Well, I guess what I mean is if the situation is as I describe in my previous comment, then anyone who did have the money to fight it would be a shoe-in. It's a much stronger case than, for example, the ongoing lawsuits by Matthew Butterick and others (https://llmlitigation.com/).
I'm seriously sick of that whole "laundering copyright via AI"-grift - and the destruction of the creative industry is already pretty noticable. All the creatives who brought us all those wonderful masterworks with lots of thought and talent behind, they're all going bankrupt and getting fired right now.
It's truly a tragedy - the loss of art is so much more serious than people seem to think it is, considering how integral all kinds of creative works are to a modern human live. Just imagine all of that being without any thought, just statistically optimized for enjoyment... ugh.
Sorry for the late reply, was way too tired yesterday.
The most extreme situation is concept artists right now. Essentially, the entire profession has lost their jobs in the last year. Or casual artists making drawings for commission - they can't compete with AI and mostly had to stop selling their art. Similar is happening to professional translators - with AI, the translations are close enough to native that nobody needs them anymore.
The book market is getting flooded with AI-crap, so is of course the web. Authors are losing their jobs.
Currently, it seems to be creeping into the music market - not sure if people are going to notice/accept AI-made music. All the fantastic artists creating dubs are starting to go away as well, after all you can just synthesize their voices now.
The currents and voltages involved are going to make that a non-starter. Do you really want random people messing with those? The solar inverters are also sized that big for a reason.
At least in countries with strong regulations around working with electricity this is simply not going to be feasible.
I've been in the PV business for some time now and seen a person get killed by it. It's not pretty. Still remembering that smell of burnt flesh... Now, to be fair, that was at a 12MW-installation, not on a roof. But still...
> The currents and voltages involved are going to make that a non-starter. Do you really want random people messing with those?
As part of our daily lives, a great many of us climb into a steel box powered by explosions and packing a 20 gallon container of flammable liquids (and increasingly several hundred pounds of also flammable batteries containing more electricity than an average family uses in a week) and then pilot that box at 80Mph down a strip of concrete packed with other large high-speed objects containing flammable liquids. Occasionally, we run low on flammable liquids in our high-speed metal box and get to refill the flammable liquid container ourselves at a flammable liquids depot, which contains upwards of 40,000 gallons of the flammable liquid delivered by other larger high-speed metal boxes which also share the same strip of concrete with us.
So: I'd expect some product safety iteration here before we get to the "roll out your own solar panels", but no, I don't consider that a non-starter.
But you can see fuel. You can't see currents and it's not trivially visible which things you can touch at all, which things you can touch at the same time, which protection to wear, how to deal with the potentially fatal flashing arcs, ...
PV installations on roofs typically have around 10-20kW peak output.
Let's go with 10kW. That's around 25 panels, each outputting 30V with something like 13A. Small installations are typically single-stringed, so you end up with a voltage of 25*30V=750V with 13A DC. That's pretty likely to kill you within milliseconds if you mess up.
There's a reason that stuff tends to be handled by professionals. It's a ridiculous (and pointless) risk if you aren't well educated about it and have some experience.
You could probably make a system sockets that communicate with each other before exchanging any serious power. You could digitally sign cables, and add shielding to make them detect cuts..
I'm not saying it's a future we should want :)
But isn't that kind of how super chargers work?
Of course, until all our grid hook ups are smart, we'll probably need electricians at some point.
Enphase systems work as you describe. Each panel has its own AC inverter, and they from a mesh network and run sanity checks for shorts, etc. before exporting power.
There are lots of boxes in our house that do 16 amps at 120V. Some do 240V, and some do higher than that, and some of those are next to sinks or in high-humidity environments. The voltages and currents for solar panels (especially if you use 240V microinverters) don't seem like a non-starter to me.
That's AC. The panels are DC. That makes a big difference.
That said, the point of "do it yourself" is that you'd nake it less dangerous for ordinarily folk. So the risk of shocks would come down.
What would concern me more is long-term fire risk. If not installed correctly, with the right spec parts etc, proper grounding etc, there's a significant risk of fire. Not immediately perhaps, but a couple years down the road.
