Funnily enough, linear algebra is a good example of how doing doesn't lead to understanding. Just calculating eigenvalues and eigenvectors don't give you the geometric view of what is happening. Also talk to some engineering students who learned how to do matrix multiplication, but can't tell you what a vector is (it is not just something with magnitude and direction).
This isn't going to happen simply because it would introduce enormous strategic vulnerabilities. The first act ina war would be to sever an opponent's grid connections to their neighbors because that would massively erode their ability to maintain an orderly civil society.
We've lived in a geopolitical world since Britain converted its navy from coal to oil prior to WWI, making itself dependent on Middle East oil (the UK didn't realise its North Sea reserves until the 1960s, they weren't developed until the 1970s/80s, contributing hugely to the Thatcher boom). Choke-points of oil exporters (particularly Iran, OPEC), pipelines (TAPLINE), canals (Suez, Panama, etc.), straits (Hormouz, Malacca, etc.) have all been at the centre of global geopolitics for well over a century.
Solar changes the who and where, but really not the what significantly. Solar is far more distributed and less concentrated, and options for distribution are potentially more diverse (cables, direct power beaming, synfuel production and distribution) in ways that an oil-based economy hasn't been.
Even within national borders, power production and distribution are sufficiently centralised and choke-pointed that they are vulnerable to significant disruption, even by non-targeted accidents and natural disasters. Major national and regional power outages are not especially frequent, but neither are they unfamiliar: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages>.
During periods of conflict, national and irregular forces routinely target power infrastructure, with significant but rarely absolutely crippling effect. For the past three-and-some years, two major eastern-European adversaries have been directly targeting one anothers' energy infrastructure. Though the results are costly, neither has been bombed back to the stone age, or even the pre-electrical era:
"Resilience Under Fire: How Ukraine’s Energy Sector is Adapting – and What It Means for Europe"
This won't happen because the lines are bi-directional. It would be like chopping off their own energy supply. Because of the Earth's rotation, neighbors can take advantage of each other's sunlight. Parts of Europe and North Africa's energy markets are already working on this.
For the past 100+ years, the US has been spending a significant amount of money on protecting oil supplies to protect its oil billionaires and its economy. It's the #1 budget item, outspending the combined military spending of the next 10 economies. This can be reduced to zero, and ultimately, the $ 39 trillion deficit can be eliminated.
Bidirectional powerlines make the grid more stable for tha larger region around most countries because it makes it easier to route around the conflict as far as capacities permit. Not many countries span coast to coast in a way that couldn't be routed around. So that would actually increase the vulnerability of individual countries.
The EU is actually extremely special because its souvereign member states collaborate in almost all areas on a level that is unmatched anywhere else. But the ideological foundation is getting eroded by propaganda and if that assault is effective, Europe will balcanize again and end up experiencing many more armed conflicts.
People believed this before. Then WW1 happened. 100 years later, people forgot the lessons of the past, and believed this again. Then Russia invaded Ukraine.
If Ukraine was part of NATO it wouldn’t have happened I am willing to bet.
Most in depth analysis I’ve seen of these Russia - Ukraine conflicts cite this as one of the top factors in why Russia invaded both a decade ago and the most recent war that is ongoing.
That is to say - mutual cooperation agreements like that have enough teeth to keep conflicts to a minimum as the repercussions are severe
Also another ultimate irony is that Russia didn’t completely cut the rest of Europe off from its oil and gas. That symbiosis continues albeit not the same way. Perhaps electricity would be the same
The loss is not that much - approximately 3.5% per 1000km. IIRC the Changji-Guquan HVDC line reported around 8% over 3300km thanks to working at 1100kV.
Extend that to 10k km and you're looking at approximately 25%, but if it's surplus solar, who cares?
Such a line costs as much as a highway broadly speaking, so it's not impossible to build.
For reference, that would give me in Maine the ability to buy power from a solar farm in Arizona or other literally unutilized deserts.
Local power costs are over 30 cents per KWh, so that could be pretty competitive.
The problem is that, no profit based organization will ever build "surplus" solar to enable that kind of thing. If we want surplus power, if we want a strong grid, if we want cheap power, if we want to enable the ability to quite literally waste solar power on inefficient processes (including things like industrial processes that produce less CO2 or generating hydrogen or methane as long term energy storage), we have to get the government to make it happen
But, uh, we hired people who would rather spend $170 billion on harassing random cities and brown people so..... Everyone get ready to pay absurd rates for electricity to support outdated businesses that have been directing American energy policy since Reagan, including paying about 60k coal miners in west virginia for a resource that is economically inferior to other fossil fuels but because they voted for a democrat once they now get a stranglehold on the US economy.
> For reference, that would give me in Maine the ability to buy power from a solar farm in Arizona or other literally unutilized deserts.
