V17's recent activity
-
Comment on There's a hundred illegal erections in the hills behind my parents' house in ~hobbies
-
Comment on There's a hundred illegal erections in the hills behind my parents' house in ~hobbies
V17 Link ParentI do urban exploration as well, never been in a place as interesting and as dangerous as the Paris catacombs, but I definitely see the appeal. One thing that I like about urbex is that you go to...I do urban exploration as well, never been in a place as interesting and as dangerous as the Paris catacombs, but I definitely see the appeal. One thing that I like about urbex is that you go to places that may be quite near to where normal people commonly go, and yet most of them have no idea the place even exists, so there are definitely some parallels. But I enjoy how pure and idealistic tramping can be when compared to urbex.
-
Comment on There's a hundred illegal erections in the hills behind my parents' house in ~hobbies
V17 Link ParentNot a devaluation at all! KC:D is the most accurate depiction of czech forests in a videogame that I know of. One of the reason why I love playing it is that the landscapes remind me of childhood...Not a devaluation at all! KC:D is the most accurate depiction of czech forests in a videogame that I know of. One of the reason why I love playing it is that the landscapes remind me of childhood summer vacations.
-
Comment on There's a hundred illegal erections in the hills behind my parents' house in ~hobbies
V17 Link ParentI would have to double check, but from what I remember it is legal to camp in non-protected forests and also in the lowest form of protected land (CHKO, chráněná krajinná oblast), but the...You wrote that in Czechia and Slovakia "when you want to sleep in the forest, you can of course just use a tarp and a sleeping bag anywhere". I'm surprised (and a little excited) to hear this, as I was under the impression that wild camping is illegal in the two countries, like it is in most countries in the area. But am I mistaken here? Am I a fool to travel to the other side of the continent to get my yearly tramping fix?
I would have to double check, but from what I remember it is legal to camp in non-protected forests and also in the lowest form of protected land (CHKO, chráněná krajinná oblast), but the restriction is that it can only be wild camping with a tarp, sleeping bag, hammock etc., no permanent structures (which I think may include tents as well) and no fires, and it can only be for a limited time in one spot, I think like 3 days. The "no fires" rule is often ignored unless the weather has been very dry and forest fire warnings have been issued, but I believe the law says you have to be something like 50 meters from the edge of the forest to legally start a campfire. You can legally collect dry firewood sticks up to a diameter of 7 cm and collect berries or edible mushrooms for personal use.
It's not something I normally do and it's been over 20 years since I left Boyscouts, so do check those things if you ever come here - which I think is a great idea, both Czechia and Slovakia are quite beautiful. Czechia is more tame, no particularly difficut terrain and a high density of villages almost everywhere, whereas Slovakia has actual mountains. Slovakia also has some bears, around here the only dangerous animal is the tick, and possibly wild boars if you're unlucky enough to get between a mother and her young.
-
Comment on There's a hundred illegal erections in the hills behind my parents' house in ~hobbies
V17 (edited )Link ParentThere are three camps in this image. Can you find them? I couldn't, and I know where they are - this is an area that has already been mapped and the maps published. I certainly hope so. Right now...With satellite images readily available how do these clearings stay hidden?
There are three camps in this image. Can you find them? I couldn't, and I know where they are - this is an area that has already been mapped and the maps published.
My hope is that your governing bodies also feel the same way you do and bureaucratically drag their heels long enough for the one guy to go away.
I certainly hope so. Right now he's winning, but so far that's two isolated protected areas, and it took him years. We can only hope that all the bureaucracy annoyments and/or court processes in other areas take him just as long and aren't sped up by what already happened, which is somewhat plausible since many of the other spots are not on protected land, so his case would have to be stronger.
The one guy is just doing it for clicks isn't here, just to create outrage and controversy and get famous and make money?
