It’s worth noting that this is talking about plug in solar, so would be at standard mains voltage.

1kw would be around 4A in Europe, but 8A in the USA. Also, since resistive losses scale with I^2 that’s 4x the heat dumped in the walls.

At least in the UK, they tend to run 3 phase to a road, but only a single phase goes into a given house. You need to get a special hook up to get 3 phase to a domestic premise, and they don’t like doing it.

I had a chat about this with a friend who works for the national grid (UK).

Apparently the problem is keeping the grid balanced and stable. Basically, the grid struggles to react fast, so they plan ahead. Things like large scale solar can provide predictions on output. Home solar can’t.

When clouds pass over an area it can cause slumps and surges in the local grid. The more home solar, the worse it gets. The current grid is designed to work top down, with predictable changes in demand. It needs upgrading to deal with large scale bidirectional flows.

The plug in units are (potentially) even more ropey. If used properly, they are no worse than normal home solar. Unfortunately, being cheaper, there are worries over the microinverters not shutting down. Either due to the manufacturer cheaping out, or turning on an “off grid” mode.

There are also worries about overloading household circuits. Back feeding bypasses the household circuit breakers and RCDs. They could overload wall wiring and cause fires, or stop an RCD tripping, allowing for a person to be shocked.

I don’t know how much this would apply to the American Grid, but I would imagine it would be worse. Your grid is older and larger. You also use 120VAC which makes the current overload issue a lot worse.

I fully agree. The only thing to add is that a lot of the economic issues are due to the type of reactors used. The new designs could be a lot more economical. Unfortunately they get buried under the same red tape as the old bomb factory designs.

I suspect we won’t see a lot of them used until after fusion power renders them redundant.

I suspect it wouldn’t be anywhere near as effective. Torpedoes fill that roll already (at least mostly).

A shahed drone carrying a modified torpedo could be terrifying however. The drone gets into range quickly. The torpedo makes final approach. It would also be a lot quicker for Iran to develop and deploy.

Modern warships basically gave up on heavy armour. Instead they use manoeuvrability and suppressive fire. They are also intended to support each other in a fleet. A single warship, running close escort, loses all these advantages. It can’t outmanoeuvre an attack, and it lacks the firepower to suppress a heavy attack on its own. Iran would make a point to try and sink both the escort ship and its protected cargo ship.

In order to work, the American navy would have to run a full convoy. A far bigger logistical challenge.

Nuclear should be part of the solution. Unfortunately, most older plants are bomb factories, that happen to make power. No-one built the newer safe designs, till China got hold of the aborted UK designs.

At this point, most of the west doesn’t have the skilled personnel left to spin nuclear up quickly. We also no longer have the time to deal with building nuclear, as part of the near term solution to climate change.

As a parent, an extra layer of protection would be a positive. Balancing everything, and not leaving holes is hard enough, and I’ve yet to deal with the teenage phase.

As the same time, as a Netizen, the risk of abuse to datamine me is FAR too great.

The only way I would accept it is via zero knowledge proof type tokens. I can prove I am of age, but nothing more about me can be determined by any party.

The current laws seem aimed at using “protect the children” to remove anonymity from the web, and are a data miner’s wet dream.

They also likely have detailed plans and supplies set up for exactly this sort of action. It will be less “teenager with an AK” and more competent, trained soldiers fighting to protect his homeland from invaders.

It perplexed me quite a lot. I think it was the only way he could mentally maintain his worldview.

Dealing with that mindset is exhausting. I try and keep an open mind. Unfortunately it’s possible to have it so open your brain falls out.

I lost a good friend a similar way. He insisted there was a global conspiracy to suppress “free energy” (over unity generators), among other things.

My background allowed me to personally prove some of his arguments wrong from almost first principles. He then accused me of personally being part of the conspiracy. At that point I concluded he was a lost cause and parted ways.

Most of his “evidence” was in YouTube videos. I went through a couple. It mostly had the build-up, explanation, consequences, and conclusions. It missed any actual evidence. It’s amazing how someone can fill 2 hours with nothing of substance.

