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Kognito

749 karma · joined October 14, 2017

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Kognito··on The Dutch are filling gas wells with cement
The same has happened in the UK. It has gone from being a major producer of oil and gas to being heavily dependent on imports.

Great for politicians on the global speaking circuit to opine how they reduced production and brought down local carbon emissions whilst completely ignoring that offshoring industry means the emissions just happen somewhere else (typically a poorer country with lower/no environmental standards).

Hardly seems to fit with the “we’re all in this together” argument.

Kognito··on The Dutch are filling gas wells with cement
Welcome to Europe
Kognito··on UK's largest battery storage facility at Tilbury substation
We do, but I can’t imagine it’s hugely popular. Only a few of the smaller suppliers offer it AFAIK.
Kognito··on Swiss vs. UK approach to major tranport projects
> £100M gets spent to resolve the issue

It's even worse than it first appears. There's no evidence that the trains will have any impact on the bats AND there's equally scant evidence that a tunnel will protect the bats from this entirely theoretical harm.

Kognito··on Britain's last coal-fired power plant shuts down
More or less none. Energy prices are a domestic mismanagement issue and pre-date the Brexit situation, unfortunately.
Kognito··on Britain's last coal-fired power plant shuts down
Wasn't suggesting it was the cause, just pointing out we seem to have done little to invest in other forms of power.

Wind has its place, but it will struggle to provide consistent base load or grid inertia that we'll lose from shuttering coal, gas and nuclear.

Kognito··on Britain's last coal-fired power plant shuts down
It's a work in progress for sure, but it's certainly not cheap. Getting enough battery storage will be a mammoth task.

From the aricle, Europe's (then) biggest battery could supply just 2 hours of power to 300k homes - compared with ~ 35 million homes in the UK.

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/uk-builds-europes...

Kognito··on Britain's last coal-fired power plant shuts down
I was referring to this article which quotes the IEA for industrial energy costs at around $0.085/kWh, versus $0.34/kWh in the UK.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/26/britain-burd...

Kognito··on Britain's last coal-fired power plant shuts down
I sense you might not be arguing in good faith, but here's at least a mild effort to placate you.

> Since when? As of 2023, high, but not highest.

Since 2024, at least. [1][2]

> Could you provide evidence that factories and industry are actually on the decline in the UK?

Tata Steel is the most topical one, production moving to India. Easy to find sources for that, it's all over the news.

> Energy prices spiked in 2021 and are now down.

False. Industrial prices have grown every year since 2011 [3]

> The risk of blackouts in Britain will be lower this winter...

Right, so you agree with me that there's a risk of blackouts then?

> Who is we? Was this a party platform? Propaganda? Just something you were lead to believe?

It's a reference to a nuclear energy optimism from the 20th century. Some reading material for you. [4]

> Is it possible to actually produce that much nuclear energy.

Of course it is. Energy is hard to sell long distance in large quantities. We're perfectly capable of building more supply than demand (FYI that's how the grid operates to this day) and we should certainly be encouraging more demand to improve living standards.

> A single plant is the buffer supply?

No, I never claimed that it was. But coal power has been used mainly to provide a buffer supply only as needed to prioritise cleaner generation in recent years so it's accurate to say we're turning off (some) buffer supply.

> That is a what-about-ism

It is, but I rather enjoy paying attention to the wider world instead of navel gazing and virtue signalling.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/26/britain-burd...

[2] https://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/uk-household-electricity-price...

[3] https://www.ibisworld.com/uk/bed/industrial-electricity-pric...

[4] https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/history-10...

Kognito··on UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius
Queen Elizabeth II had no involvement in the decision to defend the Falklands, other than perhaps some private counsel with the then Prime Minister, just as King Charles III will have had no involvement in this decision.
Kognito··on Britain's last coal-fired power plant shuts down
Bittersweet.

Glad to be moving away from coal, but the lack of serious investment in anything but wind energy has left the UK with the highest electricity prices in the developed world, factories and industry closing their doors, the most vulnerable in society choosing between heating or eating and a very real prospect of blackouts this winter.

We dreamed of a future of energy abundance, almost too cheap to meter. We have the technology in nuclear to do just that and perhaps we will one day.

So celebrate Britain turning off 500MW of emergency buffer supply and try your best to ignore the 50GW of coal power that China brought online in the 12 months of 2023 alone.

Kognito··on Bun 1.1
It’s not running TS directly, it’s just preconfigured to transpile TS to JS without the user having to bring extra tooling. Neat, but you’ll see the docs still recommend tsc for type checking at build.
Kognito··on JetZero: Ultra-efficient blended wing body jet
Any evidence for this?

Airliners have steadily gotten more fuel efficient at a rate of about 1.3% per year since the 1960s, driven by fierce competition.

If someone could produce a massively more efficient design then there’d be huge interest but when the risk of failure is so high, why would manufacturers take a chance instead of iterating on what is already proven?

