Yes, high prices have an effect, but many of the roads in European cities are tiny, and I would argue that this, more than taxes on fuel, drives behaviour. Basically, large cars are more difficult to drive around on tiny roads, harder to park (some of the parking spaces are incredibly tiny) (and more expensive to fuel up).
From 2016 to 2017, Coal, Oil and NG grew by 173 Million tonnes oil equivalent, while renewables (excluding hydro) grew by 69 MTOE. Heck, NG alone increased by 83 MTOE, i.e. more than renewables. So the idea that renewables are replacing coal and NG is ridiculously wrong.
Waste heat cannot be a serious climate issue. If any scientists (including the IPCC) are suggesting this, then they are being alarmist.
The earth receives more energy in an hour that humans use in a year. Basically, our total energy use is about 0.01% of the energy from the sun that hits the earth.
To suggest that waste heat, which is less than 0.01% of the energy we receive from the sun and about 1% of the effect of CO2, is a significant climate problem, is absurd. Worrying about the climatic effects of waste heat is up there with unplugging phone chargers to combat climate change. Yes, it has an effect, by definition, but nothing that really ought to worry us or demand much of our intellectual and physical efforts to combat climate change.
Is there any reason you couldn't have a heat reservoir for a nuclear plant, e.g. a molten salt reservoir, that would be available on tap to steam turbines that are usually idle. That way, you could store the excess energy being produced by the reactor until you need it, and you basically have your load following in the day.
And nuclear fuel being a small proportion of plan operating costs, you could probably get away with dissipating excess energy away. A 10% increase in fuel use will only increase overall operating by 1%.
It is a lot easier to use baseload overcapacity to do things like pumped hydro to smooth daily demand fluctuations than it is to try and match an unpredictable supply to fluctuating and not completely predictable demand.
I used pumped hydro as an example of a technology you might use to store excess energy generated using nuclear, hence the like before the pumped hydro in that statement. You could use batteries, for example, or any other storage scheme with nuclear if you wanted to do load following.
The point was that with nuclear (or other baseload), it is mostly a question of shifting demand within the day provided you are generating enough energy to meet daily demand. With wind energy, for example, you can't even guarantee enough generation on a daily basis, and so you need more storage, potentially to last days, rather than hours. The storage demands will be much greater - maybe even an order of magnitude greater.
Can you see that hourly average (last month) chart? See how it varies from day to day, by a factor of greater than 5 (by eye). That's for the whole of the UK. On some days, wind will produce less than 10% of nameplate capacity, heck even 5%. If you want to rely on that, you need serious storage because there are going to be days when a 20GW installed capacity that produces 8GW on average will produce less than 1GW, and there is nothing you can do about it.
Look at the hourly average. Basically, for the UK, 20GW is more or less the minimum which can be matched by baseload generation. It will pretty much never go below 19.
The flaw in this is there aren't that many places where you can do pumped hydro easily.
I didn't say it was easy, but easier. If that's hard with nuclear, then it is even harder with wind and solar etc. You definitely need storage with the intermittent generation sources, and you don't have the luxury of certainty (to a point) of availability of energy, therefore you need more of it.
Hydro is pot luck. You either have it, in which case you can use it to follow load, or you don't, and your options (assuming you require them to be zero or low carbon) are to use sources that are not quite dispatchable.
So the hierarchy in terms of convenience is:
- Dispatchable (hydro, battery storage, gas turbine)
- Base load (coal, nuclear)
- Intermittent (solar and wind)
It's a lot easier to use baseload + batteries/pumped hydro to achieve dispatchability than to combine an intermittent source with storage as you can't be sure how much you might need to store on account of not being able to rely on any "baseload" generation.
Baseload exists because electricity demand is fairly predictable. You could draw a line under which the electricity demand never falls below which you could always match with baseload, and you could draw "sine waves" of demand which are fairly predictable and solutions can be found to
It is a lot easier to use baseload overcapacity to do things like pumped hydro to smooth daily demand fluctuations than it is to try and match an unpredictable supply to fluctuating and not completely predictable demand.