Again DIY kits would need to be designed with this in mind.
> That's AC. The panels are DC. That makes a big difference
What's the qualitative difference between 16 amps at 120V and PH
v DC? Either is enough to kill a person if mishandled, and yet Home Depot sells breaker boxes over the counter.
750 volts will not kill you in single-digit milliseconds, but rather hundreds of milliseconds (or not at all), and it's probably worth it to run the extra wire to not be single-stringed
To be fair, it didn’t start that way and there are decades of design, legislation and safety regulations around all this, along with infrastructure for licensing/certifying capabilities, tracking and policing capabilities and mistakes over time, insurance, yada yada.
And you know how much mockery Oregon and New Jersey get, for believing gasoline is so heinously dangerous as to require trained dispenser operators? Meanwhile the rest of us just pump it into our own cars like adults.
It's funny to look at electricity from the same perspective.
It has nothing to do with safety. It's pure protectionism. The point is to keep small gas stations competitive by imposing labor costs on larger gas stations.
Friendly Neighborhood Handyman checking in here. Average Home Depot customer? Absolutely not unless there's some plan to quadruple suburban emergency services budgets. On the other hand I get pretty tired of sneaking around local restrictions on electrical work. Residential electrical work isn't exactly complex and I can't devote a couple years to working as someone else's laborer to get a cert. I'm perfectly capable of handling 100% of a residential solar install (including battery backup) and it's aggravating af to have to go find an electrician to bribe to get permits and inspections.
My work meets or exceeds code requirements, every project, every time. If I encounter anything where I don't already have relevant code committed to memory I stop what I'm doing and go look it up. How many tradesmen do you know that can say the same with a straight face? Anyway I'm fine with pulling permits and having my work inspected, I prefer it even when possible.
Around here you can buy a permit if you’re a homeowner. You then have to set up the inspections and actually do all the work properly, but there are no restrictions like that. The inspecting agency publishes documentation about what to read and common pitfalls even.
I can pull my own permits for carpentry and masonry work, structural stuff, but that's about it, and only for my personal residence. Homeowners here are barred from systems work of any kind, and it takes a contractor's license to pull permits when working on someone else's home.
I see how you'd think that but it isn't the case. Where I live only licensed electricians are allowed to do any work more involved than changing a light fixture. As an example I've got a 1600 square foot detached shop on property I recently purchased. There isn't six inches of wiring in the entire building that is up to code. My options are ignore it and risk a fire or electrocution, spend >$15,000 to get the building rewired, or spend $3,000 on materials and risk a life-altering fine and/or jailtime if I get caught fixing it myself.
I'd be satisfied if I could simply sit the licensure exam and maybe have to pay extra to do some kind of practical demonstration. Local requirements for residential licensure include documented multi-year experience as an electrician's helper before you can even apply to take the exam.
Ironically batteries is what makes it feasible - I can dump excess into battery instead of paying 3x more for install so I get hooked up to grid in a certified way.
Jay Leno talks about installing solar on his house (which he did himself) and commenting that he was getting shocked a lot, bc as soon as the PVs are in the sun, they're making electricity. He said it made handling the units tricky.
I installed an additional 12 505Wp panels by myself last weekend, the panels came with MC4 connectors installed which is pretty standard I think. Hard to get zapped by solar DC juice that way.
BTW: installing solar panels DIY is apparently super easy, as I found out. I have a flat roof and used micro inverters, to make it easier, but I was done in less than a day (excluding selecting the components and layout)
A small current is going to flow internally, but nothing else happens. It's quite normal to have solar panels running with zero load in regions with lots of PV - reason being, that the carriers need to keep their electricity nets stable and have to carefully balance electricity entering and leaving the net.
At least in Germany, every PV installation of certain size (> 30kW peak) is mandated to be able to be shutdown remotely by the carrier if you supply electricity for the net and aren't just using it for yourself. (You get paid the same during shutdowns, just like it were running. Otherwise it would be quite damaging and likely reduce adoption of PV)
Point being: no, it doesn't hurt the panels and is a regular ocurence.
