skybrian's recent activity
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Comment on Vermont's largest energy source is now a virtual power plant in ~enviro
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
skybrian Link ParentSince doctors make medical decisions, I'm doubtful about the idea that they don't sometimes deny care.Since doctors make medical decisions, I'm doubtful about the idea that they don't sometimes deny care.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
skybrian Link ParentWhy not charge the doctors and nurses too while you're at it? Not providing good enough healthcare is not the same thing.Why not charge the doctors and nurses too while you're at it?
Not providing good enough healthcare is not the same thing.
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Comment on Vermont's largest energy source is now a virtual power plant in ~enviro
skybrian Link ParentI don't know; that's a quote from the author of the article.I don't know; that's a quote from the author of the article.
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Comment on Taiwan targeted in AI-driven hacking campaign in ~tech
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...]From the article:
According to the Financial Times report, published on Wednesday, researchers at Israeli AI start-up Dream were the first to detect the intrusion, which allegedly used open-source AI agents to build an autonomous hacking tool.
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The tool compromised at least 85 government user accounts and extracted more than 2,500 personnel records before the attackers expanded their operations to Taiwan’s nuclear safety agency and at least seven energy companies, the UK-based news outlet reported.
Dream did not attribute the attack to a specific group, but researchers said that internal communications linked to the operation were in simplified Chinese, suggesting the operators were likely connected to China.
Meanwhile, the agency said the attacks showed clear signs of originating overseas and involved a hybrid approach combining conventional hacking with AI agents such as OpenClaw.
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Chinese cyberattacks on Taiwan’s key infrastructure from hospitals to banks rose 6 percent last year from the previous year to an average of 2.63 million attacks a day, the National Security Bureau said in January, adding that some of the hacks were synchronized with military drills in “hybrid threats.”
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Taiwan targeted in AI-driven hacking campaign
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Comment on In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices in half in ~enviro
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...]From the article:
A little more than one year ago, Australia rolled out a program to heavily subsidize home batteries, part of a larger effort to make use of the huge volumes of solar energy that were going to waste. On Friday, officials announced that more than 500,000 batteries had been installed under the plan, helping to slash wholesale power prices roughly in half.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen said that Australia now has more home batteries than the United States, which has a population 12 times larger. “This is a story of global significance that Australian households have achieved,” Bowen said in a press conference.
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With its home battery subsidy program, launched in July 2025, the government is aiming to help households use more solar energy by providing a 30 percent discount on residential battery systems connected to solar arrays.
The subsidy program has spurred a boom in installations. Australia is on track to more than double its home battery capacity this year, Bloomberg reports. The program has also been a boon to the grid. By relying on batteries in the early evening, when demand peaks, homeowners are reducing the need for utilities to fire up additional power plants during those hours, which is helping to lower costs for other ratepayers, officials say.
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In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices in half
6 votes -
Comment on Vermont's largest energy source is now a virtual power plant in ~enviro
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...] [...]From the article:
As temperatures climbed into the high 80s and low 90s and air conditioners pushed electricity demand higher, Green Mountain Power (GMP) dispatched 90 megawatts (MW) from its VPP. The network combines residential batteries, utility-scale storage, and other clean energy sources.
GMP says the 90 MW dispatch was roughly equivalent to taking 50,000 homes off the grid during the peak. Avoiding electricity purchases when wholesale prices are at their highest reduces the costs that ultimately get passed on to all GMP customers – not just those with residential battery storage.
The estimated $6 million saving follows the $11 million that GMP says its VPP saved customers last year.
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GMP’s virtual power plant now has 110 MW of capacity, making it Vermont’s largest single power resource by capacity, according to the utility.
More than half of that capacity – 53 MW – comes from residential battery systems. The rest includes utility-scale batteries, EV chargers, hydroelectric plants, and commercial buildings that can temporarily adjust their electricity use.
More than 5,000 GMP customers now have over 10,000 batteries enrolled in the VPP. During a grid peak, GMP can draw on some of that stored electricity as one coordinated power source while leaving participating homes with backup power for outages.
The batteries can now supply nearly 10% of Vermont’s summer peak electricity demand. GMP says that’s the highest storage-to-state-peak ratio in New England.
