HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

jacklbk

55 karma · joined May 7, 2021

submissionscomments
jacklbk··on Why are European countries moving their gold out of North America?
> EV batteries - and many of the other components in this plan - can be recycled

And not many of them are recycled, because making new ones is cheaper. Unfortunately it's true for most of the stuff you see. So no one is incentivized to recycle.

> You absolutely can. This is a completely outdated idea by this point. We have all the solutions we need.

Sure you can use batteries to maintain the power grid sync, it's a valid solution but is it THE solution? It is the most expensive solution you have today to maintain the grid, both day time (frequency sync for example) and night time.

It is a lot cheaper to just use coal/gas/nuclear station to maintain the grid. That's the point I'm trying to make. It is a lot easier, cheaper and more diverse to just use coal/gas/nuclear as the main source and maybe 20-30% wind/solar.

It's not that you CANNOT do it. It's that it doesn't make sense to switch 100% to wind/solar, and will be very stupid to do such thing.

> No. Oil is just hydrocarbons. It’s not a magical substance.

Oil produces plastic, a major component in all of the "renewable components". I'm not talking about oil as energy.

> I’ll give you that. For a while. Though the quantities are smaller.

You'll be surprised. Look up how much reserve quantity in serious militaries. Cut off oil and you lose a war in a month.

Wake me up when you have jet fighters & tanks with batteries.

> Any reason to think Europe couldn’t be self sustained for that purpose?

Yes. Every country in the world needs oil, especially in military. Do you want to defend against Russia?

> There have been huge supply chain issues with nuclear as well. Though at least you can fairly easily build up a supply of fuel that can last a decade or two.

That's the point? You can be energy secured for a decade at least. Supply chain issue is a much bigger problem if you want to go with solar/wind. There is no country in the world except China that can produce full pipeline of solar right now. Would you want to depend on China for the supply chain?

There is no denser energy source you have today than nuclear. Denser energy = good. It's always been that way since beginning of human history. It is also clean. It should be the essential. Everything else should be just an alternative.

The best time to build nuclear is decades ago. The second best time is now.

jacklbk··on Why are European countries moving their gold out of North America?
> Eh, once you have built your grid in solar and wind, you don't really depend on the countries that sold solar panels and wind turbines for you.

You don't account for repair, replacement and upgrade? You don't want to expand your power grid? This is a very naive take to be honest.

No country should be stagnant with what they already have, that's a recipe for a disaster.

I can argue the same, once you have built your grid in nuclear and stockpile enough uranium for decades, you're pretty much set right? Those last for a long time as well :).

jacklbk··on Why are European countries moving their gold out of North America?
It's not that solar cannot scale as is, it simply cannot scale as a power grid (see frequency sync issue as an example, even in day time).

As I said in the previous comment, you need alternate sources to maintain the power grid, even in day time. And no, battery is not a good option for it because it is very expensive. Using a coal/gas/nuclear station to maintain the grid in both day time and night time is the best option you have right now.

Solar is cheap if you only look at the panels and how much energy it produces. It is not cheap if you look at the whole grid, which is something omitted from reports you see.

I'm not against solar/wind. I'm just against it as the major source. 20-30% seems to be a good value for it.

> There was a time many decades ago to deploy nuclear at scale. Fossil fuel shills used 'environmentalists' to shut down all progress of nuclear. Now, they use nuclear again to slow down solar and wind. Just wait 30 - 50 years, we'll have a proper solution.

The best time to start was decades ago. The second best time is now.

Look at France, they have nuclear and they have energy security. Look at Germany and how foolish they were to deprecate all nuclear stations.

Australia has less than 10% solar/wind. Seems reasonable to me.

China is an exception, because they have the full pipeline to build batteries, panels. Which country has the full pipeline? Relying on China for panels & batteries for energy security? Huh?

jacklbk··on Why are European countries moving their gold out of North America?
> switch completely to renewables (solar, maybe wind), EVs, green hydrogen/ammonia and synthetic fuels

You think other countries can't restrict those things? Restricting components related to those things will work just fine.

By the way, you can never switch completely to just renewables, it doesn't scale that well. They are simply too inefficient, unsecure, to "switch completely" in a country scale. Maybe just your house or some districts. You still need coal/gas/nuclear to maintain the power grid.

Oil is needed for many components inside stuff you mentioned. Oil is a must in military. If you want clean, abundant, cheap, secure energy, invest in nuclear.

Everything has tradeoffs. Diversify it.

jacklbk··on Warp is now open-source
Love cmux but lately it's having performance issues. It is not responding for a few seconds when I switch between terminals in the same workspace. I'm tired of it and just use ghostty. I miss the notification from cmux though :(.
jacklbk··on Thunderbird 140 “Eclipse”
Also gave up Thunderbird years ago because of the same reason. Just wanted something stable and chose Spark. Works on every device, not a problem for years.
jacklbk··on MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions
As an Asian, the DEI idea and how it was executed puzzled me as well.

Apple's first VP of diversity said [1]:

> “Diversity is the human experience. I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT.”

> “there can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.”

She had to resigned [2] for saying so. That really confused me, isn't what she said... true?

[1]: https://qz.com/1097425/apples-first-ever-vp-of-diversity-and... [2]: https://nypost.com/2017/11/17/apples-diversity-chief-lasts-j...

jacklbk··on Interview: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney after Google antitrust win
Steam (and every other storefronts) has been taking 30% since its beginning. When did it become "greedy"?

Is EGS offering the same quality of service as Steam? Is EGS making profits? Is 12% really sustainable?

jacklbk··on Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs
Not the same thing. I want them to be completely separate, just like Chrome profile.
jacklbk··on Podman Desktop celebrates 500k downloads
Yes. I replaced Docker Desktop with it and I haven't found anything lacking for my use cases so far. It's a great alternative, just install and a few clicks, that's it.
jacklbk··on Flash mobs invade luxury L.A. retailers with brute force, overwhelming numbers
Well shoplifting is too common in SF now because people don't report crimes like that anymore. I'll give you one example, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr-kGYTNaxc

If they are comfortable stealing on camera, expect worse there.

jacklbk··on Why Perl?
Same. My first job was to write perl test script in a fortune 100 company. Then I pretty much used it for every scripting stuff.

After I moved on to the next job, working on Python was so much easier. I have never written a line in perl since then.

jacklbk··on Godot Arrives in the Epic Games Store
> open platforms

> introduce 3rd party exclusivity on PC

I don't think that's him sticking to a "certain principles", he's just doing whatever it takes to make people think Epic is the "good guy", as long as he's doing the opposite of the competitors.

For example, take a look into his take about blockchain games. At first he was against NFT games [1], then after Valve banned NFT games, Gabe Newell talked about it [2], Tim suddenly was OK with it [3]?

He fought with Apple because he thought he could win it, so his Fortnite could avoid 30% transaction fee. They clearly had a lot of discussion, strategies before suing Apple and thought it was a good idea, they could have won big. It's not a bad business decision if he can win, but they didn't so it looked bad.

[1]: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/144251952287594906...

[2]: https://www.ign.com/articles/gabe-newell-nft-steam

[3]: https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/144914631712989593...