My hot take is that all games are simulations to some extent. Many sports are a kind of war game, simulating a specific aspect of real war, obviously abstracting quite a bit. A big part of the fun in catan is in the tension of having to cooperate with rivals to mutually beneficial ends, much like what happens in economics all the time. The point being, that yes, there are varying levels of realism, but in the end I don’t really think there is a simple line denoting “game” or “simulation.”
Most of the cost of energy is the fossil fuels themselves, or taxation to discourage use. The cost of photovoltaic power seems to be governed by a scaling law, that has held for several decades now. [1] It is now cheaper than fossil fuels in sunny regions for electricity generation, without subsidy or other incentive. Even cautious estimates of further improvement, produce rather pleasing scenarios a few decades out.
One needs to specify if this means "cheaper than a new construction fossil fuel plant" or "cheaper than operating an existing fossil fuel plant". Whether a CO2 tax is involved should also be specified. Things will really take off when existing plants can no longer compete (particularly in places like the US where overall demand is growing slowly, if at all). Of course, this will depress the price of the fuel (natural gas is in the doldrums in the US) which will delay things.
The LCOE of solar is lower than the LCOE of fossil fuels. That includes setup costs. But it also of course wins without it for both sources because you don’t need to buy the fuel. It’s not yet there if you’re also looking at the broader cycle that includes operating battery storage. The LCOE of battery and hydrogen fuel tech then depends on the price of the energy. So it’s very difficult to define. But it is getting there.
The important point is that if one already has fossil fuel plants, you have to compare the marginal cost of operating those plants vs. the full cost (including capital cost) of replacing them with renewables (CO2 costs included if any). Otherwise, they'll just keep operating the fossil fuel plants. Eventually the fossil fuel plants will age out and be replaced in an apples-to-apples comparison, but that could take decades.
Not quite. LCOE is useful building out capacity but it varies tremendously based on land availability / suitability and the feasibility of getting it into the transmission system. So these things have huge error bars. These are also about cost of producing the energy. What we need to think about is also the demand for energy. Solar is infinitely cheaper (that is, negative prices) at the ideal times. But then it’s gone entirely at others.
Gas is very good for those consistent other times. Batteries are not. Batteries are better for the excess demand during those off times. they offset the backup peaker gas plants as mentioned in the article.
All of which to say the batteries can eat away at the margins of gas plants, but it is incrementally less cost effective to replace each one.
If you operate in an environment where you can supply renewables outside of solar time in quantities high enough to not need the gas, the gas plants will become a lot less useful. Hydro power is the king here. If you don’t have that gas is still probably pretty important.
It might get to the point where a lot of these gas plants are less profitable because they expected to be more relevant and will not be able to justify their fixed costs. But shutting down those plants is probably more expensive to society than just subsidizing them to stay open.
So it’s complicated. The energy and battery side of the inflation reduction act has been HUGE though. Society doesn’t really get how much of an important investment the Biden admin has done here
Current nuclear fission reactors can safely and reliably supply all our electricity needs. France rapidly built out their nuclear fleet in response to the 1973 oil crisis, achieving more than 70% of their electricity generation within 20 years. If the political will is there, it can be done.
The problem is that Western elites are corrupt and incompetent. They foolishly outsourced their manufacturing to a rival nation, which is now the rising superpower. Germany shut down its nuclear reactors and spent hundreds of billions on solar, while their manufacturing sector implodes from high electricity prices.
Corporate elites are increasingly extractive as exemplified by rising wealth gap, housing / healthcare / education costs, enshittification of internet platforms, etc. Any narrative which justifies price increases is gleefully propagated by the media hegemons. Climate change is used to markup prices on everything so consumers can feel self-righteous paying through the nose. Yet none of this will make a difference. China, India, and Africa will continue burning the cheapest fuels available to support their development.
Last I checked, the going rate is roughly 3.5 Billion for 3 MJ. Cost coming down quickly though! Only a couple dozen orders of magnitude to go and it’ll blow solar out of the water!
If you read the article, it does have to do with the ruling. Part of regulating ISPs as a utility is that they can regulate/enforce rules on how ISPs handle outages.
How does verifying your identity in any way violate that, though? You have a physical address that you live at, and the government verifies that you are the person living at that address, and that is not violating the fourth amendment. This would be pretty similar to that.
Of course the words are open to interpretation but "unreasonable searches" seem to encompass this sort of thing. Usually it's taken case by case and reasons would need to be given for every individual being searched. This is a blanket excuse to search every interaction without a reason.
The fourth amendment requires probable cause of a crime prior to being forced to identify yourself. This rule is forcing companies to verify the identities of their customers on behalf of the government for vague national security reasons.
This doesn't seem to affect users of internet services, though. It's just IaaS, so things like AWS. With that limited scope, what is the adverse affect of KYC laws on freedom of speech?
It affects all web hosts, so if you want to lease a server in order to install Wordpress or Mastodon you would need to submit your identification to the provider.
How much longer before IaaS platforms require their customers to also have similar KYC policies in their ToS to be able to shift liability downward in case anything goes down?
Trump tried to do this 4 years ago, how is that a "concerning" level of speed? The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has been reviewing Tik Tok's Project Texas initiative to handle US data separately for 2 years. This was not an out of the blue move. The citation for those claims are in the linked article.
Isn’t most of the speed you spend on the first stage wasted on going up, though? And what little momentum you might get to keep when it’s time to turn into your orbit is also sucked away by air resistance. Rockets have to go directly up for the first part of the flight, and all that acceleration is wasted because what you really need is orbital velocity, which is going to end up being “sideways” relative to earth. An air breathing first stage would mean you have to give a little less of your fuel to going up, and you’re doing it in an environment with less air resistance.
That’s because it’s dangerous to mix those types of vehicles with full size cars and trucks on the same street. Think about how much drivers hate bikes, and they take up almost no space at all.
Important caveat: It's not dangerous at all if streets are designed for it.
My city's roads are a dumpster fire due to one-wheel idiot-devices, electric scooters, and other micromobility.
With the exception of one-wheel idiot-devices, I've seen all the same stuff work in other cities beautifully, which had adapted infrastructure to them. I love micromobility done right, and I hate it done locally.
Excellent point! I’m not against non-car transportation at all, and generally am of the belief that if a policy decision is bad for cars it’s probably good for everyone. But in my city, at least, the other pieces of transportation are an afterthought and it can be really dangerous.
I have the same question. Goodreads has the same politics problem, plus the rotten tomatoes issue where authors seem to get punished for taking risks or not sticking rigidly to genre. I don’t know where to go for recommendations.
Try /lit/. As with most places in 4chan, don't take things too seriously but the people in those hobby boards do genuinely care about their respective hobby.
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