The UK used submarines during the Falklands war.

The decision was made to sink an Argentinian warship. Critically, they didn’t attack the escort ship. They left it to recover the sailors. Apparently it horrified the British command when it ran, leaving sailors in the water.

A simple radio message “Move and we will sink you. Take no offensive actions and we will give you 5 minutes to launch lifeboats first.” Hell, even a sonar ping would have given them half a chance.

You at least do what you can to give them a fighting chance.

A radio message would have at least let them abandon ship in a (semi) orderly manner. Hell, even a solar ping would have got them into life jackets.

Normally, a sub wouldn’t risk this. They knew in advance, however, that the ship was not currently armed.

Its more a problem with women’s cloths, but there are 2 factors in play. You make them bigger than the listed size and someone can suddenly squeeze into a smaller size. A 14 fitting into a 12 is a big dopamine hit, and so a powerful selling point.

Counter to that, reducing material usage can add up. 1/2 an inch off every pair of trousers adds up. For cheap clothes this is a noticeable saving.

Most men tend not to try clothes on in stores. This makes us dependent on the numbers. We react strongly to errors. This kept clothing makers fairly honest. That seems to be breaking down. They are trying the same tricks they use on women, and it’s annoying as hell!

The point is that the reasonable null hypothesis is flat. It’s the starting point, before you apply the scientific methods.

It’s quite simple to disprove that however, particularly if you have access to an ocean, or large body of water.

Isn’t that basically what Huel is?

The answer is quite mundane. I’ve a few friends in a (non-US) police force. The answer is that the rich/powerful are annoying as hell to go against.

They either know the law, or pay someone to know it for them. They can make obviously illegal things legal on paper. They can also nitpick everything. E.g. spending £5K on lawyers to get out of a £100 fine, since they don’t want to get the points. Any procedural mistakes, or paperwork errors can kill a case, or at least drag it out for years.

They also have contacts that can apply pressure. When their wife knows your boss’s, boss’s boss’s wife, they can make your life and career VERY uncomfortable.

End result, most officers learn to pick their battles with the rich and powerful. They will make your life hard, and will get away without everything being perfect.

In practice this can easily turn into taking the easy road. Even when the rich aren’t even technically in the right.

The rule of thumb with servers is

• Performance
• Reliability
• Power usage
• Noise
• Size

The trick is to remember you don’t actually need much performance. A home server isn’t generally a powerful machine. What matters is that it is always there.

A raspberry pi would actually make a wonderful server. It’s power efficient, small and quiet, with enough grunt to do most jobs. Unfortunately, it falls down on reliability. Arm servers seem more prone to issues than x64 servers. Pis also seems particularly crash prone. Crashing every 3-6 months isn’t an issue for most pi usages. When it’s running your smart home, it’s a pain in the arse.

I eventually settled on a intel NUC system. It’s a proper computer (no HDD on usb etc), with a very low power draw. It also seems particularly stable. Mine has done several years at this point, without a crash.

Bigger servers are only needed when you have too much demand for a low powered option, or need specialist capabilities 24/7. Very few home labbers will need one, in practice.

It’s also worth noting that you can slave a powerful, but power hungry system, to a smaller, efficient one. Only power it on when a highly demanding task requires sorting.

A friend had a radio isotope cancer treatment. He also built a geiger counter (for his own amusement). It was quite scary how much he set the thing off getting close to it!

Instructions were to not sleep in the same bed as anyone else for 2 nights, and limit closeness to people or pets for the same period.

I believe most are chemically pumped. Producing an electrically pumped laser, of sufficient power is not an easy task. Making it small enough to be useful is even harder.

The problem is that each shot costs more in materials than the drone. Lasers are also quite easy to counter, if deployed in mass (mostly by adding reflective foil coatings).

The uses of “ACHOO syndrome”!

Aka the photic sneeze reflex.

Apparently not everyone has this reflex.