All other things equal, a generation source capable of delivering a consistent supply is better than one which is not able to guarantee consistent supply.
Removing responsibility for driving functions comes with the cost of lost freedom of the driving functions. You are now at the mercy of those who decided how things should function, rather than your own choices.
You are driving a car, presumably on public roads. Your freedom is already severely curtailed:
- You cannot drive on any side of the road you wish
- You must stop when instructed to by lights
- You must have a driving license
- You must be sober
- You must be at least a certain age
- You must wear a seatbelt
- Your car must meet certain emissions requirements (when buying new of course)
The loss of freedom that Tesla imposes when you buy from them is tiny, inconsequential and a complete red herring. And yes, safety matters since you share road space with other users.
And regardless, the existence of Tesla increases choice, because without Tesla, there would be less choice anyway.
If you are worried Tesla might be too successful and other companies may copy them, then tough. Your freedoms were always illusory anyway if they depended on a private entity providing you with your preferred options.
No it isn't fraud. Buying through intermediaries happens all the time. If Grandma thinks the price is too low, she should not sell, or sell to someone else.
When I go into a supermarket to buy something, I don't expect to be charged more if I am wealthier than average.
If you are selling something and think it is worth more than you have been offered, then you hold out until the buyer matches your valuation.
Nuclear attacks are survivable. Heck, there is one unfortunate guy who was in Hiroshima when it got bombed, survived, went to Nagasaki and got another one. He died not very long ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
Basically, and I am no expert, a few minutes could give you enough time to go into a bunker which would protect you from the initial explosion and irradiation, and from there, you might be able to plot an escape from the fallout zone.
That's not fraud. That is just sensible business practice.Where does it say that every time you want to buy something, you first have to advertise how much money you have in the bank?
I am not a lawyer, but if I could guess, I reckon they filed it in Hawaii because:
- It's being filed in a federal court, therefore the jurisdiction of the court is probably "all of the USA"
- Likely Cloudflare has business in Hawaii, therefore they can be sued anywhere they do business.
- Plaintiffs will then sue / file wherever they believe they are likely to get a favourable outcome. This part is basic strategy. Why would they file where they might not get a favourable outcome?
Could autonomous robots level the playing field between bigger countries and smaller ones.
Currently, human lives are an expendable resource in wars. If you are China, you have a numbers advantage in a confrontation. You can afford to lose a large number of people without losing much per capita.
If you are a small country, even a small loss can be catastrophic.
Nuclear weapons, the other great equaliser, are already banned if you don't have them already. Mutually Assured Destruction has kept the great powers out of direct war for a while, and one could argue that killer robots can do the same, without a side of nuclear fallout.
Of course, any potentially powerful technology can be used both offensively and defensively, and we can't ignore that they could be used to suppress as much as they can be useful for defense.
I don't think drivers can see how an individual passenger rated them, or passengers see how an individual driver rated them.
I think the rating system should be a lot simpler.
- If the driver picked you up at the appointed place, and got you where you needed to be without being an annoyance or breaking every road rule known, didn't kill you (or assault you), and didn't obviously lengthen the journey to extract more money out of you. Good.
- Similarly, if your passenger was there on time, didn't leave a mess in the car, and wasn't annoying and didn't assault / kill you. Good.
- Anything else should be various shades of bad, with killing drivers / passengers obviously being the worst.
This way, the ratings systems would be a lot easier to understand and use. As many point out, I am not sure what a 4 star rating is. To me, that is more than acceptable, and 5 stars suggests something exceptional.
If a driver / passenger has gone above and beyond simply, then there ought to be a more generic feedback form where you take you can express your gratitude or whatever.
Back when broadcast TV frequencies were a limited resource, I would have argued that this was legitimate to ensure that European content could get an airing.