From what I know about him I believe it's truly just ego and a combination of spite and rationalizing yourself into believing you're the one person against all who's doing the right thing, without any other objective goal. He does have some background in ecology, but he was never really an eco activist. Back channels also claim that he lost his woman to a tramp, which I didn't include above because I have no way to validate it and it feels like a very cheap attack, but I wouldn't bet against it considering how personal this whole thing seems to be from his side and also frankly considering that he's an unattractive and not particularly liked middle aged man (and has been long before this battle).
-
Comment on There's a hundred illegal erections in the hills behind my parents' house in ~hobbies
V17 LinkThis is basically a blogpost. It's something I wanted to write about because of recent experiences, but I don't write regularly, don't have a blog and Tildes seemed like a good place for it, being...This is basically a blogpost. It's something I wanted to write about because of recent experiences, but I don't write regularly, don't have a blog and Tildes seemed like a good place for it, being populated by reasonable people from other parts of the world.
I welcome any similar experiences from your respective countries and will of course also answer questions about the post itself.
-
There's a hundred illegal erections in the hills behind my parents' house
If you're a native English speaker, you know what "tramp" means. If you're not, you can read the wikipedia article, but also look up "tramp stamp" to get a different, more contemporary meaning....
If you're a native English speaker, you know what "tramp" means. If you're not, you can read the wikipedia article, but also look up "tramp stamp" to get a different, more contemporary meaning. Neither is particularly helpful here though.
If you're in Czechia or Slovakia, it means something else altogether. "Tramping" describes a hobby and an identity that strongly relates to woodcraft, Scouting and perhaps a romanticized version of the old-school hobo life. Basically tramps are a loose community of people who like to walk through the forests, sleep outside, sing songs around the fire, usually drink, all the while respecting the nature and each other.
The part that I want to write about, though, is more interesting: their camps. Semi- or entirely illegal hidden spots in the forest, built and maintained by volunteers and free for use by anybody who finds them and behaves.
The community has existed for over 100 years and what helped it quite bit were oppressive regimes - first Nazis and then especially communists. People liked to escape the everyday atmosphere of oppression in the towns and disconnect from it in the countryside, where they could feel truly free for a couple of days.
When you want to sleep in the forest, you can of course just use a tarp and a sleeping bag anywhere, but there's a much more comfortable way: tramp camps. Some are legalized, with private ownership, and these days often contain your standard countryside cottages. But the majority is not. Popular tramping areas are full of spots that range from just a campfire with a couple of logs to sit on, through many places that contain comfortable benches and a wooden sleeping platform with a tarp-covered roof, to full-on small log cabins.
Some of these, mostly the bare campfire spots, are easy to find and near main trails. Others, especially the log cabins, tend to be hidden. There are no public maps. The more hidden they are, the more helpful stuff they tend to contain: a saw for making firewood, various pots for cooking and also for carrying water to douse the fire, a fire grate, sometimes even shelf-stable condiments, books, more comfortable sleeping arrangements... And most have a visitor's logbook too.
The beauty here is that all of those are free to use for anyone who finds them, and many of them are also completely illegal. I'm not sure what the rules are specifically in standard forests (though as far as I know making a fire is illegal even in those), but many tramp camps are in protected forests as well. This may sound bad, and sometimes it is. But many of the camps existed for decades before the environmental protection was established, and the people using them tend to not cause issues, so they're usually tolerated.
A large group of people of all ages that isn't organized in any way and merely like doing what they do has spent countless hours working to build and maintain these spots - just to bring joy not only to themselves and their friends, but also to other people they've never met.
It all relies on two things. First, the locations of these spots will only be shared privately or found by people who care and make the minimal effort to find them, and therefore are unlikely to abuse them. Second, the authorities know this too and therefore have no reason to interfere even where law says they should.
I love these instances of systems that work entirely without the involvement of any official structures, based on trust among completely unknown people, only protected by minimal gatekeeping. What they're doing could be harmful to the environment if they were selfish or irresponsible, but they're neither, so it has worked for a century.
