Correct. It will take around 10-20 years for this happen at current scaling of grid storage. In the meantime it doesn't make sense to scale up new gas, coal, or nuclear, as they won't have a decent ROI over their lifespan.
At least in Australia, the oversupply of rooftop solar is already getting to be enough of a problem that its a signal to investors that getting into grid scale batteries could be profitable, and to home owners that house scale batteries are a good idea.
Are there yet any EVs out there where you actually have control over the software? Or are there any where you could conceivably root the firmware and use open source updates and 3rd party services when the support timeline ends or the manufacturer folds?
My 2019 Hyundai Kona electric is a "dumb" car. Does not even have built-in nav. There is no connectivity, no app, no spying. Hyundai can vanish from existence tomorrow and the car would not even be aware of this happening. I don't care about it's software, because there is nothing to care about.
It's just a dumb-ass car that goes when I need it to go.
It comes with (wired) Android Auto, which is probably it's nicest and most advanced user feature.
I was under the impression that fast charging requires an up to date ssl certificate, so a manufacturer going down might affect that. Can’t seem to find a source for this though.
I'm not aware of this. The manual says nothing about it. My kona does max 77kW, but most of the chargers in Ireland is 50kW. Honestly I've bot really had the need for faster than 50 anyway.
I'm curious as to why one might need an SSL cert for charging an ev though?
Nissan Leaf Visia owner here. The car is the most basic of 4 trim lines. I installed Nissan app and couldn't connect the car and found out that connectivity feature is not available for my basic car.
My 2019 Kia Niro has some not-worthwhile connected service you can simply say No to. It is then a fully offline car. Assigning ownership involves handing someone the key fob.
I'm thinking that at least with phones you can get an Android and pretty much take it over fully and still have all the services^. I wonder if that will ever happen for cars.
^ Edit: Honestly I don't have any experience with this, but I assume you still need access to Google for notifications etc., so maybe not
Species purposely introduced by humans would be considered artificial not 'natural' selection. If the cats swam over to the island of their own volition as a survival strategy though, that would blow my mind.
So, would ticks brought to a new prairie by bisons. So, would seed brough by the feces of migrant birds.
Yes, we can CHOOSE any moral framework, including one where we introduce this arbitrary notion of artificiality to treat the impact of homo sapiens as a distinct category. But let's not treat this as science. I wouldn't go so far to call it as a religion, but it is still on the realm of ethics and philosophy.
We can even have pragmatical reasons for choosing so, like the need for a particular eco-system to stay in a given state for our own confort, health and economic reasons. But it is still an arbitrary choice.
Species migrate by themselves in the nature, sometimes they play havoc on the existing biome they migrate themselves into. This was, it is, and it will be a significant driver of evolution long after we are gone from earth.
And on this particular case, it is not even like we are restoring the island to some idealized, pristine steady state. Cats are not the only species that piggyback on our civilization to spread, we also have the domestic mouse. If anything, completely eliminating the cat from those islands will serve only to ensure that the domestic mouse will be the dominant species there.
> So, would ticks brought to a new prairie by bisons
Ah, no. Nature is specifically what has unadulterated by humans. If humans are involved, it's not natural. I didn't make up the words, but that's exactly what it is. At least if you're talking about nature as being distinct from something else. If you're talking about nature writ large, then there is no distinction, but we're not talking cosmology here.
> we can CHOOSE any moral framework
I was only making clear the distinction between natural and unnatural.
But, to take on this argument, cats and mice are exotic pest species in many places. You might object to them being called pest, but their existence is usually at the extinction risk of native species. It's fair to say there'll be enough cats and mice around the world. You could say that we should just let whatever thrives to thrive, but I'd argue the world would be a more boring place without native species, and indeed ecosystems can collapse from the introduction of exotic species, potentially even causing existential risk to the introduced species (including us humans).
Sure, "we broke it so we should try to help maintain it" is entirely an ethical question and not a scientific one.
Are you satisfied now? Can we go back to talking about the problem instead of arguing about the definition of "natural"?
...but wait, you're the one that introduced the word "natural" to this conversation, using it as a reason to do nothing. That's ridiculous. If everything is natural, then your argument would say we should never do anything ever.
You can't have it both ways. If you want to use such a wide-reaching definition of natural, then you can't also use "natural" as a motivation to not intervene.
I think intention matters here. It’s great for those people who are helped by Mr. Beast, but it’s coming from a place of ego and profit, not charity. Happy for those helped, but it’s still a little unseemly.
However, I do think Musk genuinely likes to help people^ (e.g. Puerto Rico and Ukraine), but also I feel his response to the (valid) rejection of his help by the divers in Thailand was ungracious and maybe a little telling. Hopefully he’s grown since then
The nice thing about being a billionaire is that you can finally care about other things besides making more money. For a period of time, Musk was the richest man in the world. When they drop to second place or below, they have a tradition of saying “Thank you” to the person that surpassed them.
