1) Agree that energy use is ethical. In fact, in so much as higher wealth and income is linked at the societal level to better outcomes such as longer life, lower crime, happier lives, etc., and wealth/income are strongly correlated to energy use, especially once we do the accounting for outsourced manufacturing, I'm willing to go so far as to say that in most circumstances, asking a person to lower their energy use is UNETHICAL. We should, of course, attempt to minimize externalities and harm that come from energy use, like pollution, habitat destruction, etc.
Also, just as a thing, not all public blockchains use a ton of energy. Since ETH (the number 2 blockchain) transitioned to proof of stake from proof of work a few years back, it uses practically no energy. Certainly it uses much less than other peer to peer networks, because it processes less data.
2) Agree.
3) Not only is it a good thing to replace jobs or partial jobs with automation, it is the only way that humanity moves forward for the long run! Otherwise, most of us would be dead of childhood diseases and over 90% of the remainder would be working hard manual labor jobs on farms. Certainly we need to practice harm reduction for the job functions and jobs eliminated! But only through automation do we improve materially as a species! (I'm not making a spiritual argument about the value of working on a farm vs a modern life, but material outcomes are much better and improve the more jobs we eliminate!)
4) Many tools have downsides. No tools are in all ways better than the old way of doing things. You learn to live with the bad if it's worth the good.
5) Given the open source nature of many LLMs, the ease with which state of the art LLMs appear to be copied, and the proliferation of various models that have been tuned for various tasks, I would say that LLMS distribute power rather than concentrating it!
In other words, the blog is basically wrong on every count.
This is true, especially for low frequency (high mass) inverters. The inverters that are covered here are overwhelmingly high frequency (low mass) inverters. We hope that they practiced great electrical engineering and layered multiple layers of physical safeguards on top of the software based controls built into the firmware.
Of course a company that skimped to the point of total neglect on software security would never skimp anywhere else, right? Right?
:crossed-fingers: <- This is what we are relying on here.
And even if they did all the right things with their physical safety, the attackers can still brick the inverters with bad firmware and make them require a high skill firmware restore at a minimum and turn them into e-waste and require an re-install from a licensed electrician at a maximum.
This isn't hundreds of separate sites that have to be hacked individually. This is fewer than 10 clouds with no security to speak of and the ability to push evil firmware to millions of inverters worldwide, where in a few years at the current rate of manufacturing growth, it will be 10s, and then 100s of millions of inverters.
Yeah, the potato cannon filled with aluminum chaff or medium caliber semi-automatic rifle can take down a substation. But this is millions of homes and businesses, which can all have an evil firmware that triggers within seconds of each other. (There will inevitably be some internal clocks that are off by days/months/years, so it's not like it will happen without warning, but noticing the warning might be difficult.)
For the purposes of information security, the nameplate capacity is the correct number to consider for a very simple reason: we must defend as if hackers will pick the absolute worst moment to attack the grid. That is the moment when the sun is shining and it's absolutely cloudless across Netherlands, California, Germany, or wherever their target grid is.
At that moment, the attacker will not only blast the grid with the full output of the solar panels, but they will also put any attached batteries into full discharge mode as well, bypassing any safeties built into the firmware with new firmware. We must consider the worst case, which is that the attacker is trying to not only physically break the inverters, but the batteries, solar panels, blow fuses, and burn out substations. (Consider that if the inverters burn out and start fires, that's a feature for the attacker rather than a bug!)
So yes, not only is it 25 medium sized nuclear power plants, it's probably much higher than that! And worse, that number is growing exponentially with each year of the renewable transition.
This was probably the scariest security expose in a long time. It's much much worse than some zero-day for iphones.
A bad iPhone bug might kill a few people who can't call emergency services, and cause a couple billion of diffuse economic damage across the world. This set of bugs might kill tens of thousands by blowing up substations and causing outages at thousands to millions of homes, businesses, and factories during a heat wave. And the economic damage will not only be much higher, it will be concentrated.
I have a few pieces from loow.com (Wool backwards.) They are out of EU, and what I have from them, I like! (Not associated, just a satisfied customer that paid full price.)
I wash wool and silk using a ph balanced detergent with no protease. I use cold water, minimum spin, and a super long soak. Then I hang dry. It's more work to wash this way, but they last longer, never smell, and 100% silk and wool only need washing 1/3rd to 1/5th as often anyway, so the total work is lower than with plastic clothing. The brand of detergent I use is literally called "Soak," and I get it on Amazon.
Not sure if you count insects into your moral calculus, but silk farming only involves caterpillars and mulberry trees. It's warmer, softer, lighter, and way less smelly than plastic, so it doesn't need as much washing, so less environmental impact. I can wear a silk t-shirt for about a week before it gets smelly, most of the time, whereas plastic shirts sometimes need to be washed twice after a single wearing to get the smell out!