Their image has some specifics
Oh, and there's one more thing that may seem cute to people from north America. Tramp culture used to almost idolize some small parts of US and to a smaller degree Canadian history and culture. This was understandable - the freedom of living in the wilderness of old-timey North America or in the wild west as known from literature and Western films felt like the complete antithesis to living under the oppression of soviet-style communism. But it often brought things that in retrospect may seem cute, a bit silly or even wrong.
For example every legalized and permanent tramp village had a leader who would settle disputes etc., called a sheriff. Unfortunately, those people were often targets of the communist secret police, trying to break them to snitch on their friends. Many camps have vaguely foreign names, or names inspired by real places in the US or Canada. I remember a camp called "Ontarko", a diminutive of Ontario.
But aside from western symbols like clothes, cow skulls etc., sometimes some Native American imagery or military references (tramps to this day like older versions of US Army backpacks) you would also often see Confederate flags.
These days they're almost gone, but you may still encounter them among old tramps. In the pre-internet era, with heavily censored information coming from the west, they were often seen simply as a symbol of rebellion, freedom and independence. American Civil War was barely understood here, and almost nobody saw the negative connotations that many people in the West immediately perceive today.
Why am I writing this now?
One of the prime tramping locations is around the area where my parents live, and every time I visit I take a bike to ride into the hills and then walk around interesting potential spots - near streams and springs, on steep hill sides farther away from paths, behind unusually dense patches of forest etc. So far I have found around 7 of them nearby (and probably 10 others elsewhere). It's like a game of geocaching that, instead of just giving you a virtual point, grants you a new place you can grill sausages and then sleep in, often times quite beautiful too.
Unfortunately, the fact that many of the spots are on protected land and therefore illegal has one obvious downside: it would just take one person with a lot of time and energy to start pressuring the authorities to remove them, even if they don't want to.
Quite honestly, some of the camps are a bit much. Log cabins partially covered in creosote (preserves wood but is quite far from eco friendly), with store-bought doors, on protected land... Yeah. I can see why somebody would have a problem with that. This is a small minority though.
As often happens, the one person unfortunately eventually appeared and started pushing for the removal of all of those camps. He's a journalist known mainly for being contrarian and combative. There are some minor aspects of tramping that are clearly too much as mentioned above, and others that are clearly up for discussion, but this is not his approach: his work feels truly personal, fueled by hostility towards the whole subculture, ego, and an unwillingness to understand why these places matter to people.
His communication is spiteful, full of juvenile snark, including things like mockingly misspelling tramp slang. He (or possibly some accomplice) also uses dirty tactics like mapping the camps and then anonymously publishing the maps online and in smartphone apps, where the pretense is "democratizing access to the camps", but the real intent is to remove the gatekeeping so that people who do not care about nature start using the camps, leaving a mess and causing issues, which forces authorities to act.
Unfortunately it works. In the most popular protected area many of the camps have been removed, others are scheduled for removal. Just a few camps are planned to be legalized with some conditions, despite his demands, at least.
So far this only concerns the protected areas, the hills behind my parents' house should be safe for now. Most of the forests around there are privately owned, which may or may not help when he tries to target them in the future. I hope it does. The mapping of the area is already slowly starting though.
I'm giving you some crude phone photos of the camps I or other people have found. I really want you to imagine the feeling of walking around the beautiful temperate forests of central Europe and knowing that these places are probably somewhere around you and they are free for you to use and enjoy, if you just find them and leave them in the same state after using them. They're not alpine cabins intended for survival, they are purely for enjoyment with your friends, family or alone.
A couple examples
I wish I could share more, but I only started taking photos of them relatively recently, and there are a couple that I'm not comfortable sharing even anonymously here.
And here's a video of my band playing a very old tramp song from 1939 (yeah, I know what I say below) in another one - a big campfire with a half-circle of benches around it, likely established by a local scout troop.
I am not a member of the subculture, I am not a tramp. I hate the music they traditionally play, I don't like cheap rum and I don't have that much in common with many of them. But I have a lot of respect for their traditions and the beauty of the whole concept is that I can experience some of it on my own terms.