Where else was my comment posted? It's strange that it's still getting replies and likes.
> you can finally care about other things besides making more money
I think his 'philanthropic' efforts pre-date the point where he was the richest man in the world. But tbf, his philanthropy was always tied to promotion of his various enterprises (e.g., deploying free batteries, solar, satellite internet), so it can't be entirely disentangled from his business interests. In the counterfactual where he just had the shirt on his back, figuratively speaking, he wouldn't give it up for someone more in need.
By my measure, he isn't a giving person, but he's always on the search for win-wins. i.e., how can I help people, and grow my business, and build cool shit. Building cool shit is his core drive, and everything else is incidental. Which kind of explains bad business decisions like buying Twitter. Though he hasn't really done anything 'cool' with that – it's more just his curious plaything.
> He likes to help people if he can come out as a hero, otherwise you’re a "pedo"
I made reference to exactly this if you read carefully. I actually think this rejection is an inflection point in his behavior. He ought to have been more gracious and received the rejection without hurt to his ego (and reacting as he did). I think since then he’s wrongly viewed that event as ‘No good deed goes unpunished’ and become more and more defiant in his attitude.
> what would make you reconsider seeing him as a genuinely helpful person?
I don’t believe that people are immutably good or evil. Certainly I would regard him returning to a more ‘can-do’ and less combative role in society to be very ‘helpful’. He has a history of effectively marshaling resources towards difficult problems, he has a lot of capital at his disposal, and if he could return to doing that in a more egalitarian fashion he could literally change the world for the better. But first he’d have to put his ego in the back seat
> I made reference to exactly this if you read carefully. I actually think this rejection is an inflection point in his behavior. He ought to have been more gracious and received the rejection without hurt to his ego (and reacting as he did). I think since then he’s wrongly viewed that event as ‘No good deed goes unpunished’ and become more and more defiant in his attitude.
> I made reference to exactly this if you read carefully.
> Hopefully he’s grown since then
Elon Musk has been in the news pretty regularly between the Thai cave rescue and now. I am not sure how someone could have an opinion on the man that has somehow been suspended in time since 2018, but if you’re unaware of what he’s been up to since then here are some updates regarding his personal growth.
This makes sense. “Growth” can be skewed if you only look at a person’s words and actions. The side of the equation that we imagine in our minds has be weighed equally lest we take a combination of a person’s own words about their values and thoroughly documented and uncontested accounts from others as being somehow reflective of a person’s character.
> “Growth” can be skewed if you only look at a person’s words and actions
I guess my point is that his words and actions haven't been one sided. e.g., He assists Ukraine, but he also supports Trump who has implied he will withdraw US support and force a 'peace', which likely will be at the expense of Ukrainian territory and embolden Russia to make future incursions in neighboring countries. He kickstarted the battery and electric mobility revolution, but he isn't really that concerned about the environment or conservation. I'm sure there's plenty more contradictions, but I'm not inclined to take this discussion further.
I'm not sure what to make of all of this, and I don't think there's anyone who credibly has enough insight into his mind to say. But certainly, the links you provided describe his words and actions, I don't dispute that, however cherry picked they may be.
Exactly. If we simply imagine that a person’s actions contain contradictions then we can properly imbue them with a complex unknowability that elevates them from human to mythological enigma.
Where a simple mind might look at Musk and Russia and conclude “he supports Russia” based off his words and actions or similarly conclude that he has no interest in the environment or conservation based on the same process of observation, a wiser person makes the extra effort to reject coherence in order to become retroactively confused.
Everything you said is right. Everything I said is wrong. Wisdom can't beat Very Smart, so go give yourself a pat on the back for 'winning the argument' with your deep and canny observations. Maybe one day, you, too, will outgrow your gifted child persona. Hope springs eternal.
Also, crucially, Starlink has been proactive in trying to disconnect Russian operatives who have managed to attain a Starlink connection. All the same, Elon’s backing of Trump doesn’t bode well for a good outcome for Ukraine (nor other ex-USSR satellites that are feeling very nervous right now)
"causing something to happen rather than responding to it after it has happened". Instead Elmo denied the fact russians had working terminals in the first place, and was later forced by State Dep to enact some measures. Those measures are still ineffective as evidenced by recent Starlink controlled Iranian Shahed drone sighting.