>
> Local power costs are over 30 cents per KWh, so that could be pretty competitive.
>
> The problem is that, no profit based organization will ever build "surplus" solar to enable that kind of thing. If we want surplus power, if we want a strong grid, if we want cheap power, if we want to enable the ability to quite literally waste solar power on inefficient processes (including things like industrial processes that produce less CO2 or generating hydrogen or methane as long term energy storage), we have to get the government to make it happen
>
I think what we seeing in a lot of places now is quite the opposite. There are significant opportunities for arbitrage, so private entities are building HVDC lines in Europe for example (without special subsidies over the usual ones that all big infrastructure always seems to get AFAIK). That's part of the beauty of the renewables revolution it breaks up the stronghold that only a few big corps held over generation.
> For reference, that would give me in Maine the ability to buy power from a solar farm in Arizona or other literally unutilized deserts.
>
> Local power costs are over 30 cents per KWh, so that could be pretty competitive.
>
> The problem is that, no profit based organization will ever build "surplus" solar to enable that kind of thing. If we want surplus power, if we want a strong grid, if we want cheap power, if we want to enable the ability to quite literally waste solar power on inefficient processes (including things like industrial processes that produce less CO2 or generating hydrogen or methane as long term energy storage), we have to get the government to make it happen
There are huge orbortunities for arbitrage in these areas. That's why in Europe there has been significant investment into HVDC connections recently. AFAIK they are mostly (all? ) build privately without special government subsidies (over the usual ones that all large infrastructure projects always seem to get). I think this partly the beauty of the renewable revolution, it
Regional grids are connected via tie-lines, and I heard international grids are also starting to become more connected in this way too. Though, I'd imagine it's complicated to send power from one side of the planet to the other. For starters grids can have different frequencies that need to be converted between. Also all transmission lines are subject to loss factors. In addition all the intermediary transmission companies have to route the power and avoid congestion on their grids, Then you have deal with all the financial settlement of the wheeling charges, which if you have to go through multiple grids and multiple currencies sounds like fun to deal with.
My understanding of the intentions of connecting international grids is for things like emergency supply of electricity to a different grid to stabilise the frequency and prevent blackouts.
Utility conductors are just aluminum wrapped around a steel core, air is the insulator. You can theoretically handle voltage drop with larger conductors, and there are probably ways to ‘boost’ power over a long transmission line run. I deal with electrical wiring past the utility service entrance and am not super familiar with the utility side so perhaps an EE who works on the grid can chime in with more detail.
I also know breakers for HVDC are extremely challenging to make, AC power has the benefit of sine waves crossing the zero line so power can be switched/broken a lot easier than with DC.
I don't agree. How can wasting your money in your twenties and thirties be more valuable than saving for an early retirement. Imagine being able to retire at 40 and do whatever you want. If you weren't stupid, your health should be good enough. Why prolong the time you have to do stupid chores for other people when you can be strategic and opt out as early as possible.
You can take once-in-a-lifetime experiences in your 20s and still save for retirement. I went to Burning Man and traveled to Amsterdam in my 20s and that didn't impact my savings.
I should point out that it's cheaper to travel when young: Back then I stayed in a tent in the desert and in a friend's room near Amsterdam. If I did the same trip today, I'd have my family in tow, and would need more comfortable accommodations.
I should also point out that startup equity is not retirement savings. Selling 10% of your equity, investing most of it, and then doing something that you won't be able to do when you're old is a very wise and mature decision.
Taking some time off to travel when you're young is much more than a beach vacation. You meet people (sometimes you meet your future wife), that can become lifelong friends. You learn what you like and don't like; and that the world is infinitely more complicated and beautiful than what you could imagine through books and watching youtube.
After 40 you've already made many of your major life decisions - career, partner, education, kids etc. There's less room for new experiences to alter that trajectory meaningfully.
One thing I've also realized through being lucky enough to enjoy some "semi-retirement" between work is having a healthy balance makes me appreciate both work and "leisure" more. It gets pretty boring to go to the beach every day, it turns out. I was itching to get back to building something by the end.
I don't think it's an either or proposition. You can both retire early AND take a nice vacation. Sure it delays your retirement date by a couple of days, but I think that's a good tradeoff generally. I'm approaching 40 and even now, the vacations I took when I was 10 years younger were different than now, I could cram more in, do more things without being as sore the next day, etc. And I haven't had kids yet, that would definitely change vacations.
Kids is one big reason. You can have totally different experiences before you have kids, once they arrive your outlook on life changes, risk tolerance changes etc.
If you can retire at 40 having lived your 20s/30s to the fullest then game on, but it would be crazy to sacrifice that time when you are so free and full of energy otherwise IMHO.
FWIW I am fortunate enough to have really enjoyed by earlier years and be mostly retired in my early 40s.