I can only hope that in the future, when the one majorly disliked person pushing for their removal no longer has the strength to do what he does, the camps will gradually get rebuilt and the tradition will recover in some way.
(no, I will not address the clickbait elephant in the title)
74 votes -
Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
V17 LinkOne of the issues in DIY audio, whether it's loudspeaker prototyping, room correction (something that can make the sound from your loudspeakers much better in some situations) or just equalizing...One of the issues in DIY audio, whether it's loudspeaker prototyping, room correction (something that can make the sound from your loudspeakers much better in some situations) or just equalizing common headphones which is almost always a significant audio quality improvement, is the accessibility of cheap DSP, a standalone box that takes care of EQ, splitting audio signal into different bands and other functions, digitally, which offers more precision and lower cost than traditional analog solutions. Hardware solutions have existed for a long time, but they're not that cheap, so they're not worth it if you have very cheap speakers/headphones, which would often benefit from DSP a lot.
These days it's pretty easy to do this using software if you have a multichannel audio interface, theoretically. Practically at least on windows it just sometimes breaks, sometimes it's difficult to get it working, on Android the options are limited without root and on iPhones it's afaik impossible to do. And it's a pain to install and setup the software in each new device, when you own two different pairs of headphones you need to switch their settings in the settings application etc.
Well, I did not solve this problem, but some developer with the help of AI agents just casually (mostly) did with DSPi, which is Raspberry Pi Pico used as an USB Audio interface with integrated DSP. You just buy a Pico for 6 EUR, flash it over USB and it starts working as an external sound card, plus a second (hidden) USB device that communicates with a desktop app used to change its settings. The only issue is that it only has digital outputs, so for each output channel (up to 8) you want to use you need to buy a separate digital-analog converter module as well. However, this is all still cheaper than any dedicated DSP module on market that I know of. And thanks to its modularity you can use high end DACs as well, at which point the cost is dramatically lower than any complete solutions.
I've been testing it with a couple cheap chinese DACs, fixing a couple old amp modules I've had lying around that needed a few updates to reduce noise, and it works great. My first project is just to put it all in a box and set it up for my father, but I can't wait to do some new audio project with it, something I haven't done since about 2019. May even do a pair of big high end speakers for a friend later.
-
Comment on The US campaign to turn healthy people into Alzheimer’s patients in ~health.mental
V17 Link ParentMost evidence I've seen points to the beta amyloid hypothesis being likely true despite the research misconduct, just more complicated. There were some articles I think last year about a new drug...Most evidence I've seen points to the beta amyloid hypothesis being likely true despite the research misconduct, just more complicated.
There were some articles I think last year about a new drug being tested that supposedly isolated the mechanism of why some people with lots of beta amyloid plaques are still doing fine, with great success in animals so far. That would be an incredible breakthrough, but the proposed explanation is in tune of "beta amyloid buildup is definitely a problem, but we can activate some protective mechanisms that seem to negate it".
The reason why drugs targeting beta amyloid plaque buildup do not work very well may easily just be because the ones used so far don't cross the blood-brain barrier well, and so the patient needs to take high doses to get an effect, which increases side effects. Next generations of drugs that try to solve this difficult problem are being worked on and could solve the issue.
-
Comment on Did wokeness leave us worse off? (gifted link) in ~society
V17 (edited )Link ParentI really don't see it that way. It may be a minority of people, but it's loud enough to create real consequences. One example that I immediately thought of because it was the first publicized...You know, I find it fascinating that people feel this is the case. It's almost like people don't recognize that the internet is a huge space. They don't fully internalize the 90/9/1 rule. They make these vast assumptions about entire groups of people based on a few vocal folks. Or they let these vocal folks take up all of their attention. As someone who is in a ton of left-wing spaces, I don't ever see these so called 'diversity seminars'. Well, I mean I see them occasionally happen in toxic social media spaces where unmoderated discussion among literal millions of people happen, but I also recognize that it's chronically online people having that discussion. Do most people not recognize that this is a huge reality distortion? Like it makes me think back to the child kidnapping paranoia of the 90s and early 00s driven by media coverage, when it was exceedingly rare for it to happen in the first place. These voices are getting amplified by algorithms, but they are extremely rare.