I misspoke. They've been very quick to react to Ukranian intel. If they were staffed, perhaps they'd have the capability to be proactive, but I can't necessarily say they would be motivated to, esp. when the military is doing that for them. And the Ukr. military are perhaps more effective because they know where their communication centers are supposed to be under the fog of war. That said, I'm only going on what has been said in public
Or put another way Musk is anti censorship, anti war in Ukraine, anti complying with the Harris/Biden agenda to deplatform political rivals such as they did 4 days after Biden took office, forcing Pre Musk Twitter/X and Facebook to do their bidding - or else. Turns out the ones squawking loudest about the other being a threat to democracy are in fact the ones actively working against our Constitutional Rights. And I’m a lifelong Democrat who changed to Indy and won’t support these clowns going forward. Wake up before the US is just like the UK and the police are at your door because of a post they disagree with - fuck the first amendment, right? Just like Harris and Walz just said, the first amendment doesn’t protect misinformation or hate speech… actually; it 100% does but the boomer news is gonna try to make us all believe more of their lies.
I can't agree more, I'm a black lifelong Democrat and I'm fed up with their lies. Nowadays I only get my information from Truth Social and I finally realized how evil Democrats are.
You made the above statement in response to one user, and then a different user replied who has a 9-month-old account and 1/3 of his comments include "Tesla":
You called it. The astroturfing is off the charts! And the user who replied to your comment pulled the "As a black man" routine just like the user you replied to. LOL.
Tesla doesn't even have a PR team because Musk is cheap and Musk totally pays me(a highly paid DevOps/SRE btw) to astroturf by offering me 7 figures! Please get a grip on reality.
Yes, it’s sad, but I guess it’s expected. Elon bought Twitter to have a propaganda platform, use it for himself, and sell disinformation-as-a-service. Why wouldn’t he pay for astroturfing on popular websites as well? A website like HN where you can find a lot of tech people and investors. It’s easy, it’s cheap, it’s mean. I see no reason he wouldn’t.
I've been a lifelong liberal and won't vote Democrat after seeing how SpaceX and Tesla are being treated by the liberal media, including the publishing of outright fake news by so called reputable outlets. I don't support Trump or Putin or dictators in general. If I vote Republican at some point it'd be an anti-Democrat vote.
Yeah right, but they get awarded plenty of contracts from NASA, which is a money flowing from a Democratic government to SpaceX. Call it what you will, but it doesn't sound like the actions of the government as an institution match up with this rhetoric that Democrat governance is hurtful to Elon's companies.
> really really hard to exclude Tesla
Whatever they really really did didn't actually matter in the end though did it? I'm sure if they tried really really really hard, they could have just stopped it outright with an executive order.
But really, it makes more sense for EV subsidies went towards companies in competition with the leader that doesn't really need it. More competitors means more jobs, and lower prices. Giving subsidies to the established leader (by a whopping large margin) isn't really doing anything useful.
Yeah right, but they get awarded plenty of contracts from NASA, which is a money flowing from a Democratic government to SpaceX. Call it what you will, but it doesn't sound like the actions of the government as an institution match up with this rhetoric that Democrat governance is hurtful to Elon's companies.
Biden held an EV summit in 2021 and didn't invite Tesla.
At the summit he called GM's CEO Mary Barra the pioneer of EVs when GM produced only 28 EVs that quarter and Tesla like 200K.
They also tried to make the EV subsidies not apply to Tesla.
On Reddit any positive news about SpaceX like the first private spacewalk is actively downvoted by democrats and liberals. And any negative news is hugely amplified whether true or not. Mods of large subreddits hand out permanent bans and remove posts if you comment against the narrative even when sourcing official SpaceX responses.
> On Reddit any positive news about SpaceX like the first private spacewalk is actively downvoted by democrats and liberals. And any negative news is hugely amplified whether true or not. Mods of large subreddits hand out permanent bans and remove posts if you comment against the narrative even when sourcing official SpaceX responses.
Looking at this thread, I'm seeing that it's the anti-Elon commenters that have been downvoted, flagged, and silenced. And instead there seems to be a lot of conspicuously biased anti-Democrat Elon supporters who seem untarnished. So I'm not buying these claims of persecution.
As for your claims around subsidies, see my responses to the sibling comments – assuming your not a bot.
Depends on the price of batteries, which are rapidly declining. Within the next few years the numbers will change in favor of batteries. Though it also depends on the load and having enough space/sunlight for the solar array
I can buy a used diesel/propane/gas/pick your fuel generator today for a few hundred bucks that could power most of the essentials in my house. I bought a brand new one during an extended power outage due to storms last year for $500 CAD. That and 80L of gas (~$120 CAD) can run my sump pumps, fridge, freezer, the electronic side of my furnace, my homelab server rack (including 6 PoE access points), my workstation, and key lighting - for 5 days. If I cut that back to essentials, closer to 3 weeks. That’s roughly 200kWh for $120, plus $500 up front.