However, streaming services are on the internet (by definition) and there isn't the same argument for such a quota.
Basically, they are trying to force consumers who are not interested in their arty-farty movies to pay for them. If I was Netflix, I would fill the 30% with extremely low-budget productions bought very cheaply to meet the auota. And never change them out / rotate.
Plants grow better in hydroponic conditions with carefully calibrated nutrient solution and perfect amounts of light and carbon dioxide. They thrive, but their roots are weak.
Doesn't this just how that the plants are "smart" for the lack of a better word? Why bother expending energy to grow roots when you can obtain adequate nutrients without them?
The obligatory car analogy - you don't need a super-powerful engine in a car to achieve high speed on an downward sloping road (decline).
Understanding what code does and predicting what it will do are not quite the same thing. Understanding how a neural network works does not necessarily mean you can predict how it will behave for all inputs.
Do you honestly think they don't have people trying to use the standard libraries for this, and finding that it won't work quite like they need it to.
Supporting a platform is not just about getting it to work. It is also about making sure it works properly and consistently across platforms. At the end of the day, most of their customers use Windows and Mac, and they have an incentive to ensure those platforms are supported best.
They are finding Linux difficult to support, ergo, it is not that easy.
The technology needs to be out there for it to improve. There is no way it will get better in a lab. Regardless, if we imposed the same standards on new drivers that you would impose on autonomous vehicles, the roads would be very quiet.
Why not write to them and offer to fix the issue for a reasonable salary of course. If it is that easy, maybe you can show them how easy it is. Win-win.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, high prices have an effect, but many of the roads in European cities are tiny, and I would argue that this, more than taxes on fuel, drives behaviour. Basically, large cars are more difficult to drive around on tiny roads, harder to park (some of the parking spaces are incredibly tiny) (and more expensive to fuel up).
Wind and solar are replacing coal and natural gas. People are not waiting, they are replacing.
Not they are not. In absolute terms, natural gas, coal and oil are all growing, and the absolute increase is greater than the increase in renewables.
https://www.bp.com/content/dam... (page 12).
From 2016 to 2017, Coal, Oil and NG grew by 173 Million tonnes oil equivalent, while renewables (excluding hydro) grew by 69 MTOE. Heck, NG alone increased by 83 MTOE, i.e. more than renewables. So the idea that renewables are replacing coal and NG is ridiculously wrong.
Waste heat cannot be a serious climate issue. If any scientists (including the IPCC) are suggesting this, then they are being alarmist.
The earth receives more energy in an hour that humans use in a year. Basically, our total energy use is about 0.01% of the energy from the sun that hits the earth.
To suggest that waste heat, which is less than 0.01% of the energy we receive from the sun and about 1% of the effect of CO2, is a significant climate problem, is absurd. Worrying about the climatic effects of waste heat is up there with unplugging phone chargers to combat climate change. Yes, it has an effect, by definition, but nothing that really ought to worry us or demand much of our intellectual and physical efforts to combat climate change.
Is there any reason you couldn't have a heat reservoir for a nuclear plant, e.g. a molten salt reservoir, that would be available on tap to steam turbines that are usually idle. That way, you could store the excess energy being produced by the reactor until you need it, and you basically have
your load following in the day.
And nuclear fuel being a small proportion of plan operating costs, you could probably get away with dissipating excess energy away. A 10% increase in fuel use will only increase overall operating by 1%.
What are you on about?
The original statement I made was:
It is a lot easier to use baseload overcapacity to do things like pumped hydro to smooth daily demand fluctuations than it is to try and match an unpredictable supply to fluctuating and not completely predictable demand.
I used pumped hydro as an example of a technology you might use to store excess energy generated using nuclear, hence the like before the pumped hydro in that statement. You could use batteries, for example, or any other storage scheme with nuclear if you wanted to do load following.
