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Comment by gustavus | Hacker News Reader

So Texas almost got close to a blackout in the last 2 years?

Is this newsworthy, are we reporting on things that almost happened?

If you had lived through the last blackout and still lived in Texas, then absolutely yes it’s newsworthy. We want to grade our government accurately. Almost having a collapse again is a bad mark on the test score.

Yes, lets keep news coverage focused only on disasters after they've happened.

Let's keep our heads down in the sand when the cracks are starting to show and when there still might be time to adapt to what's going on before the disaster strikes.

Nothing happened, so nothing to see here. Everything is working perfectly, move along.

... Does something need to be an abject disaster in order to be newsworthy? This is so strange to me as a position.

In case you were asking this in good faith: Yeah, it is, for a buncha reasons. I'll theorycraft a few from my uneducated position:

1) There was a public mass email sent out, but followup wasn't forthcoming, so people might want to know what happened. People often turn to the news for this function.

b) There was grid failure that resulted in deaths because it got too cold out a while back, so people might want to know if it's likely to happen again, once more making the news about the conditions involved relevant, because it wasn't too cold this time.

iii) Some people rely on electricity to stay alive in a very-direct, medical sense, and might be so interested enough in the power grid's disposition to be concerned if someone at ERCOT farts out of turn.

Also, yes, the news routinely reports on things that almost happened. I don't even own cable TV and I know that.

It’s newsworthy if you live there when it’s 108 degrees in a house built such that it will easily reach 95-100 inside with just an hour of AC outage.

Which is basically every new house in Texas.

Regional blackouts are kinda common in Texas. The article briefly mentions the AC frequency doing too can damage the grid. This damage can actually lead to months long power outages for large regions.

Its newsworthy because of its frequency of occurrence.

I think the news is that they paid bitcoin miners to sit idle. The only other choice was to charge them more for power usage.

right, they save that second option for regular consumers.

AFAIK users have the option of signing up for the fixed rate plan or the variable rate plans when they sign up with their provider. That's why not everyone got hit with the multi-thousand dollar bills during 2021, they had benefitted from the lower pricing in general but were hung out to dry during these spikes.

Or just cut power to them. It's hardly on the level of critical infrastructure like a hospital, or 50,000 homes in 110+ degree F heat.

and because of the timing. a blackout or grid failure now would be incredibly deadly to vulnerable populations.

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