The fibers are stronger than polyester, so if you get a thick silk fabric, it will last a lifetime. Unfortunately, it's absurdly expensive, so even though the total cost of ownership isn't terrible if you get a thick fabric because it will last forever, it's a ton of money up front. Additionally, most places sell super thin silk to keep the price down, which means it doesn't last, so you have to shop around and find the good thick stuff.
I love silkliving.com's 100% silk line, which even includes a fleece hoodie! I'm not associated with them other than as a satisfied customer that paid full price.
Nothing is going to hit the price/warmness combo of plastic based fleeces, but I find the smelliness factor on synthetics to be worth paying extra for high quality natural fibers. Plastic clothing just ends up smelling gross and needs 2x-3x the washing!
Some alternatives I've found. (I'm not associated with any of these, other than as a full price paying satisfied customer):
1) Silkliving.com is a New Zealand company that sells a 100% silk fleece. It's AMAZING to wear, and has a price to match. Pretty hard wearing, but I wouldn't wear it as my outer layer and then do construction or rock climbing or whatever. This fleece is as warm as plastic or wool, weighs less than plastic, is comfy over a wider range of temps, and just literally the best fleece money can buy for anything other than activities where it will get abraded. Sadly, only comes in black. I'm hoping if you all buy one, they will justify more colors because I want to buy more of these.
2) Minus33 is a New Hampshire, USA company (minus33.com) that makes a hard wearing 100% merino wool fleece. Their "expedition" weight is heavy, but WARM. I have two of these.
3) Arms of Andes (armsofandes.com) make Alpaca wool clothing. Alpaca fiber is hollow and smaller than merino wool, so it will be lighter (or the same weight but warmer) and slightly softer than merino. It's not as soft or light as silk though, and you might not notice the difference, whereas you will DEFINITELY notice silk vs. merino. They don't have a full zip hoodie, which is unfortunate, but they do offer non-toxic plant based dyes, which is nice! Remember, you are breathing that fiber in and swallowing it, so while it's an upgrade to go from plastic to natural fibers, it's also an upgrade to move away from to old school nasty heavy metal based dyes.
We have some pretty good ideas about just how "lumpy" the explosion of the big bang should have been. And yes, the best theories in cosmology disagree with the recent observations highlighted in this article. On the other hand, those cosmological theories are rooted in extremely strong physics which does things like predict various attributes of particles that have been measured extremely precisely and were predicted correctly. So the Hubble tension is real. My money is on the theory needing revising, but how? There are no great candidates for something to replace the standard model and our best theories in cosmology. There are plenty of candidates, but no obvious methods to choose a best one. This is science! Remember, the most exciting words in science are, "huh, that's odd." The Hubble tension is extremely odd!
This result confirms that the "hubble tension" is real. In other words, two methods for measuring the expansion of the universe disagree, but we can't figure out why and have new and really strong evidence that the "cosmic ladder" method is correct. (The other method is based on the cosmic microwave background radiation and our best theories of physics, so we're caught between a rock and a hard place here: strong experimental evidence one way, and throwing out a ton of what we think we know about the universe with no obvious replacement the other way.)
No. This confirms that the "hubble tension" is real. In other words, two methods for measuring the expansion of the universe disagree, but we can't figure out why and have new and really strong evidence that the "cosmic ladder" method is correct. (The other method is based on the cosmic microwave background radiation and our best theories of physics, so we're caught between a rock and a hard place here: strong experimental evidence one way, and throwing out a ton of what we think we know about the universe with no obvious replacement the other way.)
I stopped reading at paragraph 4. What idiot is buying lead acid batteries in 2023 for solar storage systems?
4 12V 200AH deep cycle lead acid batteries cost $1552 on Amazon and hold as much energy in practice as a 100AH 48V LFP battery which last 15 years, minimum, and only costs about 6% more up front. (Not linking to specific batteries in order to not shill for them, but do a little searching for 100AH 48V 4U server rack LFP batteries on youtube, and you will find dozens of tutorials.) Quality inverters last 30 years, not 10.
Are these people TRYING to light money on fire? Are they fronting for someone by trying to make solar look impractical? Or are they just stupid?
Ventile is an exception to the "rule" that "cotton kills" (in the cold).
Especially great is for staying dry is double layered ventile, which is now free of flourine chemistry for extra waterproofing (older iterations used PFAS as an extra waterproofing coating.)
The cotton breathes, it's more durable than gore-tex or off-brand knockoffs (stressed PTFE), and it doesn't make annoying "swish swish" noises either, which is helpful for bird watchers and other folks that want to move quietly in nature.