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GMP was the first US utility to offer a state-approved, tariffed home battery lease program. Customers can currently lease two Powerwall batteries for $55 per month or pay $5,500 upfront for a 10-year lease. In return, GMP gets access to some of the stored electricity during peak demand. (I participated in this program when I was a Vermont resident, and it was fantastic. Having two Tesla Powerwalls in our cellar kept our electric bill reasonable, and the lights on and water running when the power went out.)
Customers can also buy their own compatible battery through GMP’s Bring Your Own Device program in exchange for an upfront incentive.
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The growing VPP has already allowed GMP to permanently close peaker plants in the towns of Vergennes and Rutland following an ISO-New England retirement process. Peaker plants operate when electricity demand surges, but they’re often expensive and carbon-intensive. GMP says it plans to retire more peaker plants as its battery network grows.
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Vermont's largest energy source is now a virtual power plant
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Comment on Clothing, how did they make it? Part I: high fiber. in ~life.style
skybrian Link ParentOh, I read too fast and didn't see that at all :-)Oh, I read too fast and didn't see that at all :-)
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Comment on US tax law is funding the AI infrastructure boom, not creating it in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentYou could consider it equivalent as long as everything else remains equal, but I think that ignores where the revenue comes from, and that conditions can change. If the business does well then...You could consider it equivalent as long as everything else remains equal, but I think that ignores where the revenue comes from, and that conditions can change. If the business does well then they may pay more taxes (depending on a lot of accounting details), and if they stop doing well then they'll go down.
As you point out, businesses take estimated expenses into account when deciding what to do. We often rely on this effect. The whole point of a carbon tax is change profitability calculations so that businesses will change what they do.
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Comment on BoredOS: A from scratch OS in ~comp
skybrian Link ParentAre you using day-to-day? What machine do you run it on and what do you do with it?Are you using day-to-day? What machine do you run it on and what do you do with it?
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Comment on Clothing, how did they make it? Part I: high fiber. in ~life.style
skybrian Link ParentI’m missing something. What does that quote mean to you?I’m missing something. What does that quote mean to you?
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Comment on US tax law is funding the AI infrastructure boom, not creating it in ~tech
skybrian LinkWhile I’m sure the companies are happy to get tax cuts, it’s rather odd to recharacterize a reduced expense as funding when the cash flow is in the other direction. Normally, businesses get money...While I’m sure the companies are happy to get tax cuts, it’s rather odd to recharacterize a reduced expense as funding when the cash flow is in the other direction. Normally, businesses get money from either investors or customers and some of that money is paid in taxes.
Some exceptions: for government contractors, the government is a customer, and there are sometimes government subsidies that actually pay out.
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Comment on Clothing, how did they make it? Part I: high fiber. in ~life.style
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...] [...]From the article:
Transhumant pastoralists are not ‘true’ nomads; they maintain permanent dwellings. However, as the seasons change, the transhumant pastoralists will herd their flocks seasonally between different fixed pastures (typically a summer pasture and a winter pasture). Transhumance can be either vertical (going up or down hills or mountains) or horizontal (pastures at the same altitude are shifted between, to avoid exhausting the grass and sometimes to bring the herds closer to key markets at the appropriate times). In the settled, agrarian zone, vertical transhumance seems to be the most common by far, so that’s what we’re going to focus on, though much of what we’re going to talk about here is also applicable to systems of horizontal transhumance. This strategy could be practiced both over relatively short distances (often with relatively smaller flocks) and over large areas with significant transits (see the maps in this section; often very significant transits) between pastures; my impression is that the latter tends to also involve larger flocks and more workers in the operation. It generally seems to be the case that wool production tended towards the larger scale transhumance. The great advantage of this system is that it allows for disparate marginal (for agriculture) lands to be productively used to raise livestock.
This pattern of transhumant pastoralism has been dominant for a long time – long enough to leave permanent imprints on language. For instance, the Alps got that name from the Old High German alpa, alba meaning which indicated a mountain pasturage. And I should note that the success of this model of pastoralism is clearly conveyed by its durability; transhumant pastoralism is still practiced all over the world today, often in much the same way as it was centuries or millennia ago, with a dash of modern technology to make it a bit easier. That thought may seem strange to many Americans (for whom transhumance tends to seem very odd) but probably much less strange to readers almost anywhere else (including Europe) who may well have observed the continuing cycles of transhumant pastoralism (now often accomplished by moving the flocks by rail or truck rather than on the hoof) in their own countries.