I really don't see it that way. It may be a minority of people, but it's loud enough to create real consequences.
One example that I immediately thought of because it was the first publicized instance that I've seen: the scientist who helped land a probe on a comet but wore an inappropriate shirt because he's a nerd: The controversy follows the revelations from the scientist’s sister Maxine that he could be “useless” in everyday life. Portraying her tattooed sibling as absent-minded, unable to find his car in the car park, and sometimes lacking in common sense, she told the Evening Standard, he didn’t like making decisions.
That shirt probably warranted a HR visit explaining to wear plain clothes for press conferences next time, but I find the reaction to be much more disgusting than what he wore.
I think it's also emblematic that this is essentially friendly fire. I doubt a nerdy scientist is the enemy of progress.
-
Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 Link ParentI think this is still a bad frame of mind that leads to disappointment and possibly supports harmful thought cycles in the broad area of "the world is fucked and everyone is against common people"...So maybe we're not where we should be today
I think this is still a bad frame of mind that leads to disappointment and possibly supports harmful thought cycles in the broad area of "the world is fucked and everyone is against common people" that seem to be quite prevalent. I don't think batteries and solar getting cheaper could be realistically done much faster than it has been. There have been huge financial incentives to innovate for quite some time now, but the reality is that it's just a hard problem to solve. But I do think this is an area where we can honestly say that "we" have been doing close to our best.
As for the rest of your comment I am simultaneously worried that too quick of a rollout of renewables is going to make energy too expensive, further lower Europe's competitiveness on the world stage and lower our standard of living, but simultaneously, probably similar to you, I am excited about what's going to be possible in a decade.
-
Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 Link ParentAs Englerdy says and as I already said, using heat as storage has great losses and the lower the temperature the harder it is to extract energy back from it. The thermal battery you linked is used...As Englerdy says and as I already said, using heat as storage has great losses and the lower the temperature the harder it is to extract energy back from it. The thermal battery you linked is used for heat storage, it's not turned back to electricity, its purpose is to reduce (non-clean) electricity consumption for heating during the night by providing heat that was generated during the day basically.
Using waste heat either to heat homes or to use in other industries (chemical industry often has uses) that are located nearby is a good idea and is indeed often done, with waste heat from fossil power plants as well. Generating electricity from it is not efficient at all, unfortunately.
One thing we seem to keep circling back to is that these huge datacenters are a business and the costs to build them are already sky high. If a cheap and simple alternative existed, many of them would be doing it.
-
Comment on Do you play knock-offs of celebrated indie games? in ~games
V17 Link ParentHuh, I never realized. I kind of liked Brogue, but Pixel Dungeon always bored me. Anyway, a related example is Pathos: Nethack Codex, which at first looks like a Nethack ripoff or fork (Nethack is...Pixel Dungeon is a loving homage to PC's Brogue, probably my favorite roguelike. But Brogue isn't available on mobile and PD is the next best thing.
Huh, I never realized. I kind of liked Brogue, but Pixel Dungeon always bored me.
Anyway, a related example is Pathos: Nethack Codex, which at first looks like a Nethack ripoff or fork (Nethack is free software, so forks happen), but it's actually a new game that takes many features of Nethack (creatures, special levels, magic effects, items...) but reshapes them into a significantly changed whole which removes some of Nethack's most frustrating/"interesting" qualities in general (the need to read and study extensive spoilers to be good at the game) and in the context of phones (shitty interfaces of Nethack ports).
The name itself still feels weird, but it was somehow necessary to acknowledge the big Nethack influence, and the game turned out to be the closest we have to actual traditional roguelikes on phones, so I'm really not mad at all.