The point was that with nuclear (or other baseload), it is mostly a question of shifting demand within the day provided you are generating enough energy to meet daily demand. With wind energy, for example, you can't even guarantee enough generation on a daily basis, and so you need more storage, potentially to last days, rather than hours. The storage demands will be much greater - maybe even an order of magnitude greater.
Don't believe me, well let's find some data shall we - http://gridwatch.co.uk/?
Can you see that hourly average (last month) chart? See how it varies from day to day, by a factor of greater than 5 (by eye). That's for the whole of the UK. On some days, wind will produce less than 10% of nameplate capacity, heck even 5%. If you want to rely on that, you need serious storage because there are going to be days when a 20GW installed capacity that produces 8GW on average will produce less than 1GW, and there is nothing you can do about it.
http://gridwatch.co.uk/
Look at the hourly average. Basically, for the UK, 20GW is more or less the minimum which can be matched by baseload generation. It will pretty much never go below 19.
The flaw in this is there aren't that many places where you can do pumped hydro easily.
I didn't say it was easy, but easier. If that's hard with nuclear, then it is even harder with wind and solar etc. You definitely need storage with the intermittent generation sources, and you don't have the luxury of certainty (to a point) of availability of energy, therefore you need more of it.
Hydro is pot luck. You either have it, in which case you can use it to follow load, or you don't, and your options (assuming you require them to be zero or low carbon) are to use sources that are not quite dispatchable.
So the hierarchy in terms of convenience is:
- Dispatchable (hydro, battery storage, gas turbine)
- Base load (coal, nuclear)
- Intermittent (solar and wind)
It's a lot easier to use baseload + batteries/pumped hydro to achieve dispatchability than to combine an intermittent source with storage as you can't be sure how much you might need to store on account of not being able to rely on any "baseload" generation.
Um, no.
Baseload exists because electricity demand is fairly predictable. You could draw a line under which the electricity demand never falls below which you could always match with baseload, and you could draw "sine waves" of demand which are fairly predictable and solutions can be found to
It is a lot easier to use baseload overcapacity to do things like pumped hydro to smooth daily demand fluctuations than it is to try and match an unpredictable supply to fluctuating and not completely predictable demand.
All other things equal, a generation source capable of delivering a consistent supply is better than one which is not able to guarantee consistent supply.
Removing responsibility for driving functions comes with the cost of lost freedom of the driving functions. You are now at the mercy of those who decided how things should function, rather than your own choices.
You are driving a car, presumably on public roads. Your freedom is already severely curtailed:
- You cannot drive on any side of the road you wish
- You must stop when instructed to by lights
- You must have a driving license
- You must be sober
- You must be at least a certain age
- You must wear a seatbelt
- Your car must meet certain emissions requirements (when buying new of course)
The loss of freedom that Tesla imposes when you buy from them is tiny, inconsequential and a complete red herring. And yes, safety matters since you share road space with other users.
And regardless, the existence of Tesla increases choice, because without Tesla, there would be less choice anyway.
If you are worried Tesla might be too successful and other companies may copy them, then tough. Your freedoms were always illusory anyway if they depended on a private entity providing you with your preferred options.
No it isn't fraud. Buying through intermediaries happens all the time. If Grandma thinks the price is too low, she should not sell, or sell to someone else.
When I go into a supermarket to buy something, I don't expect to be charged more if I am wealthier than average.
If you are selling something and think it is worth more than you have been offered, then you hold out until the buyer matches your valuation.
Nuclear attacks are survivable. Heck, there is one unfortunate guy who was in Hiroshima when it got bombed, survived, went to Nagasaki and got another one. He died not very long ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
Basically, and I am no expert, a few minutes could give you enough time to go into a bunker which would protect you from the initial explosion and irradiation, and from there, you might be able to plot an escape from the fallout zone.
That's not fraud. That is just sensible business practice.Where does it say that every time you want to buy something, you first have to advertise how much money you have in the bank?
