ppf

You mean, like a mainframe? Tech goes round in circles, more like.

Apparently, 51% attacks aren't enough to put off investors, as ETC had 3 of them in one month last year.

In this use case, hydrogen forms a fairly inefficient way of transferring energy from renewable sources to your car. As well as that, you have severe problems with distribution and storage - the pressures required are frankly terrifying as an end-user, and hydrogen embrittlement of any steel in contact with the hydrogen is also a big problem.

Counterpoint: many atrocities have been made acceptable to the general population, in the name of "public health" (or at least, the greater public good).

For me, "the greater good" does not over-ride personal critical analysis.

GRUB

I have worked hard to wean myself off the harmful effects of (mostly social) tech, and will do my utmost to pass these lessons on to my kids. My wife and I even have ideas like having a wifi-free house.

Yes, and we just threw away what little shared child-raising community we did have with Covid restrictions. Raising children isolated and alone is absolutely against every instinct, and (I think) incredibly bad for the long-term health and welfare of all involved.

We will see how this plays out, but in my experience so far, it's women who have ended up returning to defacto and fulltime childcarers. Our response as a culture to Covid may mark the high point of women's progress in the workplace.

I spent a while on this path - removing apps, hiding others, setting personal time limits or other restrictions on my phone usage. At each step on the way, all I learned is that I need to go further. Short of getting rid of your smartphone (which I have now done), the most effective thing I found was to make sure you put your phone in some fixed place in the house where you won't typically look at it (a shelf in the kitchen, in my case), ideally with it turned off. Even then, I would find after a few days that my phone was back in my hand and I had been wasting a lot of time on it.

There are no easy answers, sorry. You'll always find a way around any lockdown you do.

Horses take a lot less energy and rare minerals to produce than Teslas, superchargers, and solar panels.

Edit: You can also do multi-level agriculture, unlike solar panels

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvopasture

Horse and buggy is more sustainable than either ICE or EV. It's about the most efficient way to convert the power of the sun into forward movement!

The next Covid-19 variant?

How did it do that, while not just creating a regular second wave like most of the Western world?

Of course it didn't go away. So you are saying that Western countries, that took all the Covid precautions, had an early second wave. However, a densely populated country that took very few precautions didn't have a second wave, but a deadly version months later? Do you have any references for the idea that India is suffering from a new variant of Covid?

For that matter, do we have any accurate information about the situation in India, except some choice photos in the media?

How did it take so long for India to have a second wave?

I enjoyed your little moment of US exceptionalism, assuming that I am in one of the dumber states, as well as the opening call to authority.

Your references, in order:

1. This would be light on detail for a Medium blog post. "Reported extreme weather events" depends wildly on measurement, reporting, and public communication criteria, none of which is quantified. As another commenter pointed out, "extreme weather" is also not the same thing as "unpredictable weather".

2. Is a largely an investigation of what would happen if global temperatures increased, along with some computer projections of future weather conditions. This is not proof of anything.

3. I'm not sure what to make of this, especially as the original video is not referenced. "Warning of climate change" is not the same as "climate change is happening".

4. This Mashable article, again, does not link the original documents that Shell wrote.

I'm not sure of the status of science education where you live, but referencing pop-sci articles that reference companies that once wrote a report about climate change does not constitute serious research.

Humour me. It's certainly a recent scientific fact, if so.

The idea that "weather is increasingly unpredictable" is also presented as a fact.

Anything. Cars, bikes, electronics, kids toys, furniture.

Personally, I'm able to enjoy the lifestyle I do because I buy second hand. I'm also able to add value by repairing items, although as you say, there is the risk that someone is dumping broken items on you. You just have to be discerning, and possibly experience getting burned a few times.

Would you rather buy a high-quality item, and factor in its resale value as part of your decision-making process, or buy a cheap item that will be thrown away when you're done with it?

Do you think the purchasers of quality but second hand goods could afford to buy them new?

I have two very young children, one of whom was born during 2020. I can tell you that raising kids that young, with both parents trying to WFH, and the lack of any support of any kind at all thanks to Covid restrictions, was a soul-crushing experience that I do not ever want to repeat. I do appreciate that my experience is a little unique, though.

>Yes, 13 cents per kg of dead batteries, working out to US$7.30 per kg of lithium.

Your original comment said there was "23¢/kg of lithium" in waste batteries.

Concentration of lithium is not the only concern, and as you point out, we barely have a way to achieve this at any cost. If we're allowed to invoke future technology to solve this, then I'm going to continue driving my ICE car, because soon we will solve the problem of mass CO2 capture.

You speak the truth. "Recycling" is mostly a sham, that we allow to soothe our consciences for living such an unsustainable lifesytle.

A close friend of mine gained a Masters's degree in the subject, intending to work towards our new utopian recycling society, and even he doesn't complain any more when I tell him that the best thing we can do with our "Recycling" is highly controlled incineration and heat extraction.

You're assuming that it takes less than 13 cents / kg to extract that lithium.

Personally, my issue with EV battery (and electronics!) lifecycles is for precisely the opposite reason - the quarries and landfills in question are far far away from the places where EVs are actually used. All that most people will see is a local reduction in air pollution, so unless the topic is discussed, the general perception will be that all is well.

It's tough. HN is the last of my social accounts. I'm really trying to limit it to once a day - you really don't miss anything, and it intrudes far less into your day.

In my opinion, the main Facebook site is now hard to get addicted to as a new user. I recently made a new account (having deleted my personal one years ago) for a local group, and found the site un-navigable and frustrating beyond belief. I suppose its current denizens are contendedly trapped in the time-suck, but it's a different experience as a new user.

And not just for the vaccines, but the choices made in Covid policies and mandates.

Indeed, which is why a careful examination needs to be made of the energy and resource cycles involved. It'll be interesting if we ever switch to an energy economy fuelled entirely by PV (or similar), and seeing how the energy economics plays out. This is aside from the various minerals needed to continually replenish our new green energy sources, and what we do with the complex and poisonous wastes produced.

As for your comments on China - they certainly don't have any issues allowing widespread pollution and industrial poisoning of their people and land.

>The whole 'it's all powered by fossil fuels' argument is a bit old now

It'll only be "old" when China reduces the amount of coal (and mostly brown coal) that it uses to manufacture all this stuff for us. They have enormous reserves, it won't happen any time soon.

Proponents of green energy and electrification of various domestic items are perfectly willing to support externalising various costs onto others, just to give one example.

Edit: Allow a lithium mine, or a rare earth processing plant, or an electrical waste site, in your back yard, and be happy that it provides employment for those around you, and then we can talk.

The only way that it's possible for energy-containing raw materials to be more expensive than complex, manufactured sources of energy generation, is government interference (and the corresponding lack of in the places that the solar panels and the like are actually manufactured, as well as an abundant source of fossil fuels to power that manufacture).