supposed to be irony?
I'm not a Trump supporter but that information isn't very useful unless you consider who is on the course with him. It could plausibly be the equivalent of a treadmill desk if he is meeting with people and discussing official business. But we will probably never know since the Mar-a-Lago visitor records haven't been released.
The resiliency of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal intermodal container) at each substation.
The resilience of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal outdoor dunny) at each house.
At what cost? Is it worth spending billions of dollars to reduce average downtime from 200 minutes a year to some marginally smaller number?
The resiliency of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal intermodal container) at each substation. These could act like your home UPS, fixing blackouts of a few minutes, when they occur. This also would make the grid much more able to use wind and solar sources, without so much need for standby diesel systems currently in place.
This is really not necessary. The number of blackouts that have been caused by generation issues is miniscule. The last major one in the US was in 2003 and protections against such events have been greatly improved since then.
The most cost efficient way to connect the battery would be to tie into a power plant transformer, or a substation, which would not eliminate any failure modes. The substation still would need protection controls that shut it down in the event that downed wires are detected. Blackouts would not be reduced under most conceivable circumstances.
Many of the "last resort" standby generators run for only a handful of days a year, if at all. The pollution per kW may be high, but the aggregate amount is very low. I expect if you were presented with the cost to replace this existing infrastructure with batteries, you would not be interested in pursuing it.
The coal plant that failed was producing close to 600MW. The max output from the graph in the article showed the battery system inject less than 10MW max into the grid. Who pickup up the other 500+ MW? The other coal plant that came online within 6 secs. Basically all the batteries did was reduce the size of the brownout.
The "spinning reserve" generally picks up the demand. "Spinning reserve" consists of machines which are on the grid but not at full load. The spinning reserve should be a minimum of the sum of the largest individual generator + the maximum estimated demand change that could happen in around 10 minutes (the time it takes for a gas turbine to start up). Generally, all that is necessary to change spinning reserve into real power is for a valve to be opened further. For combustion or steam turbines, this can occur in less than a second, and is automatically controlled by the generator controller - the generator demand signal will increase as grid frequency decreases. Spread across many generators, the increase in output is not a significant shock to any individual generator.
In this case, it seems that the Australian grid did not have adequate spinning reserve, which is why the frequency dropped. Many power stations are set to shut down in the case of large frequency variations (for machine protection), which caused the coal power station to shut down.
If a power source goes offline, wouldn't you see a slump in voltage? Why the decrease in frequency?
Large generators are voltage controlled by the Automatic Voltage Regulator, or AVR. To simplify a complicated system, the rotor in large generators does not contain permanent magnets, but is instead an electromagnet. When output voltage drops, the AVR increases the current to the rotor coils. This keeps the voltage constant.
The frequency is a function of how hard the generators are pushing the grid, and how hard the grid pushes back. Again, the AVR at each power station has controls which attempt to push a little harder when frequency is less than desired, and slack off when frequency is too high. However, due to several potential safety issues in (including resonance in rotating equipment, grid failure detection, risk of overfluxing the generator, etc), the power plant control system is often set up to shut the machine down when the frequency is out of a certain range. In most cases this is set to something like +/- 0.2 to 0.5 Hz outside of normal grid frequency. This appears to be why the coal power station shut down.
Since a battery does not have rotating equipment or a generator, they are likely not fundamentally constrained by frequency limitations for machine protection. Some people would make a case that batteries are helpful for grid stabilization in this kind of situation. However, such issues are very rare in large, well-run power grids anyhow. The last time such an event happened in the US was in 2003, and many regulations and countermeasures have been put in place since then.
Real-estate is mainly an inflation hedge in the long term. It is helpful for diversification, and it can be something useful for survival, and it is a good way for people that can't save otherwise to be forced into it. It is a poor investment if you need to sell in less than 5-6 years, or if you end up buying a much bigger house than your present needs dictate to accommodate long-term family plans.
