P.S. I have once used DC to power a pump "directly". I use quotation marks because the pump (a water pump) was a brushless DC motor with an integrated controller. I used it on a field for removing water after a spring flood. Its controller accepted 24..48 V input, and it was powered from a 40 V solar panel brought on a wheelbarrow. :)

instead of powering the heat pump from the wall, the heat pump can be connected directly to a PV

I have no experience with this exact combination. I know that "batteryless" inverters exist, but most of them are on-grid inverters. In that scenario, all that matters is monitoring your production: if you don't want grid energy, you only run your system when your PV produces enough.

Another type of batteryless inverters are "pump inverters". Farmers seem to like them for pumping water from wells into water towers. A pump inverter can be configured to run at 50 Hz (or 60 Hz for North Americans) and 230..240 V (or 110 V for North Americans) alright, but it is not designed to power electronic devices, but dumb agricultural motors. There is considerable risk involved with powering a heat pump from a pump inverter, unless you find an exceptionally simple and dumb heat pump with very limited or resilient steering electronics.

Efficiency losses are small anyway, but mostly happen during battery storage or when voltage needs to rise or drop considerably (e.g. a transition of 700 -> 24 V or 24 -> 240 V would cause a small efficiency loss).

I’ve heard that a PV can directly power a compressor

This seems unlikely as the compressor would have to be a brushed DC motor. That kind of motors don't last long, they wear out their brushes. Long-lasting motors are brushless, and those generally cannot be run on DC power. For example, a "brushless DC" motor is essentially a three-phased AC motor, just its controller (full of smartness and MOSFET transistors) accepts DC input.

If you have a good technical overview of your heat pump system, maybe you can locate a point where regulated DC can be fed into the system, but that would be hacking. Alternatively, maybe a niche market already exists for DC-powered heat pumps, e.g. for caravans, trucks or ships? But on niche markets, prices typically aren't good for you. :(

Relays: my use for truck relays is switching on heaters in my thermal storage water tank. Not big ones, though - I use relays rated for 24V and 40A of current. Since they are old, I have applied a safety margin and only let 25 A flow through them, so each of them handles 24 x 25 = 600 W.

As for using DC appliances: benefits do exist. If a household has a low voltage DC battery bank (some do, some don't) then dropping the battery voltage a few times to power car parts comes with a smaller efficiency loss. In my household, DC appliances are used for lighting, communications, computing, cooling food, pumping water and soldering electronics. The rest goes via AC. I think a car air conditioner could cool some small storage room decently. With big living rooms, it would have difficulty since it's a small device.

it would (as far as i understand with high school chemistry) be strictly more efficient to electrolyse rust directly

I'm not a chemist either, but I do know a bit of chemistry.

Typically, you need a solution of NaOH (sodium hydroxide) to directly reduce iron oxide in an electrolysis cell. If your iron oxide contains impurities, those may react with NaOH and ruin the fun. Also, if you have exposure to CO2, your NaOH will gradually degrade, producing NaHCO3 and losing potency.

My impression: wet electrolysis is great for making high purity iron, but it would be hard to make it work for energy storage.

Relays can be used for anything, and a car contains a fair number.

You can make a pulse jet engine from a muffler parts, but a solarpunk society would probably not do that. :)

Copper brake pipe and cooling radiators can be used as heat exchangers for other stuff.

Air conditioner parts can be reverse-used for Stirling engines or to pump heat in other contexts.

Wow, really interesting tools. :)

But sadly not for me - I left biology behind at some point and have fallen off the sleigh so badly that I'd probably need a year of study before I could use this tool for something less than practical (e.g. make a bacterium glow in the dark).

This one didn't have rocket boosters, but was also nice: :)

( it traveled 180 km on one charge, back in 2009 :D )

Apparently, the Caspian Sea Monster is back, and it's electric now. :) If I had a need for watercraft (I live on land and I don't need more than a SUP board), this would be something that I'd try building (naturally with seatbelts and airbags to survive a crash). :)

Wow. :)

I was expecting something with rotor sails, but I click, and it's a fancy new derivative of schooners. :)

As a result, I guess that rotating masts aren't optimal after all - too much moving mass, impossible to take down during a hurricane, etc.