The generated power will be dissipated through the panel as heat, AFAIK.
Which means that in winter, probably nothing, because it's cold, but on a hot summer day with peak sun, the heat might start damaging the cells. How much exactly you'd have to look at studies.
My guess is the output will permanently degrade by a few % per year if the panel is not connected. Might go down to 80% way quicker than normal (25-yr)
> The generated power will be dissipated through the panel as heat, AFAIK.
Solar panels are not constant-power devices. In an open circuit, they will generate their open circuit voltage at nearly zero current (except minor internal leakage), and thus nearly zero power. In a short circuit, they will generate nearly zero voltage, and thus also nearly zero power. To get maximum power out of a solar panel requires maximum power-point tracking (MPPT), where the load is adjusted such that the product of voltage and current (that is, power) is optimized for the current conditions; while significant power can be delivered to a fixed load, there's no real power being generated without a load.
The thermal power of the sun will heat the panel, to the extent that it is not reflected. But no electrical power (or any power) is being "generated" by the panel, the panel is just absorbing photons like anything else with low albedo.
That's just nitpicking. There is thermal power generated from the electromagnetic power from the sun and GP is right that a solar panel turned off will be hotter than one turned on.
And if that was the original poster's intent, I apologize for nitpicking. My impression was that the use of "generating power" in the given (open circuit) context suggested a fundamental misunderstanding of the behavior of solar cells in this situation on behalf of the poster, and thought I might clarify; and perhaps even if the original poster understood this already, someone else learned something.
Think of what happens to a normal roof tile in the sun: it absorbs solar energy as heat and also reflects some and radiates some away. A solar panel is the same (though a bit more reflective), but when a load is connected some of the solar energy is converted to current instead of being absorbed as heat. Therefore the panel is a little cooler when a load is applied.
There is no power. Power is IV, current times voltage. The voltage will be the rated voltage of the panel at that sunlight level, but the current is 0 (minus some very, very small (microamp) internal currents).
Alternately, power can be expressed as V^2/R. But in an open circuit R is infinite, so again, zero power.
There is ~1000W/M2 of electromagnetic power from the sun, and if it's not turned into electrical power it will be turned into thermal power, thus heating up the panel.
But as noted by sibling comment, that heated panel will then begin to transfer that heat back into its environment, as a function of its temperature difference with its environment.
So as long as manufacturers engineer their panels to be tolerant of the maximum heat at a site (i.e. full sun, maximum temperature), the panels won't be harmed in any meaningful way. They'll just heat up a bit faster than if they were providing current.
Is ther a difference between "electromagnetic power" and "thermal power" here? If a panel is not connected, there is no conversion and the surface is warmed - just like any other surface exposed to the sun gets warmed.
PV panels are just like charged capacitor or a chemical battery with no loads: just holding unused potential differences with no damage to the unit.
Or have interconnecting cables, plugs, and sockets that are designed to prevent you from touching the conductors. Yeah you could probably still shock yourself but you'd bascially have to be trying to do it.
if it were really a problem moving forward and diy becomes the norm(which i doubt is the case) it's pretty trivial to apply an opaque sticker or cardboard covering to the panel during manufacture.
They're limited to pretty small sizes by german law - they are so insignificant that they're much less dangerous to handle. I'm not up to date on their ROI, but IIR they usually were a rather bad investment and more of a novel toy than a serious and reliable source of electricity.
Essentially, any notable installation fundamentally deals with much higher currents and voltages and as such is much, much more dangerous. Once a certain size is reached, the carrier also has to be involved and professional installation is mandatory, both due to the law and requirements by insurance companies.
At least here in germany. I've been involved with building all kinds of PV installations in bavaria, from 4kwp up to 20MWp. The balkony generators aren't taken seriously by anybody in the industry right now, at least.
> At least here in germany. I've been involved with building all kinds of PV installations in bavaria, from 4kwp up to 20MWp. The balkony generators aren't taken seriously by anybody in the industry right now, at least.
If you're working at that size, I'd expect you to ignore balcony systems regardless of how cost-effective they were.