-
Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 Link ParentI meant it for the application mentioned in this article. The batteries would have to be 10x cheaper to start being viable for seasonal storage instead of fossil power generation. In general it's...I see what you're saying that batteries are expensive, but this seems so pessimistic.
I meant it for the application mentioned in this article. The batteries would have to be 10x cheaper to start being viable for seasonal storage instead of fossil power generation. In general it's a good thing of course.
Anyway I watched this video that discusses a new report.
Didn't watch the video, went through the relevant parts of the report. They list current prices as below 100 USD/kWh, but if I understand it correctly the number is based on information they got from the manufacturers. It is not based on real world data from projects that were actually built. My numbers are based on the costs of real projects. While the report claims <100 USD/kWh in 2025, real data usually contains claims like "cost of battery storage fell as low as 194 USD/kWh in 2025".
A data center so massive would probably not be physically built for 2 years, right? At least? So if the cost of the batteries has dropped by a little less than that rate from 2025-26 to like $50/kwh and then it does so again from 2026-27 to like $35/kwh then again from 2027-28 by the time the place is built, the storage would cost like $25/kwh.
Aside from the numbers likely being significantly undercut I think this has two flaws. First is that with a project that costs literally billions of dollars I don't think you can afford to make such big assumptions, that the graph of battery prices is going to look the same further on - that depends on many things, some of it not "natural development" - for a neighboring example China is now trying to halt the lowering prices of solar because their own state incentives shrank the margins too much.
Second is that even if it doesn't get built for two years, and that's an if, considering how much in a rush we are with datacenters specifically, you can't start signing deals and finalizing orders in a couple years. For an industrial project the deals are signed (and prices finalized) well in advance because the production capacity it takes is significant. Of course for a project of this scale a free battery production capacity doesn't even exist, which is a much bigger issue, but if we assumed it did.
Another interesting number from your linked report. It confirms that using batteries to store energy during the day and release it in the evening still makes spot prices of solar electricity double per kWh even with todays electricity prices. And this is still just battery storage for a few hours after dark.
Aren't they starting to use thermal batteries to heat up dirt instead of lithium? In a data center, a lot of the energy use is for cooling so this seems like a perfect fit. There is no way that dirt batteries are that expensive.
Without wanting to be mean this sounds a bit like hopium, do you have any data for real projects using these? Never heard of them (but I'm far from an expert, I just researched what's used these days and how much it costed to build). Generally using heat as storage has great losses, and the lower the heat the harder it is to extract the energy back from it (unless you use it for heating somewhere not far away).
-
Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 Link ParentI agree with that. The reality though is simply that they chose the only viable option that aligns with their goals. Solar/wind with storage is impossible at this scale currently, so is something...And at this scale, that's probably going to be a huge cost, right? Using fossil fuels for a project that is going to double the energy used by an entire state,, and consuming a not insignificant amount of water in a region that desperately needs to conserve water all so Kevin "I'm not a billionaire, I just play one on TV" O'Leary can open a data center that serves the interests of practically no one seems pretty fuckin crazy to me.
I agree with that. The reality though is simply that they chose the only viable option that aligns with their goals. Solar/wind with storage is impossible at this scale currently, so is something like biogas, which is arguably better than natural gas. That pretty much leaves nuclear as the only clean option capable of handling such output, but nuclear afaik takes at least five years to get through all the paperwork and build it, usually more, and that's too long of a goal for such a project, we don't really know what the market is going to be like at that point.
We really fucked up many years ago when we collectively decided to not keep intensely developing nuclear.
-
Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 Link ParentI believe that affordable energy storage is so far off (see my other comment with some math) that investing in nuclear would be a better use of this philosophy. The problem is that any such change...The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is right now.
I believe that affordable energy storage is so far off (see my other comment with some math) that investing in nuclear would be a better use of this philosophy. The problem is that any such change is going to significantly raise costs for the end user, further increasing cost of living, which is a hard sell.