The act of grading itself is what's wrong with colleges. Different people learn at different paces. Forcing everyone to work at the fastest rate and then judging them for not performing is what kills interest in subjects. People should be allowed to write tests when they want to, learn at the pace they want to decide for themselves when it's time to move on, because lets face it, not everyone cares about some prof's pet subject.
The problem is that higher education became something marketable and universities decided to sell diplomas instead of giving people a chance to learn skills they think might help them reach their goals.
> I'm a paid subscriber of open AI, but it's really just a matter of convenience. The app is really good, and I find it's really great for double checking some of my math.
That right there is why they are valuable. Most people are absolutely incompetent when it comes to IT. That's why no one you meet in the real world uses ad blockers. OpenAI secured their position in the mind share of the masses. All they had to do to become the next google was find a way to force ads down the throats of their users. Instead they opted for the inflated bubble and scam investors strategy. Rookie mistake.
There is talk of 800 million weekly users or whatever. But real question to me is how much actual disposable income they have or willingness to spend it on expensive AI subscription.
The downside to making a zero-effort product is that consumers can easily just switch to something else with no thought. ChatGPT has literally nothing that makes it unique.
And just because you have users doesn’t mean it’s easy to create a profitable ad business - ask Yahoo. Besides we still don’t know how much inference costs. But there is a real marginal costs that wouldn’t be covered by ads. They definitely couldn’t make enough on ads to cover their training costs and other costs.
And adding ads into the responses is _child's play_ find the ad with the most semantic similarity to the content in the context. Insert at the end of the response or every N responses with a convincing message that based on our discussion you might be interested in xyz.
For more subtle and slimier way of doing things, boost the relevance of brands and keywords, and when they are semantically similar to the most likely token, insert them into the response. Companies pay per impression.
When a guardrail blocks a response, play some political ad for a law and order candidate before delivering the rest of the message. I'm completely shocked nobody has offered free gpt use via an api supported by ad revenue yet.
The sooner people realize that there is no such thing, the better. People are extremely incompetent in judging competence. With that said, the solution isn't to then just hire the person willing to do the work for the least amount of money. You americans should realize you live in a society together and have obligations to give each other chances. Plenty of bright people around. This new top down command and control culture that has taken root in the American corporate world will be the downfall of the nation. Everyone is just trying to screw over the next guy for a quick buck.
Past a certain point, skill doesn't contribute to the magnitude of success and it becomes all luck. There are plenty of smart people on earth, but there can only be 1 founder of facebook.
Once you go deep enough into a personal passion project like that, you run a serious risk of flunking out of school. For most people that feels like a big deal. And for those of us with fewer alternatives in life, it's usually enough to keep us on the straight and narrow path.
People from wealthy backgrounds often have less fear of failure, which is a big reason why success disproportionately favors that clique. But frankly, most people in that position are more likely to abuse it or ignore it than to take advantage of it. For people like Zuckerberg and Dell and Gates, the easiest thing to do would have been to slack off, chill out, play their expected role and coast through life... just like most of their peers did.
Metaverse and this AI turnaround are characterized by the LACK of perseverance, though. They remind me of the time I bought a guitar and played it for three months.
When you put the guitar down after three months it's one thing, but when you reverse course on an entire line of development in a way that might affect hundreds or thousands of employees it's a failure of integrity.
What if they’re playing a different game? I read a comment on here recently about how the large salaries for AI devs Meta is offering are as much about denying their AI competitors access to that talent pool as it is about anything else.
True, but I was around and saw first hand how Zuckerberg dominated social networking. He was pretty ruthless when it came to both business and technology, and he instilled in his team a religious fervor.
There is luck (and skill) involved when new industries form, with one or a very small handful of companies surviving the many dozens of hopefuls. The ones who do survive, however, are usually the most ruthlessness and know how to leverage skill, business, markets.
It does not mean that they can repeat their success when their industry changes or new opportunities come up.
Or you can just have rich parents and do nothing, and still be considered successful. What you say only applies to people who start from zero, and even then I'd call luck the dominant factor (based on observing my skillful and hardworking but not really successful friends).
Another key component is knowing the right people or the network you're in. I've known a few people that lacked 2 of those 3 things and yet somehow succeeded. Simply because of the people they knew.
No. Nothing of that scale. I was replying to OP's take on the 3 factors that lead to success in general. I was simply pointing out a 4th factor that plays a big role.
I don't think it is that deep for Trump. His sloppiness is great for the media because his choices lead to endless content. He is great for the unofficial media because everything he does is meme worthy. It is no wonder he and Musk teamed up, both their successes come from following the same strategy.
Nvidia's market value is pumped due to hype. They can use this value to raise enormous amounts of capital and make investments that boost their earnings. This impresses investors, and the cycle continues.
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