Currently, the absolute cheapest I can find lithium batteries (I am planning a solar+grid load-balancing setup) is about $160CAD/kwh. To prepare for the worst case (i.e. minimal solar generation during and following the storm - say, middle of winter/happens to be cloudy/panels are damaged/etc) I’d need to spend over $30,000 in batteries alone to have the same capacity as $120 of gas. Not to mention the sheer amount of space that would take. And the cost of solar panels (10kW actual generation capacity, minimum, to keep essentials running), at roughly $1/W in Canada, adds another $10,000 to that estimate. And that’s not including the cost of installation, which based on what I’ve heard, probably adds another $10-20k.
While there are some interesting advances being made, I do not believe that battery capacity costs will decrease by 3-4 orders of magnitude “within the next few years,” unless you anticipate gasoline/diesel/etc prices to go parabolic. It’s very obvious why people would much rather have a generator and some Jerry cans for a few hundred bucks than a solar + battery setup that costs more than their car.
> I do not believe that battery capacity costs will decrease by 3-4 orders of magnitude “within the next few years,”
Fair call for lithium chemistries, which will probably drop closer to one order of magnitude within 2-3 years (if the trend from the last year-to-date holds). But if we're talking about sodium ion, I wouldn't be surprised if that did drop by a couple of orders of magnitude, which is already sitting about ~140USD/kwh for consumer packs (but before shipping from China). It has a weird discharge voltage curve and needs a more capable inverter to handle it though, but at the prices I'm seeing, overcapacity is plenty affordable.
The solar and batteries have much lower emissions, and can be used as all times (not just during power outages) to lower the cost of electricity. Anyway it doesn't have to be generator or solar + batteries... Why not both? Have the solar, reduce emissions and utility bills. Have the generator as a backup if power is out and batteries are empty.
That's what I'm currently in the planning phases for. Break-even is still the better part of a decade on parts alone, unless you get very creative (for instance, where I live, I can choose to have a special time-of-use electrical billing program where overnight electricity is ~60% cheaper than usual; you can make use of this to charge batteries overnight, rely on solar when it's sunny, and batteries during the more expensive times-of-use).
The overall point though, is that solar and/or batteries are not a viable alternative for emergency backup power, nor will they be "within the next few years." Within the next few decades, maybe.
My quick math came up short on batteries. But as you say, it's worth running those numbers every year. I can't imagine I'll be sitting here in 2030 saying "batteries aren't there yet".
> I can't imagine I'll be sitting here in 2030 saying "batteries aren't there yet".
Or if you're looking now at sodium ion. It's only just hitting the consumer market, but it's already cheap enough for energy storage at the scale GP is talking about. Might take a few years for cell quality, inverter, and charging technology to improve, but by 2030 it will be so dirt cheap to the point that it would be economically sensible for any household.
Last year, when I did the math, batteries still had a 15 year payoff time. I'm not going to be in this house in 15 years. If the state subsidized it more (it is kind of a public good imo), or I could easily roll it into house value, I'd do it.
I'm trying to move to a nicer house. When I do that, I'll almost certainly just go for it.
I'm not sure whether you read my comment, but I was specifically talking about sodium ion which are absurdly cheap even before efficiencies of scale enter the equation. I don't think many are doing the math on that because it's only just become available on Alibaba. BMSes and chargers don't really exist for it yet, but there are whole battery packs for sale.
No, I read your comment. I was just thinking about 2030.
Also, no offense, but I'm not trusting a brand new energy storage technology bolted to the wall of my house. I'll businesses trial it out first for a few years.
I’m not saying privacy doesn’t matter, I’m saying that there aren’t any enforced guardrails on this growth mechanism to protect it. It’s an illusion of choice. Government intervention is really needed here
> This race may even be the answer to the Fermi paradox
The mostly unchallenged popular notion that fleshy human intelligence will still be running the show 100s – let alone 1000s – of years from now is very naive. We're nearing the end of the human supremacy, though most of us won't live to see that end.
To be fair fleshy human intelligence has hardly been running the show any more than a bear eating a salmon out of a river thus far. We’d like to consider we can control the world yet any data scientist will tell you what we actually control and understand is very little, or at best a sweeping oversimplification of this complex world.
> has hardly been running the show any more than a bear eating a salmon out of a river thus far
Exactly. We're on an super-linear growth curve. Looking at the earth on a timescale since biological life emerged, it would seem that intelligent squishy life appeared for a split second and then an entirely artificial intelligent life took over from then on.
The bigger deal about the M-series performance and efficiency is SoC, not the ISA. This is something that could take off in the x86 world though it stifles upgradeability
This is a laptop chip, though. Upgradeability seems to be not a thing anymore at this point anyway (besides maybe an m2 slot or two). I don't think Lunar Lake even supports non-soldered memory even if the laptop manufacturer wanted to use DIMMs.
I agree. It's getting more and more pointless to avoid SoC. No need to do expensive bus transports when you can just stay on-die. The only upgradeability that's needed is to swap out entire SoCs.
reply