-
Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 (edited )Link ParentI checked the data before writing my comment and I did not use numbers for central Europe in the example in the latter half. I'll edit the comment to make that clear. Firstly the difference in...This is part of why the top-level comment brought up the fact that Utah is in the desert and gets a lot of sun, though.
I checked the data before writing my comment and I did not use numbers for central Europe in the example in the latter half. I'll edit the comment to make that clear.
Firstly the difference in sunny hours between peak summer and peak winter in Box Elder County (where the project is planned) is still threefold, in january you get less than 5 hours of sun per day on average even in the desert from what I could find.
Secondly Utah also gets snow - for an example look at the main Wikipedia photo for Box Elder County - this is in the easternmost part of the county under the mountains, but weather reports claim that snowfall is common everywhere.
Thirdly energy storage and firming need to account for unusually bad cases as well, there is of course a limit to it, but 10 days of minimum sunlight surely isn't it. Just turning off your datacenter when a storm comes is incredibly expensive and the utility grid won't save you because the capacity simply isn't there.
edit: In order to make solar even a bit viable I think I'd have to be about an order of magnitude off with my battery math. In reality the cost is likely an undershoot, it uses the lowest cost estimates available.
And honestly I find it disappointing that even after the clarification (but I was explicit about using some Utah numbers even before that) people still give votes to your comment but ignore mine despite being a relatively high effort explanation that expands on the article and applies to solar in general. Feels somehow reddity.
-
Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 (edited )Link ParentWell now you made me look up the data, at least I'll have this comment to link to when debates on PVE come up again. That only works if you can somehow fill in periods of time in which you get...Well now you made me look up the data, at least I'll have this comment to link to when debates on PVE come up again.
I guess I thought solar + wind combined was supposed to take care of that problem, with only a small amount of batteries.
That only works if you can somehow fill in periods of time in which you get neither. I mostly have data for central Europe as that is where I reside (edit: for the example below I did actually check the data for Box Elder County, Utah and built it upon that), but in here we can pretty commonly get two weeks with minimum solar and wind and yet peak energy demand in the winter, no weather anomalies needed - and generally you need the energy grid/datacenter supply to be ready for the anomalies as well. So far coutries with a lot of non-firm renewables do this by simply importing energy from their neighbors with a bigger share of fossil or nuclear, but this only works because not everyone is on renewables yet and it usually has a downside in cost. Germany has a ton of both solar and wind farms and it's the biggest electricity importer in Europe with highest electricity prices in Europe.
I googled cost of electricity and found this PDF page: https://www.lazard.com/media/5tlbhyla/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2025-_vf.pdf
Those costs do not include storage, but the study does talk about storage costs as well. The basic numbers in the graphs are not purchase costs, we need to look a bit deeper at the methods used to get to that: utility-scale 100 MW 4 hour storage (so 400 MWh) without subsidies costs 62 - 160 mil. USD, or about 155 USD per kWh on the low end, according to them. I looked myself at some finished battery storage products like shipping container modules or modules like this and they were all 100 - 150 USD per kWh at the least, and the low end was without freight costs and imports, plus no idea about things like fire code compliance, guaranteed degradation rates and other things I know nothing about. So let's say it's 150 USD per KWh - this is the very low-end, Chinese ready made battery systems.
The first phase of the project aims at 3 GW. So to run it for an hour from batteries, we need 150 USD * 3 000 000 kWh = 450 000 000 USD. I think you already see the issue here. Let's say we get 10 days of cloud cover in january - Salt Lake City gets about 1/3 of sun hours in january vs july and the energy generated per hour is lower due to lower sun angles. So let's say we get only 20% of summer PVE capacity that is designed to feed it in full (which is optimistic imo) and the rest needs to be covered by batteries. That's 450 mil. USD times 240 hours minus 20% = 86 billion USD with the lowest cost battery modules currently available. And to get a truly firm energy source I believe 10 days is not enough, I'm trying to be optimistic to bias for possible future prices.