I also guess that this sailboat has a fairly good motor, for use during total lack of wind (rare) or storms that would damage sails or masts.

Regarding infiltration of the police - a similar theme played out in Greece during the 2008 economic crisis, when Golden Dawn vied for power - they tried hard to infiltrate the police, and succeeded to a considerable degree.

At some point, they made a mistake, though - GD thugs killed a popular leftist rapper named Pavlos Fyssas. He was able to point out who stabbed him. His death caused widespread rioting. Rioting incapacitated GD temporarily by blocking and damaging their party offices while the security service raided high-ranking members for evidence (apparently they didn't manage to infiltrate counterintelligence and in the confusion probably couldn't dispose of evidence even if they knew of incoming raids) ...and evidence was plentiful. They were banned and leaders got meaningful sentences in courts.

Only in a country where entering the police force requires lengthy studies to obtain a diploma (and background checks), is there some chance of random bozos not worming their way in. Most states of the US aren't such a place, sadly.

I wonder what the structure could have been in the past? A navigation light pillar? A ventilation shaft riser for some underground thing?

Tesla's favourability with car repair technicians probably never exceeded 5%. :)

It's a maintenance nightmare and a far cry from even slight futureproofness. If someone dumps it on you for 1000 euros with a working battery, take the battery apart and sell the rest for 500 euros. ;P

(sums slightly underestimated) ;)

Yep, indeed, I'm already discovering differences too. :) A good document for techies to read seems to be here.

https://reticulum.network/manual/understanding.html

I also think I see a problem on the horizon: announce traffic volume. According to this description, it seems that Reticulum tries to forward all announces to every transport node (router). In a small network, that's OK. In a big network, this can become a challenge (disclaimer: I've participated in building I2P, but ages ago, but I still remember some stuff well enough to predict where a problem might pop up). Maintenance of the routing table / network database / <other term for a similar thing> is among the biggest challenges when things get intercontinental.

Interesting project, thank you for introducing. :)

I haven't tested anything, but only checked their specs (sadly I didn't find out how they manage without a distributed hashtable).

Reticulum does not use source addresses. No packets transmitted include information about the address, place, machine or person they originated from.

Sounds like mix networks like I2P and (to a lesser degree, since its role is proxying out to the Internet) like TOR. Mix networks send traffic using the Internet, so the bottom protocol layers (TCP and UDP) use IP addresses. Higher protocol layers (end to end messages) use cryptographic identifiers.

There is no central control over the address space in Reticulum. Anyone can allocate as many addresses as they need, when they need them.

Sounds like TOR and I2P, but people's convenience (easily resolving a name to an address) has created centralized resources on these nets, and will likely create similar resources on any network. An important matter is whether the central name resolver can retroactively revoke a name (in I2P for example, a name that has been already distributed is irrevocable, but you can refuse to distribute it to new nodes).

Reticulum ensures end-to-end connectivity. Newly generated addresses become globally reachable in a matter of seconds to a few minutes.

The same as aforementioned mix networks, but neither of them claims operability at 5 bits per second. Generally, a megabit connection is advised to meaninfully run a mix network, because you're not expected to freeload, but help mix traffic for others (this is how the anonymity arises).

Addresses are self-sovereign and portable. Once an address has been created, it can be moved physically to another place in the network, and continue to be reachable.

True for TOR and I2P. The address is a public key. You can move the machine with the private key anywhere, it will build a tunnel to accept incoming traffic at some other node.

All communication is secured with strong, modern encryption by default.

As it should.

All encryption keys are ephemeral, and communication offers forward secrecy by default.

In mix networks, the keys used as endpoint addresses are not ephemeral, but permanent. I'm not sure if I should take this statement at face value. If Alice wants to speak to Bob tomorrow, some identifier of Bob must not be ephemeral.

It is not possible to establish unencrypted links in Reticulum networks.

Same for mix networks.

It is not possible to send unencrypted packets to any destinations in the network.

Same.

Destinations receiving unencrypted packets will drop them as invalid.

Same.

P.S.