I am not a lawyer, but if I could guess, I reckon they filed it in Hawaii because:
- It's being filed in a federal court, therefore the jurisdiction of the court is probably "all of the USA"
- Likely Cloudflare has business in Hawaii, therefore they can be sued anywhere they do business.
- Plaintiffs will then sue / file wherever they believe they are likely to get a favourable outcome. This part is basic strategy. Why would they file where they might not get a favourable outcome?
Could autonomous robots level the playing field between bigger countries and smaller ones.
Currently, human lives are an expendable resource in wars. If you are China, you have a numbers advantage in a confrontation. You can afford to lose a large number of people without losing much per capita.
If you are a small country, even a small loss can be catastrophic.
Nuclear weapons, the other great equaliser, are already banned if you don't have them already. Mutually Assured Destruction has kept the great powers out of direct war for a while, and one could argue that killer robots can do the same, without a side of nuclear fallout.
Of course, any potentially powerful technology can be used both offensively and defensively, and we can't ignore that they could be used to suppress as much as they can be useful for defense.
If the USA made them mandatory, then yes.
Some of the waste becomes safe in 30 years, but Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years.
We can dig very deep holes and put the high level waste in the ground.
And I think Plutonium 239 can be used as reactor fuel too.
I don't think drivers can see how an individual passenger rated them, or passengers see how an individual driver rated them.
I think the rating system should be a lot simpler.
- If the driver picked you up at the appointed place, and got you where you needed to be without being an annoyance or breaking every road rule known, didn't kill you (or assault you), and didn't obviously lengthen the journey to extract more money out of you. Good.
- Similarly, if your passenger was there on time, didn't leave a mess in the car, and wasn't annoying and didn't assault / kill you. Good.
- Anything else should be various shades of bad, with killing drivers / passengers obviously being the worst.
This way, the ratings systems would be a lot easier to understand and use. As many point out, I am not sure what a 4 star rating is. To me, that is more than acceptable, and 5 stars suggests something exceptional.
If a driver / passenger has gone above and beyond simply, then there ought to be a more generic feedback form where you take you can express your gratitude or whatever.
Back when broadcast TV frequencies were a limited resource, I would have argued that this was legitimate to ensure that European content could get an airing.
However, streaming services are on the internet (by definition) and there isn't the same argument for such a quota.
Basically, they are trying to force consumers who are not interested in their arty-farty movies to pay for them. If I was Netflix, I would fill the 30% with extremely low-budget productions bought very cheaply to meet the auota. And never change them out / rotate.
Plants grow better in hydroponic conditions with carefully calibrated nutrient solution and perfect amounts of light and carbon dioxide. They thrive, but their roots are weak.
Doesn't this just how that the plants are "smart" for the lack of a better word? Why bother expending energy to grow roots when you can obtain adequate nutrients without them?
The obligatory car analogy - you don't need a super-powerful engine in a car to achieve high speed on an downward sloping road (decline).
Understanding what code does and predicting what it will do are not quite the same thing. Understanding how a neural network works does not necessarily mean you can predict how it will behave for all inputs.
The point wasn't about any home user but about a regular user who doesn't, by definition, contribute in code or in any other way.
Do you honestly think they don't have people trying to use the standard libraries for this, and finding that it won't work quite like they need it to.
Supporting a platform is not just about getting it to work. It is also about making sure it works properly and consistently across platforms. At the end of the day, most of their customers use Windows and Mac, and they have an incentive to ensure those platforms are supported best.
They are finding Linux difficult to support, ergo, it is not that easy.
The technology needs to be out there for it to improve. There is no way it will get better in a lab. Regardless, if we imposed the same standards on new drivers that you would impose on autonomous vehicles, the roads would be very quiet.
Why not write to them and offer to fix the issue for a reasonable salary of course. If it is that easy, maybe you can show them how easy it is. Win-win.