There's also the issue of supply limits. Afaik Tesla Megapack factories each produce significantly less than 50 GWh of capacity per year. This means less than 17 hours of battery storage to run the first phase of this datacenter produced per year in the whole factory.
As for natural gas power plants, the construction prices seem to vary between 0.8 - 2.5 billion USD per 1 GW. An order of magnitude cheaper than just the batteries (without the solar panels or the property costs which are not small either at this scale, computing how much area of solars we'd need for this is left as an exercise for the reader).
Basically, while the cost of batteries has been going down, it has been going down from such ridiculously high places that it changes nothing.
-
Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 Link ParentThe problem stays the same though because it's not abour overnight storage. Overnight storage can be done with PVE and batteries, it makes the price per KWh about 2/3 higher per some recent...The problem stays the same though because it's not abour overnight storage. Overnight storage can be done with PVE and batteries, it makes the price per KWh about 2/3 higher per some recent studies, which is still viable. The issue is that you need 10x that or more to safely get through winter, storms etc.
-
Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 Link ParentThis is a fuckup that was already done in the past through not investing in cheap nuclear. At this moment it's basically either abandon the AI arms race (which is also terrible, AI is happening...This is a fuckup that was already done in the past through not investing in cheap nuclear. At this moment it's basically either abandon the AI arms race (which is also terrible, AI is happening and it might make the world a worse place, but throwing in the towel and letting China lead would almost certainly make the future worse and could be impossible to revert) or use fossil fuel to power it. A firm multi gigawatt power supply can't be done with renewables unless you build it next to something like Three Gorges Dam.
I think that this is the most solid case for libertarianism (as a general idea, not the libertarian party in the US) that exists. This overabundance of laws that most people break makes it really easy for either the state (which happened commonly during communism) or as we see here even for one asshole to endlessly bully you. I need to say that I am not a libertarian and wouldn't want to live in an actually libertarian state, but I think this kind of healthy paranoia over regulating everything and its consequences is an angle that we should consider and think about hard every time we push for a new law.
True, but also I'm worried there's not even any way to do it. I can't see a way in which you could define proper behavior in a law, in a way that can be checked and enforced. Tramping seems like the special category of "we need to regulate it on paper because if every common idiot did it, the damage would be too big, but a sane person doing it is harmless and even welcome". In an ideal situation the solution is obvious: decide it on a case by case basis and if a camp gets too popular among people who misbehave* and generates too much trouble, it can be removed. But in reality you get one spiteful person who creates a map of camps with the explicit purpose to make them all problematic in that way.
This I see as the biggest tragedy of the whole thing. Things that are not sanctioned by state or whatever regulating body tend to disappear over time because a portion of people is unable to participate in an acceptable way, and most of the time there's no way back. We rarely relax or prune old regulations, and so the continued existence of such things is often dependent on a few people in the right positions of power willing to take responsibility and even legal risk to themselves to defend them. That's a fragile system that often fails and so we very slowly move into a life more and more regulated and controlled. Is there even a way to go back?
* We call them "mastňáci", something like "fatty guys", origin is not related to being overweight but probably comes from leaving trash like oily sausage wrappers etc.
Honestly I don't get the hate for gatekeeping at all. I think that most of the internet clearly shows us that some sort of gatekeeping is necessary for good communities, reddit especially is a particularly bad example. I get that artificially restricting things is bad in principle and sometimes in practice too, I would never think of asking somebody who wears a shirt of my favorite band to name 3 songs (this is a meme, no idea how often it actually happens). But many of us talk about how great some aspects of the old internet used to be, and one of the main reasons for that was that it was all gatekept in various ways. My hot take is that the dislike for gatekeeping is a part of a broad trend of mainstream antiintelectuallism, but this is truly a hot take that I don't want to defend here, I'm sharing it to provoke a bit but not to pollute this thread.