I also checked their interface list and it looks reasonable. Dropping an idea too: an interface for WiFi cards in monitor/inject mode might help some people. If the tool gets popular, I'm sure someone will build it. :)

Interesting article, thank you. :)

I wouldn't get one for myself because I have lots of big plants (hazel, cherry and sea-buckthorn), but it makes me wonder - why did some species of fungi start glowing? Did they do it by accident, for no good reason?

As a rule of the thumb, the longer your stomach (and its bacteria) have to work to get calories extracted from a food (this has a big correlation with the food not being excessively pre-processed, and also has a big correlation with lack of additives) - the better it is for you. :)

We will surely learn the precise reasons later. Until then, acting upon that information is possible without knowing why. :)

Well, today they are actually in production, while 5 years ago they were in laboratories.

As an anarchist who would welcome other anarchists - sadly, I doubt if that's a reliable recipe to stop climate change.

Limiting (hopefully stopping) climate change can be done under almost any political system... except perhaps dictatorial petro-states. However, it takes years of work to tranform the economy. Transport, heating, food production - many things must change. Perhaps the simplest individual choices are:

• going vegetarian (vegan if one knows enough to do the trick)
• avoidance of using fossil fueled personal vehicles
• improving home energy efficiency (especially in terms of heating)
• avoidance of air travel
• avoidance of heavy goods delivered from distant lands

The rest - creating infrastructure to produce energy cleanly and store sufficient quantities - are typically societal choices.

As for corals - I would start by preserving their biodiversity, sampling the genes of all coral and coral-related species and growing many of them in human-made habitats. If we're about to cause their extinction, it's our obligation to provide them life support until the environment has been fixed.

Also, I would consider genetically engineering corals to tolerate higher temperatures. Since I understand that this is their critical weakness, providing a solution could save ecosystems. If a solution is feasible, that is.

Corals reproduce sexually so a useful gene obtained from who knows where would spread among them (but slowly - because typical colonies grow bigger asexually). Also, I would keep in mind that this could have side effects.

As for tempeature - it will be rising for some time before things can be stopped. Short of geoengineering, nothing to be done but reduce emissions, adapt, and help others adapt. The predictable outcome - it will get worse for a long while before it starts getting any better.

Smart choice, even if a bit slow to come. :)

News of the sentencing reached the public broadcaster here in Estonia, including Dale Vince's comment that "this resembles Russia or maybe North Korea" and Chris Packham's assessment that "this is a threat against freedom of speech".

I hope the judgement gets overturned on appeal, and the law that enabled the judgement gets scrapped or rewritten.

I also suspect that the next people who want to stop traffic will not choose peaceful assembly as their method, but will use far more dangerous methods - sabotage from distance, e.g. no more traffic lights on a big intersection. Needless to say, state will cry "terrorism" then, and that is not a desirable outcome, so I hope nobody feels compelled to prove the point.

Trying to figure out whether he was genuinely Republican, using some kind of logic.

It seems fairly certain basing on this photo that he did not use an optical sight, at least not anything sizable. Attempting to assassinate a presidential candidate under Secret Service protection with iron sights on your gun...

...no, this guy wasn't a planner. So his registration as a Republican likely wasn't an elaborate plan either.

The interesting part: Democrat officials made public statements about going silent for a while, and those statements reached headlines even in Europe. You can go silent and still have your statements in headlines.

Also, as far as money and efficiency are involved - if they save money now, they can advertise more later. Currently, advertising against Trump would have a low efficiency, since he currently receives positive attention. I think their current action plan is "let's wait for Trump to open his mouth".

Knowing psychology, almost any PR advisor will advise to temporarily cease media attacks against a person who's been shot.

As a minimum, messages may need to be reworded, because Trump is likely to change his messaging after his narrow escape.

Some notes:

• almost no doubt: this will have a mobilizing effect for Trump supporters ("our great leader is being attacked", etc)

• possibly: this will improve Trump's ratings among voters with no clear political preference (a big story where he's not the villain is what he needs)

• pattern: historically, surviving an assassination attempt has improved a candidate's chances of getting elected; in the most recent example, Slovakia's prime minister Fico enjoyed a boost in ratings while in hospital after being seriously wounded

I don't blame Democrats for temporarily ceasing campaign advertisement. Two principles dictate this: "you don't kick a person who is already down" (Trump was incredibly lucky and isn't) and "you don't attack someone who has martyrdom effect". Generally, you wait until the dust settles. Democrats too will wait until the dust settles. They will also check the popularity ratings and decide how to proceed.