Agree completely except for the last point- "or if you end up buying a much bigger house than your present needs dictate to accommodate long-term family plans."
We waited until our kids were 5 and 3 before buying a house this year. Transitioning from a 2BR apartment to a 4BR house can be a very time consuming (or costly, if you don't do the work yourself) undertaking. We have spent too many long evenings trying to make the house habitable (previous owner had very naughty dogs). We could have spent this time with the kids. If we had bought when they were younger, the "must-fix" items would have been taken care of before they started walking.
"How to make a protest sign." Good Lord.
As though that were some positive feel good thing, like the others mentioned.
(Not to mention, seriously? You can't figure out how to make a sign? But you want to influence serious things?)
People who are dissatisfied with others telling them what to do are just searching for a more controlling and manipulative person to tell them what to do.
Most papers in my industry fall along the lines of âoeWe tested our proprietary weld filler / spray-on coating against some others, and ours is superior for this limited and specific applicationâ. These are more for marketing than scientific advancement, and are not useful for citing (especially if you are a competitor playing the same game!)
There are entities in my field that are âoeindependentâ and arenâ(TM)t in the business of actually using the product. Their papers tend to be more useful for citing, but they are also usually behind their own âoegive me a bunch of money for access to our papersâ paywall and are not published widely and usually donâ(TM)t have DOI records. Maybe this is typical for âoethe real worldâ once you get outside of the acedemia bubble.
Let those new outlets get their own clicks the hard way, instead of having FB and Google funnel people straight to them. Spoiler alert: I won't see their articles anymore.
Is it good for healthy societies to have one or two giant for-profit companies controlling most of the news people see? There are three forseeable outcomes-
1. The aggregator manipulates which stories are shown based on payments by the news organizations, or by 3rd parties
2. The aggregator tries to show the user exactly what they want to see, and hides articles they do not want to see
3. Combination of the above
How did gold become the foundation of everything until the banksters finally took over?
Gold is and hasn't been worth as much as we've made it for centuries. We based a system around it and that made it valuable. It has a silly jewelry value but that isn't what made it so expensive.
In a perfect world, the cost or value of anything represents all the costs needed to produce, process, and transport that item. Gold isn't that bad of a commodity to measure wealth- it does not rust or otherwise deteriorate (in typical conditions) over time, reasonable quantities can represent significant value, and the industrial demand (demand which is not jewelry related) is reasonably non-volatile. And you can actually use it as a low-resistance, non-corrodible coating. I am not a gold nut, but I would say that gold is on average better than a piece of paper which has intrinsic value far less than the actual valuation.
If the valuation of gold was significantly higher than the cost of mining it, mining companies would be making great profits. This does not appear to be the case- from 2003 to 2013, 3 of the largest gold mining companies had several years of losses, even when considering various different accounting methods. The stock price and dividends of these companies also are not particularly spectacular. I can't think of a great reason that such companies would cook the books or spend money unnecessarily so as to be less profitable than they could be. Therefore I would conclude that gold may be overvalued at times, but it is generally not unreasonably overvalued considering the cost of production.
Case #2 in point, Google's execs regularly fly their Boeing 767 into and out of government owned Moffett Field rather than "fight the lines" at San Jose International a mere 4 or 5 more miles down the road.
Not sure that is a great example. Google leases the field from NASA and operates it. I've never leased an airport before, so I'm not sure if 1.16 billion dollars for a 60-year lease (and Google taking over the maintenance costs) is a good or bad deal for NASA.
If I read it correctly, the longer we run bitcoin the larger the cost associated with transactions (network, computation). How is that sustainable? At that point MasterCard and Visa look great with their 2% processing fee.
Perhaps a more important question is regarding tumbling. If transaction fees are high, does this make tumbling uneconomical? If so, then all the people using bitcoin to launder and hide money will stop using it. And that is about the only valid purpose for bitcoin that I see at this point.
I think the app just relays entered information. The Japanese pizza guys probably aren't entering fake info to make it appear like they are working hard and following procedure.