There are two major disadvantages: cost and weight. A ventile garment is many times the price of a similar ptfe garment, especially now that the original gore-tex patents have expired. And it's also many times the weight.
However, let's be honest, if you can afford ventile, you probably can drop 3 pounds of fat through the additional time you will spend outside, lengthen your healthspan and lifetime, and use the garment long enough to pay for the several "waterproof" ptfe garments you would have gone through in the same time.
Only if you want a battery that will die fast. Nissan made an insane decision early on to not heat or cool their batteries, and also not go with a battery chemistry that is resistant to degradation in the heat.
10 years in, all those early LEAFs have been scrapped or needed battery swaps due to like 75%!!! range loss in some cases! Meanwhile, Tesla, while notorious for fit/finish issues, has similar vintage cars that are still on their first battery with less than 20% loss of range.
Yes, the LEAF is "reliable." It reliably goes when you step on the accelerator, and everything else is reliable as well, except for the drivetrain, which reliably loses range to the point where the car is totaled because Nissan raised battery prices just as a tidal wave of vehicles needed them.
There's a reason Tesla is outselling every other EV in North America. Part of it is that they are able to source materials, but they are the only ones with a "good enough" mix of reliability and build quality on everything but the drivetrain, a bulletproof drivetrain, and a reliable and widespread charging network. Teslas aren't perfect, and there's room for a fast follower company to beat them, especially on fit, finish, convenience, and luxurious cabins, but that would require an Apple like attention to both detail and supply chains.
The entire book falls apart because of two facts, both of which are in the book itself!
"Hands down, solar is the only renewable resource capable of matching our current societal energy demand. Not only can it reach 18 TW, it can exceed the mark by orders of magnitude." (Section 13.9)
"We would likely not be discussing a finite planet or limits to growth or climate change if only one million humans inhabited the planet, even living at United States standards. We would perceive no meaningful limit to natural resources and ecosystem services." (Section 3.5) An energy source that is thousands of times more abundant than fossil fuels is basically equivalent to having one one thousandth the population.
While I must acknowledge the truth that converting things to run on electricity will be a large engineering and logistical challenge, and that battery production must be scaled up (as well as converting some loads to run where the sun is shining), both of these challenges pale in comparison to the money part of that first quote: "exceed the mark by orders of magnitude." In other words, even if we could only store electricity at an efficiency of 1%, we'd be fine. (In actuality, we ALREADY store electricity at efficiencies over 80 times that.)
Ecosystem services, availability of raw materials, and many other challenges exist as well. However, all of them are meaningless in the face of "we would perceive no meaningful limit to natural resources." Having an energy source that is thousands to millions of times more abundant than the ones we use today lets us substitute energy for basically all of our needs. (Need clean water? Energy + dirty water = clean water. Need more steel? Dirt + energy = steel. Need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere? You can do it, at only the cost of several times the energy you got putting the CO2 into the atmosphere, which is only a few % of the future energy budget from solar. Think of it this way. In the past, we relied on cutting down forests for heat. Putting the forests back would have seemed like an insurmountable task, because our fuel came from the forests. But now that we run on fossil fuels, which are approximately 100x more abundant than forests, putting the forests back is a matter of politics and land usage discussions, not one of practicality.)
In other words, we are the only ones we have to blame if the future is not MUCH wealthier than the past, both per person and also for our total economy.
Why isn't there more building? In most places that "need" rent control, it's because there are heavy restrictions on building. And rent control, all by itself, serves as a disincentive to build. Why should I invest in a new building when I can invest in something else that's less hassle, more liquid, etc.?
Not to mention historical controls on building, rules about shading out other buildings, onerous permitting processes that take years, potential lawsuits, the annoyance of prostrating oneself before random bureaucrats begging for the ability to spend one's own money, etc. I think I'll just go YOLO into options futures instead, or throw my money in a global index fund.
Each of these rules is well intentioned, or at least has a well intentioned sounding justification. (Often, the main force behind them is a monopolist who specializes in navigating them, and doesn't want to have to compete on an even footing in an open market.) Altogether, however, the rules make a sticky web that causes entrepreneurs to throw up their hands and go elsewhere.
Rules about building is like dessert. A few desserts is a good idea. A meal constructed entirely of dessert is not so healthy, especially in the long run. Figure out how to make it easy to build, and people will build. And those folks need to be wooed, not with sweetheart deals out of the public purse, but with a clear, easy to navigate regulatory environment. If you make it easy to compete, there will be much competition.