In my opinion, Democrats would strongly benefit from a younger candidate. I would advise getting someone under 55 to run. Among the wider population, not enough people understand that, as things are, the Democratic candidate is Kamala Harris, her name is just currently Joe Biden. :o

Overall, it seems that Trump has considerable chances of getting elected president. Preventing that will require exceptional effort and considerable luck. Only if the Democrats manage to paint a clear picture of what a Trump presidential term would bring about, and only if that picture causes their voters to show up and vote nearly without exception - only then will things turn out differently.

My personal view from Eastern Europe - contingency plans for a Trump presidency ceasing aid to Ukraine have a very high probability of occurrence now (estimated time: early 2025). Over here, everyone and their cat will researching cheap weapons systems to replace things that only the US can provide. I think that group will now include myself.

Nice to have it here, but due to the practical nature of the demonstration, I think this video could have flown better on c/technology or c/diy - or something of that sort. :)

But yep, moving heat is a lot smarter than creating it. :)

Nice and thorough overview. :)

The article is mostly correct. :)

Notes: out of the three, Latvia has serious energy storage - a 4 billion cubic meter (at normal pressure) underground gas store, sufficient to carry all three countries over the winter. So far, it's filled with fossil natural gas - but some day it could be filled with synthesized methane.

As a backup option, Estonia has oil shale - probably the worst fuel on Earth, so the price of emitting CO2 keeps those plants out of the energy market during summer. During winter, they come online though.

As for solar, we aren't planning to rely much on that. Solar capacity has of course skyrocketed, but only because it's very easy to install. For me, it provices a nice way to charge my car from April to October. But at latitudes 55 to 60, days are really very short in midwinter, so wind and waste wood are the likely candidates in future - after oil shale leaves the scene, but before synthetic gas becomes feasible.

Regarding pumped hydro - it can stabilize a day, but can't stabilize a week or month. Lithuania has a biggish (~10 GWh) pumped storage facility. The rest of Baltics don't have suitable terrain. Estonia has limestone banks, but they're under various forms of protection and even if one built a lot of pumped hydro, the low elevation difference (up to 50 meters) means one couldn't support the electric grid through more than a few days.

Regarding hydrogen - maybe. But hydrogen is difficult to store, so I'm betting on wind, and on sourcing technology from Germany to produce synthetic methane from excess power during summer, and pumping it to Latvia for storage.

Finally - connecting to the continental EU power grid allows importing energy when local wind isn't strong enough, and exporting any surplus. So far, all three countries are still in the ex-Soviet synchronization area (common with Russia and Belarus, but with no trade, just synchronization), and thus unable to connect with the EU synchronization area. Local power companies have been building synchronous compensators (devices that steer grid frequency) for the past 2 years to drop this dependency.

If things go as planned, Baltic countries will sever those connections and join the EU grid via Poland in winter 2025. Undersea cables already go from Estonia to Finland and Lithuania to Sweden, but in the current political conditions, I don't think anyone counts of them for sure (a Chinese-owned but Russian-crewed ship broke the Estonia-Finland gas pipeline last autumn when dragging its anchor during a storm - it's still unsure if the damage was accidental or not).

But that’s not what we found. In fact, experimental manipulations that reduced support for the protesters had no impact on support for the demands of those protesters.

We’ve replicated this finding across a range of different types of nonviolent protest, including protests about racial justice, abortion rights and climate change, and across British, American and Polish participants (this work is being prepared for publication). When members of the public say, “I agree with your cause, I just don’t like your methods,” we should take them at their word.

Wow, that is both new (at least for me) and interesting - thanks for sharing this article. :)

I note a potential weakness in the method of analysis: if negative framing (e.g. by the media) reduces support for the protesters as persons (but not their cause), it may still somewhat harm their ability to bring about change, since it probably reduces people's willingness to team up with them - but not another group which has the same cause but different methods.