Domino's Japan is an entirely different company than the USA. They ride 3-wheel scooters that tilt around corners. The pizza has a much higher relative cost, and it tastes better than the US versions of the same pizza. They aren't playing by the same corporate playbook, it is not just cultural.
In related news .... the average BTC transaction fee is now at $6 USD, and climbing fast. Could be worse, however. Two weeks ago, it spiked above $19.
Does anyone seriously think that BTC is being used for anything except speculation? It sure isn't being used for "money". You've got people buying BTC using their credit cards, and converting their savings to BTC. It's a classic bubble.
It's gonna be nasty, and when the bubble pops the transaction backlog will be huge as people try to dump their BTC before they lose everything. Transaction fees will shoot through the roof. Boom or bust, the Chinese mining pools will make money hand over fist.
Even $100 is pretty cheap for a large international transaction. Arguable $1000 is a cheap for certain transactions that someone would want to hide. You won't be using bitcoin to buy a pack of bubble gum, but certain people will use it.
They misjudged the size of the pool of fools. The sharp rise of the last few months is a sure sign the crash is near. At the moment, those that have invested are frantically trying to get more to invest, because a $10'000 coin is worth nothing if nobody buys it. But the remaining pool of fools is dwindling fast.
I'm sure there are a lot of fools who own bitcoin, but I'm also sure that there is hidden wealth being moved around and money laundering. Bitcoin isn't the be-all-end-all money laundering cure, but it is a good addition to any decent money-hiding scheme. And as long as that remains the case, it will have value.
It's beginning to feel a lot like late 2000 again. Those who were around then will remember how much hype there was around technology, and how the various stock market indices were constantly hitting new highs. Profit was the last thing that businesses were thinking about; it was all about growth. Even the most outlandish ideas were taken seriously. The future outlook was nothing but pure optimism.
Then it all came crashing down just a few short months later.
Just look at the outrageous valuations of so many Silicon Valley companies. Look at this cryptocurrency nonsense, where performing a single transaction requires more energy than an average American home uses in a month. Look at the nonsense coming out of moz://a, especially the silly Rust programming language and the terrible Firefox 57 release.
There are a lot of people who will be in for a very rude awakening, and it could very well be happening much sooner than they expect!
Many tech companies seem incredibly overvalued, but their business model may not be "make/do product/service, obtain currency". Some companies seem to exist only to stay afloat long enough for Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple to acquire them.
Other companies (particularly Tesla) seem like they may remain afloat regardless of the underlying financials. Giving money to Tesla may have a better $ / "environmental return" compared to entities like Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Foundation, or the Sierra Club. If significant numbers of investors are only investing for the "environmental return", the stock price may not matter as much compared to traditional companies.
Some would argue that even the S&P 500 is overvalued. There are many recent articles arguing on both sides of that question, but I like this one since it walks through all the math and you can draw your own conclusions.
Regarding cryptocurrencies- they will exist as long as people need an electronic mechanism to hide/launder money and are able to use it for those purposes. We are in a new guilded age and there is plenty of wealth that needs to be secretly hidden or moved around. Money laundering costs money, bitcoin (even with large transaction fees) may be worthwhile to such people.
And it has been used for typical city-wide distances for a long time. Where the heat comes form is unimportant as long as it is available with reasonable dependability or there are fallback alternate heat sources. This whole system was probably available from a catalog already. May have been an European catalog, but still.
These kinds of systems are usually 1-off designs, even in Europe. The engineering calculations are fairly trivial and most of the components are commodity items such as piping, heat exchangers, pumps, etc. Bidding and designing such a project is not that difficult, if sufficient space is available for equipment. Projects constrained by land use or existing infrastructure are considerably more difficult. Executing the project is the tricky part- it requires good project management from the beginning to the end.
I have come to realize that almost all large projects are not difficult because of the underlying technology, but the problem of organization and managing the project correctly.