Sorry - What?

You said Denmark had converted to green energy. I pointed out that they haven’t done anything like that. You are now moving the goal posts and saying “where is the comparative essay defending nuclear power”…

If you must, France turned completely green in the 70s. So they’ve provided 50 years of clean energy. Its a classic story and not as simple as I’m going to make out, but still. Look at the map link in the last post - any area that stays green is either using hydro or nuclear. Hydro is great, but you need mountains and water.

That is actually very impressive. Thanks! I remain a bit skeptical as its only 1/5th of what they need and it’s only one region of one (rich) country. Still, 10GW of lithium battery would be one hell of a fire ;-)

The fact that you descend into complete science fiction should give you pause for thought. I doubt it will, but please think about how fantastical your proposed solutions are - “a massive lake of molten salt under every city” (I actually like that one!)…

Negative energy prices are a bad thing! That means that someone is dumping energy into the grid (you should be paying the grid if you have solar panels!!) In the UK all renewable energy had to be called ‘experimental’ so that the pricing was fixed and the government picks up the tab - that’s not good. Check this map - right now the wind isn’t blowing and solar hasn’t got out of bed - so most of the countries using renewables are looking shit - later today solar will kick in, but tonight it will be bad again. That isn’t a solution.

Yeah! Let’s dig a big hole till we hit lava and then throw everything into it. :)

This is wrong. Right now, europe is experiencing high pressure and doesn’t have any wind. Check this out its map that shows you how much wind is being produced right now! Can you provide a source that says " the wind is always blowing somewhere" or is it just a platitude?

No, there is pumped storage. Honestly, despite the plethora of start-ups claiming to have a solution (sodium batteries, molten-salt, etc) The only really proven way to store electricity for later is pumped storage, but that relies on geography (hills) which not everyone has. Batteries are great for phones, and cars but they simply don’t scale to countries.

Denmark looking decidedly not green this morning. It’s sunny, but virtually no wind - might be like this for another week. Check the map regularly to understand why unreliable energy is actually just a way of increasing gas usage.

Please understand that negative prices are the market for electricity breaking down! That is not a good thing. It should mean that if you have solar panels on your roof you have to pay to participate in the national grid because you are dumping energy into the grid when it can’t use it, but special rules have been made for renewable plants. Literally, imagine a contract-to-supply for wind or solar…

Just a note to say that this is the electricity market breaking down - don’t celebrate it! France has had low-carbon energy since the 70s when they built a load of nuclear power. The have started building renewable plants rather than updating the nuclear plants. Electricity cannot be stored in the amounts that we use it. So many statistics about wind/solar quote power act like we can use it all… but an installation battery that could store a country like France’s worth of energy for 12 hours (solar never works at night) would be the biggest megastructure humans have built*. During a period of high pressure a whole country might get little wind for a week. Also, check out this map if you visit regularly the low carbon energy solutions are nuclear or hydro… the only countries that reliably don’t burn fossil fuels use these. [edit: clarity, *edit: Not quite-about 100mx100mx50m, approximately the same size as the Great Pyramid of Giza, but made of flammable material - I got confused with something that could provide a week or two for windless anticyclones]

Here’s a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69AtkAHkKEc

Governments are location based, but also give huge amounts in foreign aid - especially rich countries. They are also better placed to give it fairly than individuals. Here’s a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69AtkAHkKEc

An individual giving money to good causes will always be limited by the fact that it is based on the whims/biases of that individual. So, it is possible to see that some billionaires like Bill Gates and (dare I say it…) J K Rowling give substantial amounts to charities - we can also see that they are donating to personal pet causes. Society already has a way for rich people to give to a structured system that (attempts to) give(s) out the money to a wide variety of causes - its called tax and the system is government! If these people who society has allowed to become so wealthy just paid taxes and supported a proper, fair government then they wouldn’t need charities… but then they wouldn’t get to name buildings after themselves.

Just a thought… Google wrote the ‘we have no moat’ document. Is it possible that they are intentionally trying to turn public opinion against AI? [no moat document] It’s a bit like they are intentionally churning out shit AI (it won’t damage their monopoly) to turn people against using AI (which might topple some serious business interests)… In short you’re right, but I get suspicious when big business seems to be doing the right thing. :D [edit: espirit d’escalier!]

Yeah, Zoneminder is pretty mature software. I would say that this shouldn’t be an impossible DIY project.

I have thought about this from time to time. I want good surveillance, but I also don’t want to lose control of the video.

I think that the solution that I favor right now is a Wyze cam V2 or similar flashed with openmiko. edit:(I had to buy wyze v2 cameras from the US on ebay to get v2 versions, user:@ashok36@ashok36@lemmy.world suggests in this comment to use v3 and Wyzemini firmware - this might do the job. clarification: the point is to replace the manufacturer’s firmware which will phone home with something open source that you could audit)

These can be attached via USB or wifi interface to a server with zoneminder (https://zoneminder.com/) From there you could think about offsite records too and motion detection etc. [edit: wifi is useful as I don’t want to rewire the house - though could be blocked (or the router could be unplugged!) if you are expecting technically savvy criminals. A solution here would be to use an old router on a separate wifi network, put somewhere where most of the property would have been traversed before it could be accessed (e.g. upstairs).]

Having said this, the setup is just fiddly enough that I keep to finding myself finding other stuff to do. [edit: ‘Fiddly’ is the wrong word, I think its pretty simple, I just find myself wanting more features until the project doesn’t happen at all. I’d be clear that this is a feasible DIY project, so long as you accept that ‘done’ is better than ‘perfect’]

[edit: One last note - if you host the video yourself, you take responsibility for the security - this means keeping zoneminder and the OS up to date and offsite backups/networks/cameras secure. This is possibly something that a company is better at (but don’t bet on it!). However, you are also a smaller attack target (because bad actors only get your video) so blackmailing you with whatever you do in your surveilled place is less valuable than having the same data for 1000s of people. Also, if someone has access to your home network - they can set up man-in-the-middle attacks and steal your bank details - you have to be doing something interesting in front of those cameras for it to be worth more than the contents of your bank account.]

edit:clarity/details

The 2014 remake made sense to me… it was a remake by Omnicorp. They evil corporations won, then they remade Robocop as a ‘no blood’ 12a. It was a super-dark play on the fact that they couldn’t make the original anymore. [edit: added date & link to imdb]

yep: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

I thought hard about whether to put it on ask lemmy, but didn’t want to look stupid. The only advice I could find was this:

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others’ questions on various topics.

thanks - I’m checking some of the live dates.