So, if the goal is mass action (which has a component of mobilizing like-minded people to join) I would strongly recommend a protester to choose non-controversial methods (so that even grannies can join). :)

The Ugandan military playing security guards for a China-controlled oil project... I think explaining human rights over there will have to start from zero - and may have to be backed with "or else" statements - if there exists an institution in a suitable position to issue them. :o

“It’s what we call ‘strategic incapacitation’ of groups that threaten the political order,” Walby said. “The tactics also include bogus or trumped up charges, early morning raids, and surveillance and strategic intelligence to know as much as possible about activist communications.

This wouldn't be the first time of a police force using the legal process (which is heavily tilted towards their convenience and the inconvenience of anyone suspected or accused) as a punishment. Needless to say, the process should not be tilted or burdensome, but in reality - it is.

I hope the Canadian legal system at least ensures compensation for false imprisonment and such things.

Activists would meanwhile benefit from adopting safeguards characteristic of partisans operating against a hostile government, even if their actions are peaceful and seek to inform the public. It's a shame that one has to view cops as an enemy force, but that's reality - they aren't friends of activism anywhere. In some places they just have unchecked power, while in other places their power is limited.

I would add:

• if you wanted direct and low-latency access to cameras (for machine vision)

1 C more temperature -> air can hold 7% more water vapour

...but the peaks of fringe events are quite a bit taller than +1 C. Raising the average by 1 C raises the peaks considerably more.

Summary:

But then, in the geologically abrupt space of only a few decades, this great river of ice all but halted. In the two centuries since, it has moved less than 35 feet a year. According to the leading theory, the layer of water underneath it thinned, perhaps by draining into the underside of another glacier. Having lost its lubrication, the glacier slowed down and sank toward the bedrock below.

/.../

“The beauty of this idea is that you can start small,” Tulaczyk told me. “You can pick a puny glacier somewhere that doesn’t matter to global sea level.” This summer, Martin Truffer, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, will travel to the Juneau Icefield in Alaska to look for a small slab of ice that could be used in a pilot test. If it stops moving, Tulaczyk told me he wants to try to secure permission from Greenland’s Inuit political leaders to drain a larger glacier; he has his eye on one at the country’s northeastern edge, which discharges five gigatons of ice into the Arctic Ocean every year. Only if that worked would he move on to pilots in Antarctica.

It's not wild at all. :) The plan makes sense from a physical perspective, but should not be implemented lightly because:

• it's extremely hard work and extremely expensive to drain water from beneath an extremely large glacier
• it doesn't stop warming, it just puts a brake on ice loss / sea level rise

If the motor mount is hackable with reasonable effort, and the motor controller's interfaces are open, then in principle... yes.

Yet in reality, companies build extremely complicated cars where premature failure of multiple components can successfully sabotage the whole. :(

I've once needed to repair a Mitsubishi EV motor controller. It took 2 days to dismantle. Schematics were far beyond my skill of reading electronics, and I build model planes as an everyday hobby, so I've seen electronics. Replacement of the high voltage comparator was impossible as nobody was selling it separately. The repair shop wanted to replace the entire motor controller (5000 €). Some guy from Sweden had figured out a fix: a 50 cent resistor. But installing it and putting things back was not fun at all. It wasn't designed to be repaired.

Needless to say, replacing a headlight bulb on the same car requires removing the front plastic cover, starting from the wheel wells, undoing six bolts, taking out the front lantern, and then you can replace the bulb. I curse them. :P

But it drives. Hopefully long enough so I can get my own car built from scratch.

Since we didn't even have a radical left running this time, I picked an ordinary social democrat. One whom I've met and talked to, and who seems a reasonable person... and is already a MEP. He will narrowly continue to be a MEP.

As for priorities - the transition to a sustainable economy is indeed on the back burner currently. I like to imagine that everyone knows it must happen and soon - but maybe I over-estimate people.

The local hot topics this time were economic crisis and war.

Thanks for the news, but also - thanks for posting a proper summary. :)

(So many videos have only the YouTube-compiled summary, which is typically totally off topic.)