For these pastoralists, home is a permanent dwelling, typically in a village in the valley or low-land area at the foot of the higher ground. That low-land will generally be where the winter pastures are. During the summer season, some of the shepherds – it does not generally require all of them as herds can be moved and watched with relatively few people – will drive the flocks of sheep up to the higher pastures, while the bulk of the population remains in the village below. This process of moving the sheep (or any livestock) over fairly long distances is called droving and such livestock is said to be moved ‘on the hoof‘ (assuming it isn’t, as in the modern world, transported by truck or rail). Sheep are fairly docile animals which herd together naturally and so a skilled drover can keep large flock of sheep together on their own, sometimes with the assistance of dogs bred and trained for the purpose, but just as frequently not. While cattle droving, especially in the United States, is often done from horseback, sheep and goats are generally moved with the drovers on foot.
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The availability of iron for tools represented a fairly major change. Iron, unlike bronze or copper, is springy which makes the standard design of sheep shears (two blades, connected by a u-shaped or w-shaped metal span called a ‘bow’ (see the image)) and the spring action (the bending and springing back into place of the metal span) possible. The basic design of these blade shears has remained almost entirely unchanged since at least the 8th century BC, with the only major difference I’ve seen being that modern blade shears tend to favor a ‘w-shape’ to the hinge, while ancient shears are made with a simpler u-shape. Ancient iron shears generally varied between 10 to 15cm in length (generally closer to 15 than to 10) and modern shears…generally vary between 10cm and 18.5cm in length; roughly the same size. Sometimes – more often than you might think – the ideal form of an unpowered tool was developed fairly early and then subsequently changed very little.
Modern shearing, either bladed or mechanical, is likely to be done by a specialized sheep shearer, but the overall impression from my reading is that pre-modern sheep shearing was generally done by the shepherds themselves and so was often less of a specialized task with a pastoral community. There are interesting variations in what the evidence implies for the gender of those shearing sheep; sheers for sheep are common burial goods in Iron Age Italy, but their gender associations vary by place. In the culturally Gallic regions of North Italy, it seems that shears were assumed to belong to men (based on associated grave goods; that’s a method with some pitfalls, but the consistency of the correlation is still striking), while in Sicily, shears were found in both male and female burials and more often in the latter (but again, based on associated grave goods). Shears also show up in the excavation of settlements in wool-producing regions in Italy.
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When thinking about the people involved in these activities, at least in most agrarian contexts, it is often important to distinguish between two groups of people: the shepherds themselves who tend the sheep and the often far higher status individuals or organizations which might own the herd or rent out the pasture-land. At the same time there is also often a disconnect between how ancient sources sometimes discuss shepherding and shepherds in general and how ancient societies tended to value actual shepherds in practice.
One the one hand, there is a robust literature, beginning in the Greek and Roman literary corpus, which idealizes rustic life, particularly shepherding. Starting with Theocritus’ short pastoral poems (called eidullion, ‘ little poems’ from where we get the word idyll as in calling a scene ‘idyllic’) and running through Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics, which present the pure rural simplicity of the countryside and pastoralism as a welcome contrast to the often ‘sordid’ and unhealthy environment of the city (remember the way these ‘gentlemen farmers’ tend to think about merchants and markets in cities, after all). This idolization only becomes more intense in Europe with the advent of Christianity and the grand metaphorical significance that shepherding in particular – as distinct from other rural activities – takes on. It would thus be easy to assume just from reading this sort of high literature that shepherds were well thought of, especially in a Christian social context.
But by and large just as the elite love of the idea of rural simplicity did not generally lead to a love of actual farming peasants, so too their love of the idea of pastoral simplicity did not generally lead to an actually high opinion of the folks who did that work, nor did it lead shepherds to any kind of high social status. While the exact social position of shepherds and their relation to the broader society could vary (as we’ll see), they tended to be relatively low-status and poor individuals. The ‘shepherds out tending their flocks by night’ of Luke 2:8 are not important men. Indeed, the ‘night crew’ of shepherds are some of the lowest status and poorest free individuals who could possibly see that religious sign, a point in the text that is missed by many modern readers.