My point here is simply and only that it's possible to make a system safe enough that an untrained and unskilled member of the general public can just plug it in and use it, which is exactly what was being called for up-thread with this:
> We should practically get to the point where someone can buy a roll of material at Home Depot and unravel it on their roof, nail it, and plug it in themselves.
Germany basically has that (even if it's not in the form of a roll); there's nothing fundamental preventing the USA from having it too.
They're sold for apartments, and as DIY jobs. They're designed to fit on a balcony just about wide enough to stand on, and to be installed without needing an expert.
The point of the example is to show that you don't need an expert. It's not even trying to show a specific unit that suits all people, just that one thing, that you don't need an expert to install it.
The voltages are the same regardless, because that's how domestic electricity works. (If you forced me to guess, I'd expect grid-scale PV farms to go direct to a higher voltage than domestic users, but I'm not an electrical engineer).
The law in Germany may prevent you hooking up ten, but that's not relevant to the point or the market.
Can Americans even hook up things this size on their rental apartment balconies?
> Plus without proper meter (or CT "limiter")
Difficult term to search for, so I'm unsure what that is exactly. I get links about inverters, and I'm sure you noticed this comes with one so it's probably not that.
And this relates to the impact of module mass on (supposedly) preventing DIY installation (despite my example of a DIY installable system) how exactly?
Homeowners work with 240v and tens of amps all the time across the country. Hell I wired a hot tub breaker panel and a car charger. Safe enough interlocks and it's a non issue
I would rather be zapped with a 240v AC current vs 240v DC current.
AC power crosses the zero line twice per cycle while DC does not. AC has a lower ‘let-go’ threshold, but DC contracts your muscles and makes it harder to let go.
You are correct though, if you de-energize your panelboard and have a deadfront cover over the line side conductors and lugs, working inside a panelboard (or on electrical wiring) is safe.
DC interferes with your heart's rhythm much, much less though, due to being constant. AC's frequency easily causes ventricular fibrillations even at low currents and voltages. AC is considered potentially lethal starting at 50V. For DC it's 120V, because it's significantly easier on your heart.
It’s the amperage that kills you, not the voltage. 5000VAC at a 1.0 nano amps is not going to be something you can feel, not even as something like static electricity.
We're talking about proper sources here where the voltage doesn't disappear as soon as you start mildly conducting. So volts and amps will be proportional in this context.
I don’t buy that the volts and amps will always be proportional. In my experience, the volts are usually pretty fixed, depending on the circumstances. Like 120VAC in most homes in the U.S., but variable amps — 15, 20, 30, 50, 100, etc…. Or 240VAC in Europe and certain other places around the world.
And if you want to talk about power lines, then the neighborhood medium voltage lines are going to be roughly the same in most places within the same jurisdictions, and distinct from the true high voltage lines that are used for long distance transmissions.
You are not conductive enough to get anywhere near 10% of the circuit's capacity. Therefore, the supply might as well be an infinite amp supply. You, in any particular situation, act as a particular ohm resistor. The amps that flow through you from mains voltage or big solar arrays will be directly proportional to the volts.
If a 120V 15A supply puts 50mA through you, then a 120V 100A supply will also put 50mA through you.
A supply that's "5000VAC at a 1.0 nano amps" really means that it starts at 5000 volts but super rapidly drops to zero volts as it conducts. A household supply is going to have negligible voltage drop by the time it turns deadly.
Edit: The other way to put it is that 99.9% of supplies don't give you a certain number of volts and amps. They give you a certain number of volts and they have an amp limit. If you're not approaching the amp limit then the only thing that matters is the volts.
I get what you're saying, amps are pulled, not pushed. But you should consider ohms law. Hand to foot, with a dry hand, typically is 400ohms. You can pull a lot of amps through 400 ohms if the voltage is high enough
The focus here is the 30-750 volt range with tens of amps, with a secondary mention of neighborhood power lines. For injury purposes, we can treat all of these as having unlimited amps available. By the time there's enough kilowatts going through your body to notice the curve shifting, we're well past the point of wondering whether or not you die.
My point is that the number of amps you can get from the circuit is irrelevant, it's "more than enough" and that's all you need to know beyond the voltage and the exact way the human is being exposed.