Interestingly, warfare also has the effect of:

• causing houses to be abandoned, necessitating houses elsewhere while the abandoned ones likely get bombed

• decreasing the number of future consumers, whose future footprint would depend on future behaviour patterns (hard to predict)

• changing future land use patterns, either due to unexploded ordnance or straight out chemical contamination (there are places in France that are still off limits to economic activity, because World War I contaminated the soil with toxic chemicals), here in Estonia there are still forests from which you don't want trees in your sawmill because they contain shrapnel and bullets from World War II

I have the feeling that calculating the climate impact of actual war is a difficult job.

But they could calculate the tonnage of spent fuel and energy, that would be easier.

Nice to hear. :) The process seems doable in a suitably equipped factory. :)

Alas, I did not have the time to watch it all.

Acting as if they were ever under attack by this video is mansplaining an best and strawmanning at worst.

Those are quite closely related branches of research. If you deal with one, you're almost certainly also involved with another, so much that teaching them on the same course makes sense. Human psychology is considerably more complex than animal psychology, but built of the same blocks - and both humans and animals can, to different degrees, be rational agents in natural or artificial games, where their choice of strategy depends on their psychological profile.

Please show the scientific process went in establishing that mistrust of strangers is a genetically evolved trait.

Here are some articles on the subject. The deepest-drilling article is not about humans, but dogs.

"Genetic mapping of canine fear and aggression"

We conducted genomewide association (GWA) mapping of breed stereotypes for many fear and aggression traits across several hundred dogs from diverse breeds. We confirmed those findings using GWA in a second cohort of partially overlapping breeds. Lastly, we used the validated loci to create a model that effectively predicted fear and aggression stereotypes in a third group of dog breeds that were not involved in the mapping studies. We found that i) known IGF1 and HMGA2 loci variants for small body size are associated with separation anxiety, touch-sensitivity, owner directed aggression and dog rivalry; and ii) two loci, between GNAT3 and CD36 on chr18, and near IGSF1 on chrX, are associated with several traits, including touch-sensitivity, non-social fear, and fear and aggression that are directed toward unfamiliar dogs and humans

So it seems that in dogs, there likely is a genetic factor involved in fear of unfamiliar individuals and agression towards them. It is no wonder, as countless generations of wolves have likely needed to decide how to relate to an individual from another pack, and this has sometimes conveyed them advantages or disadvantages.

Large Study Identifies Genetic Variants Linked to Risk Tolerance and Risky Behaviors

An international group that includes researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine has identified 124 genetic variants associated with a person’s willingness to take risks, as reported in a study published January 14 in Nature Genetics. /.../ The researchers emphasize that no variant on its own meaningfully affects a particular person’s risk tolerance or penchant for making risky decisions — such as drinking, smoking, speeding — and non-genetic factors matter more for risk tolerance than genetic factors. The study shows evidence of shared genetic influences across both an overall measure of risk tolerance and many specific risky behaviors.

So it seems that in humans, there are hundreds (or thousands) of genes subtly influencing different types of risk-and-reward calculations. Trust (or distrust) in strangers is a narrower part of a wider array of attributes which can be summarized as "risk tolerance". It has been noticed recently that genetic factors contribute, along with environmental factors, of course. It is worth noting that genetic factors aren't considered to be the biggest source of influence.

...and in practise, a person knowing about their genetic predisposition might apply this knowledge in related fields - e.g. when negotiating a risky deal, deciding whether to litigate or take retribution after being wronged, deciding whether to wear a life vest or attach a seatbelt.

Some person might know of their predisposition to seeking higher reward at high risk, and refrain from gambling. Another might know that their reward-seeking mechanisms are more susceptible than usual to chemical addiction, and avoid consuming certain substances. Another might know of their predisposition to averting loss, even if it also averts gain, and deliberately increase their willingness to take business risk. Another might want to compensate against their higher tendency to distrust strangers, or against a tendency to trust too easily.

Are you seriously comparing the breeding of crops with the human genome?

Yes. All life on Earth is related. Even plants and bacteria use the same sort of ribosomes to make their protein, and most air-breathers use the same sort of mitochondria to process oxygen. Altering plants so they would resist drought or flooding better is only some degree of knowledge away from giving oneself or others night vision, ability to heal bigger wounds, greater resistance to cancer or inability to get thrombosis.

Not hastily, though, as genomes don't have their goods in clearly labeled boxes.