We see a variety of shepherding strategies which impact what kind of shepherds might be out with flocks. Small peasant households might keep a few sheep (along with say, chickens or pigs) to provide for the household’s wool needs. In some cases, a village might pool those sheep together to make a flock which one person would tend (a job which often seems to have gone to either fairly young individuals or else the elderly – that is, someone who might not be as useful in the hard labor on the farm itself, since shepherding doesn’t necessarily require a lot of strength).
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Full time shepherds could – they didn’t always, but could – come under suspicion as effective outsiders to the fully sedentary rural communities they served as well. Diodorus in the aforementioned example is quick to note that banditry in Sicily was rife because the enslaved shepherds were often armed – armed to protect their flocks because banditry was rife; we are left to conclude that Diodorus at least thinks the banditry in question is being perpetrated by the shepherds, evidently sometimes rustling sheep from other enslaved shepherds. A similar disdain for the semi-nomadic herding culture of peoples like the Amorites is sometimes evident in Mesopotamian texts. And of course that the very nature of transhumance meant that shepherds often spent long periods away from home sleeping with their flocks in temporary shelters and generally ‘roughing it’ exposed to weather.
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Clothing, how did they make it? Part I: high fiber.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
skybrian Link ParentMade me look! Yeah, people are still chatting. There is an AI conference now. (Their word for a forum.) It’s not somewhere I go very often. I didn’t cancel my account out of inertia. Demographics...Made me look! Yeah, people are still chatting. There is an AI conference now. (Their word for a forum.)
It’s not somewhere I go very often. I didn’t cancel my account out of inertia. Demographics are old and older.
Like Tildes, they are in “cozy mode” and the software doesn’t change.
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Comment on Any cool coding languages? in ~comp
skybrian LinkWhat kinds of languages are you interested in? What's your connection to BoredOS? If you want to make your own language, I highly recommend reading Crafting Interpreters, which is a whole book on...What kinds of languages are you interested in? What's your connection to BoredOS?
If you want to make your own language, I highly recommend reading Crafting Interpreters, which is a whole book on how to do it, first in Java and then in C. But you could use any language you want.
I think if I wrote another interpreter for fun, I'd try writing it in Lean 4, just to see learn more about what mathematicians are up to. (Lean is used for proofs but it's apparently a real programming language too?)
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
skybrian (edited )LinkI'm still tinkering with my personal link-sharing website, but it's gotten increasingly meta. I've gone back to my devtools roots. It started out because I'd gotten annoyed with how VS Code is...I'm still tinkering with my personal link-sharing website, but it's gotten increasingly meta. I've gone back to my devtools roots.
It started out because I'd gotten annoyed with how VS Code is evolving, with too much AI stuff I don't care about in each new release. I use AI all the time, but it's in Shelley and I don't want it in my text editor anymore. (I liked using Github Copilot for autocomplete at the time, but those days are over.) Also, VS Code doesn't work on my tablet or phone.
Since I rarely edit files myself anymore either, maybe I don't need a text editor at all? So, I decided to build a personal web app for source browsing. That's gone well. I use it about half the time to look at the source and if I see something I don't like, I ask the AI to refactor it. I plan on adding search next, since that's something I still need VS Code for.
It's reminded me of my early days at Google when there wasn't a good way to search and browse Java code in google3, so I built one as my 20% project. This is much easier nowadays!
Also, my wife asked for help getting her ancient personal website up to date, working on mobile and moved to a new hosting service with https. I offered to get her set up on exe.dev, but she asked me to do it. So I spun up a VM and I typed requests to the AI for her. We asked Shelley to download all files. It's a static website and needs some templating for common layout, so we converted it Eleventy at the AI's recommendation and got a preview website set up. Since everything is easy with AI these days, I asked it to build a file browser / editor admin website, so that she could edit the files directly, with instant preview. Then we uploaded it to github and from there to Cloudflare Pages (her choice). There was a bit of head-scratching at times but it went well. There's no way we could have done that in a couple days before.
One of these days I should do the same for my original, abandoned blog.
Lithium iron phosphate batteries are supposed to be cheaper and safer, but heavier. It seems like home use might be a good application for them?