Kognito··on PostgreSQL 17 gains built-in collation
Removing the inconsistency across different operating systems, I guess?
Kognito··on Companies continue to export chlorpyrifos from the EU to poorer countries
Bad analogy.

It’s more like your average lower income family eats more fast food than average high income families

We could ban fast food because it increases cancer risk and say the poor people don’t understand the risk so we need to save them from themselves. Meanwhile they just lost their main source of low cost food.

Kognito··on Companies continue to export chlorpyrifos from the EU to poorer countries
Yeah, tend to agree here. The idea that the west knows best and less developed countries need a saving from themselves feels wrong to me.

The data is out there, it’s trivial for these countries to ban chemicals if they wish to do so, but it may not be trivial for their industries to switch to cleaner, greener and potentially more expensive alternatives.

Kognito··on The end of Britain's weeks-long general elections
The proportions seem a little off but it is hand drawn.
Kognito··on Not all TLDs are Created Equal
The article goes on about how this is “bigotry” by the Afghan authorities for suspending queer.af yet doesn’t bother to consider whether any other domains were affected. Saw at least one other report yesterday and I suspect it’s not the only one:

https://x.com/wesbos/status/1757418308050079762

Kognito··on Don't use NameCheap for the .fr TLD
Cloudflare sells domains at cost so yeah, they’re cheaper. Downside is they don’t have as extensive TLD support as Namecheap, but they’re slowly improving.
Kognito··on Automatic class sorting with Prettier (2022)
We all know that individual…

But still, formatting changed files on commit, even on CI ought to be a fraction of a second.

Kognito··on New cancer drug kinder than chemotherapy
From one internet stranger to another, I wish you a speedy recovery friend!
Kognito··on Automatic class sorting with Prettier (2022)
I commend anyone for trying to make the tooling ecosystem better, but I’ve never once thought Prettier was too slow. It runs in a fraction of a second on file save.

The performance comparison on Biomejs’ site shows a Prettier run taking 14 seconds, which I can imagine on a very large code base might be true - but that’s a one-off case surely? Once it’s run, it’s just a case of format on save or commit which is back to near-instantaneous.

What’s the use case I’m missing here?

Kognito··on The weirdest bug I've seen yet
Hate that.

“Sorry, the system says no”

Had similar situations with PayPal and Uber recently where their support have absolutely no information or ability to take a decision.

Support essentially becomes a glorified text-to-speech system.

Kognito··on Sweden plans new nuclear reactors by 2035, will share costs
Sounds like exactly what happened in the UK. New nuclear was proposed in 2010 by the newly elected centre-right led coalition government, with the aim of it being privately funded.

Since then subsidies have been agreed but costs continue to skyrocket. Only one plant is under construction and the time to operation has shifted from 5 years to 10 years.

Meanwhile pretty much all private sector interest in investing in nuclear seems to have dried up.

We seem to be instead putting all our eggs in the SMR basket hoping that there’ll be the economies of scale to make it viable.

Kognito··on Apple and Irish Government suffer major setback in €13B EU case
Performing better than the other two major European economies, France and Germany?

Britain doesn’t seem to be an outlier considering a backdrop of an ailing European economy suffering the after effects of the energy crisis - though clearly it could be doing far better in the global context.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-economy-grows-02-q2-2023...

Kognito··on UK’s largest steelworks given £500M to decarbonise
I suspect mainly the concern is that steel production is a strategic resource. The intention is to maintain a domestic capability given how critical steel is to the modern economy.

It’s dressed up as mainly about the workers and going green because it’s good PR.

Kognito··on Huawei reportedly building 'secret' semiconductor fabs
Not to say you’re wrong, but “TSMC seeks $15 billion in US subsidies for Arizona chip plant”[1] and the fact they may get a sizeable share of the EU’s $46 billion subsidy pot [2], suggests that this is just the sort of money that governments are willing to spend to secure access to one of the 21st century’s most critical resources.

If anything, given China will not have access to ASML’s latest tech and will need to develop much of the tech itself, the $30 billion seems a bit low for a whole “network” of fabs.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tsmc-seeks-15b-subsidies-want...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/technology/tsmc-feeling-good-about-p...

Kognito··on Why macOS anti-malware scans can behave oddly
I've always found it interesting that XProtect is completely invisible to the average user, whereas MS Defender is very much in your face (at least it was last time I used Windows). I suppose it's to quietly reinforce the narrative that Macs "don't get malware".

If they do, but you never know about it before its dealt with, to the average user it's as good as it never having happened. Unless of course, damage has been done/data stolen/etc - in which case I suppose the user never finds out?

I really wouldn't mind a UI for XProtect buried somewhere deep in the settings.

Kognito··on Apple brings Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro to iPad
Interesting change, I do wonder if the Mac apps will follow suit.
Kognito··on Dutch town installs bat-friendly red LED street lights (2018)
Looks like something out of a horror movie.

Does remind me of the old low-pressure sodium street lighting that was popular in the UK when I was growing up. They’d glow pink for a while when they first turned on, before turning a deep orange.

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