And houses are burning and people are being electrocuted regularly - being not only a hazard for themselves but also their entire neighbourhood. I certainly wouldn't want to live next to somebody who thinks they can handle their electricity installation by themselves.
for an offgrid installation it's feasable to possible to have an idiot proof system. It rise the cost, but I don't see why it would be impossible. I actually saw one at a store (not for roof but anyway).
Instead of running against windmills, try submitting patches and constructively improving the thing - it isn't going to go away, that much is safe to say. Every day yet another distro adopts it, at a steadily increasing pace.
Build extension packs, workarounds, etc. - similar to all the tools unfucking gnome 3 did, instead of fighting a hopeless battle.
I don't see FUD anywhere in my post. Did you accidentally reply to the wrong person?
My point was essentially, that if he thinks wayland is this bad, the poster should help improve it to their liking, instead of ranting - it's pretty widely adopted now, and just like systemd, little more than a few minor holdouts are going to be left a few years down the line.
Now, keep in mind, I'm not claiming that wayland is good or bad - just, that complaining is unproductive and improving helps much more.
Easily the cheapest way to get decorative pictures where reality doesn't matter much - at least for now, until the law in various countries catches up to this practice.
Happens a lot, mostly when US Companies with a majority of their customers in the US make changes without thinking about other countries/ taking them seriously.
Additionally, ToS really don't count for much in the EU, they're usually not enforcable anyway, if there's anything out of the ordinary at all. There's a whole lot of stuff in ToS nobody is ever going to be able to enforce at all.
They probably expected to fly under the radar, without making sure it's even okay everywhere. Well, that's not going to happen I guess.
I suppose it doesn't make a material difference if it's enforceable, since if you have personal data on their platform right now you have to assume it's been accessed or consumed in some form.
They obviously had an inent to start using the data for something, and given what I know about tech businesses, I wouldn't assume they only started once the ToS change was made. I would consider my data compromised.
That particular Vulture certainly won't fly in the EU.
Without a simple summarization for end users you can't just hide "unexpected" things in ToS-updates. And, well, a cloud-hoster deciding randomy to own your content hosted on servers you pay for is certainly neither expected nor typical.
Rimworld. Dyson Sphere Program. Cult of the Lamb. Escape from Tarkov. Furi. Getting over it with Bennett Foddy. Hollow Knight. Kerbal Space Program. Oxygen not included. Pillars of Eternity. Risk of Rain 2. Tyranny.
I'd say all of those do some major thing that makes them stand out.
Because the EU's overall attempt to disempower US tech giants is something SV simply doesn't like at all. A significant share of the users here are heavily invested in those companies - financially and otherwise - so obviously they won't ever encourage a future where tech companies are a part of society like every other one, without particular power.
And the more angry rants we get from SV-folks, the better we know that we're on the right track.
Not really, the US is still a bigger market, but even leaving that aside, I see more handwringing from actual EU citizens as to how this will impact their local markets and jobs, than from anyone actually in the US [0][1]. It's more like those in the US are simply pointing and laughing at the EU consistently shooting themselves in the foot rather than any actual disdain from them. It actually reminds me of those who make fun of cryptocurrency while those who've "invested" in cryptocurrency think we're just "mad" that we didn't make "gainz." No, mate, we're just laughing at people who fall for such misfortune.
HN is not typical of the general population of Europe, not even within the IT community. It self-selects for certain kinds of people. There are other IT communities, such as the CCC, that do not at all share the libertarian bent that HN tends to have.
I'm from the EU, and I'm not afraid that AI regulation is going to make my job disappear. There are other EU laws / rulings that I'm much more worried about (e.g. chat control, or for a mundane example, mandatory time tracking).
Meanwhile, if people from the US are "laughing at the EU consistently shooting themselves in the foot", I kindly suggest taking a close look at your own country before judging others.
It's a factor of 5 to 20 [1] in many cases.
Regular hosting is unbelievably cheap, especially in high traffic environments.
[1] https://tech.ahrefs.com/how-ahrefs-saved-us-400m-in-3-years-...
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