Overwhelmingly, though, there's no competition in these kinds of jurisdictions because powerful interests LIKE it that way. Think of those folks who spent EUR 10K on a square meter of condo. Are they going to be happy at your proposed regulatory reform that promises to quadruple the rate of building? Of course not! You are directly attacking their asset, that they strived and scrimped and worked for for years! Are they going to come out and say that? Only rarely. They are going to talk about the character of the neighborhood, or the historical significance of whatever, or the environmental impact of a skyscraper in the downtown, or make overtly racist comments about who might move into these new buildings, or anything that will rally people to their cause to STOP THAT BUILDING!
The deep irony here is that you wrote "its not impossible for millions of people to have long term side effects from COVID."
While it's clear from the rest of your post that you meant the vaccines, you accidentally ended up making your own counterpoint! It is ABSOLUTELY possible for millions of people to have long term side effects from COVID, the disease.
It would be a brand new thing for a vaccine to give so many people side effects so long after the shot. No vaccine has ever given people side effects that didn't show up within about 6 weeks.
Yes, some people had side effects from the Polio vaccine. But you know what was far more likely to cause lifelong side effects? Polio!
Cheap space launch is the cause of, and the solution to, our light pollution issues.
50,000 satellites would be impossible to launch without the recent step change in the wholesale price of launch. And even 5% of that number of space based telescopes will decrease the contention for valuable instrument time enormously.
Particularly if the next generation space based telescopes used tethers or precision formation flying for extremely large simulated aperture size, we'll start getting phenomenally amazing data. (Even some of the largest ground based telescopes will be possible to compete with in space using large formations of connected satellites.)
So all of the hue and cry around Starlink is really just growing pains. It will hurt some of the science temporarily (particularly around sunrise and sunset), but in the long run, cheap launch is really what the field of astronomy needs to continue to have better and better instrumentation.
If you look at places that have high vaccination numbers, oh wait, there aren't any. Israel is leading the world with only about 20% of their population having undergone a full vaccination regimen, and it takes a few weeks after the second dose for immunity to reach its highest level. Given how fast they are vaccinating, a very high proportion of that 20% was given that second shot in the last few days.
In other words, there is no place on Earth where we would expect vaccination to have an impossible to dispute effect on the top-line deaths or hospitalization numbers... yet. Give it 6 weeks.
To your other points about side effects, nearly 100m people globally have gotten at least one shot. The mild side effects which require a day off work are completely worth it, and the severe ones happen extremely rarely, to where a risk adjusted decision even for a very young and healthy person would still be to get the vaccine.
Only one of your points is even mildly valid, that the vaccines haven't been out long enough to know if there are any long term health issues. While we won't know this for generations, because of the definition of "long term," we also have no reason to believe that there would be long term health issues, while we know that SARS-COV-2 infection can DEFINITELY cause long term health issues in a significant minority of people infected.
Lastly, many folks pushing anti-vaxxer propaganda are selling something: usually quack cures. Ignore the parent comment, and focus on the facts.
Lithium is a mine once, use forever resource. It's an element. It will cost energy to recycle it, but that energy is increasingly sourced by clean energy sources. Let me cite the oil company, BP.
Coal is in terminal decline. Solar and wind have been growing exponentially, and are on a path to pass coal within the decade. Projections to the contrary have to explain why decades of industrial economics theory are wrong, where manufactured goods (like solar and wind generators) get cheaper by a fairly consistent % every time you double production. This creates a virtuous cycle that will drive coal and other fossil fuels out of business through profit seeking alone. (We are past the tipping point on costs here.) The burden of proof is on the fossil fuel advocates like yourself at this point. (This article is from 2015, and the IEA and similar keep getting it wrong since then.)
Also, just as a thing, not all public blockchains use a ton of energy. Since ETH (the number 2 blockchain) transitioned to proof of stake from proof of work a few years back, it uses practically no energy. Certainly it uses much less than other peer to peer networks, because it processes less data.
2) Agree.
3) Not only is it a good thing to replace jobs or partial jobs with automation, it is the only way that humanity moves forward for the long run! Otherwise, most of us would be dead of childhood diseases and over 90% of the remainder would be working hard manual labor jobs on farms. Certainly we need to practice harm reduction for the job functions and jobs eliminated! But only through automation do we improve materially as a species! (I'm not making a spiritual argument about the value of working on a farm vs a modern life, but material outcomes are much better and improve the more jobs we eliminate!)
4) Many tools have downsides. No tools are in all ways better than the old way of doing things. You learn to live with the bad if it's worth the good.
5) Given the open source nature of many LLMs, the ease with which state of the art LLMs appear to be copied, and the proliferation of various models that have been tuned for various tasks, I would say that LLMS distribute power rather than concentrating it!
In other words, the blog is basically wrong on every count.