rgmerk

23 ms·

361.
by rgmerk 3y ago
I think nuclear is a red herring in most of the world (too expensive and SMRs are too far away to matter), but the idea that we’ll run out of fuel for them is a nonsense. We haven’t looked very hard at all for uranium. Nor have we tried ve
362.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Not an expert but from what scanty technical detail is presented in the article, it sounds like they're using: * metal hydride to store hydrogen. * a reversible fuel cell that can either split water to extract the hydrogen, or combine
363.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Yes. The 911 retained the basic layout and rear suspension design of the VW Beetle, and consequently its major flaw - a tendency to slide its tail out if you lifted off the throttle mid-corner. My cousin bought a Beetle convertible as her
364.
by rgmerk 3y ago
I wouldn’t put it past a Ferrari of that era to collapse in a heap if you put any extra weight in it.
365.
by rgmerk 3y ago
If I were doing a conversion like this I’d be tempted to have a go at a luxury sedan from the 70s or early 80s, something like a W126 Mercedes S-Class or a Series III Jag. Firstly, these are big and heavy cars (at least for their time) and
366.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Death trap on American roads, unfortunately.
367.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Toyota has thrown billions at fuel cell cars and it hasn’t gone mainstream - people around 2017. Not all bets that look crazy pay off. Sometimes they’re just bad.
368.
by rgmerk 3y ago
This. The question of whether VR/AR finds profitable markets is a separate one from whether it becomes a mass consumer phenomenon on the scale of social media.
369.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Perhaps I’m getting old, but back in the day it seemed like that when a consumer product was going to be a hit, “everybody” would want it watts and all because the good parts were so compelling people would put up with the rough edges. I me
370.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Zuck has been throwing tens of billions of dollars at VR and it still hasn't gone mainstream. At what point do you decide that the market just isn't there for the product - or, at least, the market will forever be restricted to fa
371.
by rgmerk 3y ago
That seems like pretty weak sauce. If your sensors can distinguish a Vespa from a sports bike reliably, compared to all the other things that an autonomous vehicle has to cope with programming it to treat those two as different categories o
372.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Market has crashed from its highs but it hasn’t completely imploded (sigh). According to [1], the current minimum value of a bored ape is the equivalent of about $48,000 USD. I’d be surprised if the price ever goes to zero unless the tradin
373.
by rgmerk 3y ago
That’s not how publicly funded research works. Most research projects are competitively funded by grant money on short timelines, and researchers are employed on fixed-term contracts. University professors with tenure are the exception rat
374.
by rgmerk 3y ago
For what it’s worth, while these things are undoubtedly more useful than bored apes, it’s not where I’d be investing my money if I were a billionaire. While the idea of cost-benefit analysis in philanthropy has gotten a bad reputation after
375.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Yes, if you imagine a world where large numbers of people live off-Earth, that kind of energy consumption is likely necessary. But that society will not exist in the lifetimes of my children’s children’s children, and I’m not letting ventur
376.
by rgmerk 3y ago
All billionaires need somebody whose job it is to tell them their ideas are f***g idiotic to their face periodically. Kinda like “momento mori” without the incentive to go and invent tech to make them immortal.
377.
by rgmerk 3y ago
US embodied carbon imports are not nearly as large as is sometimes assumed, apparently in the order of 7% of total emissions: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/no-the-us-didnt-outsource-our-...
378.
by rgmerk 3y ago
The idea of increasing per-capita energy consumption to 1,000x current American levels is so ludicrous Andreesen should immediately be laughed out of town without any further consideration. I did some back of the envelope calculations (and
379.
by rgmerk 3y ago
The proportion of books that make money 20 years after publication, after languishing in obscurity for that time, is a rounding error. Like, how many such books can you actually name? I think it’s a little different for music, where people
380.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Yes, but people who wrote commercially successful books 25 years ago will scream blue murder if you take what they see as their retirement nest egg away from them.
381.
by rgmerk 3y ago
All copyright is way too long but authors go completely off-piste at anyone who suggests that it should be something more reasonable (I kinda like 21 years myself). Part of the issue is that the loudest voices are that 0.01% of authors whos
382.
by rgmerk 3y ago
You can do that kind of thing in the US, but land use is a real constraint in the UK. The politics of land use in the UK are also diabolical.
383.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Yes, solar power has a huge amount of seasonal variation in the UK and the rest of northern Europe. And obviously, batteries on their own won't cut it to deal with this seasonal variation. But northern Europe, particularly the UK, has
384.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Battery storage works just fine for intraday use. And you don't even need batteries for industrial heat, which is a very substantial fraction of total energy demand. You can heat up a box of rocks/bricks/sand/graphite w
385.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Yeah, for grid energy applications in our lifetimes it's hard to see fusion beating a grid made up of solar, wind, lithium-ion and other battery chemistries, topped up with some chemical storage (eg hydrogen) for places with cold winte
386.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Sure, I get that you can ramp nuclear plants, technically, but it’s highly unlikely to be economically attractive to build new ones with the intention of ramping them a lot. If SMRs are built, I’d expect many of them to be accompanied by ba
387.
by rgmerk 3y ago
SMRs are going to have relatively high capital costs and (hopefully) low but non-zero operating costs. They will probably have similar ramping characteristics to coal. As such, they will probably operate like coal - generating most of the
388.
by rgmerk 3y ago
This has almost nothing to do with the topic at hand, which was a commentary on the value of a functioning market for electricity (I hesitate to call it a "free" market because any electricity market ends up having a lot of rule
389.
by rgmerk 3y ago
While the exact number may be a little higher this tallies very much with my experience of US national parks. Walk a few hundred yards and even at the busiest sites you’re basically on your own. While many people with disabilities can’t go
390.
by rgmerk 3y ago
And furthermore, it matters where non-CO2 pollution is released. Particulates released from a jet at cruising altitude, particularly over an ocean, are less harmful to human health than a truck belching pollution next to a kindergarten.\ I

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