skybrian's recent activity

  1. Comment on Asia turns back to coal as war chokes off natural gas in ~enviro

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...]

    From the article:

    Many nations in Southeast Asia began significantly ramping up import volumes in the early 2010s as domestic gas reserves dwindled. Thailand led the push. The country built two major import terminals and took steps to liberalize its domestic gas market. By 2022, natural gas generated more than half its electricity, with L.N.G. accounting for nearly a quarter of that supply — up from just 2 percent in 2011, according to data from the Asia Pacific Energy Research Center, a research organization in Tokyo.

    The Russia-Ukraine war dented confidence in L.N.G. When Moscow cut pipeline supplies to Europe in 2022, wealthy European nations pivoted to the global L.N.G. market, often outbidding developing Asian economies. The resulting shortages forced countries to curb imports and endure rolling blackouts. In Thailand, electricity rates rose to record highs, prompting the government to postpone the retirement of coal-fired units at the Mae Moh power plant.

    [...]

    Four years later, the pattern is repeating. This month, the Thai government ordered coal-fired power plants to operate at full capacity and began tapping heavily into a state energy-subsidy fund to help absorb price shocks.

    With ships being rerouted, “it’s once again widening economic disparities between the richer countries and the emerging economies,” said Dinita Setyawati, an Indonesian-based senior energy analyst at Ember, a think tank.

    In Bangladesh, utilities have begun significantly increasing their use of coal to create electricity since the start of the war in Iran, data from Bangladesh’s state-owned company responsible for electricity transmission show.

    Supply disruptions are causing problems in Asia’s most developed economies as well. Taiwan’s economy ministry said this month that it would be prepared to buy more L.N.G. from the United States and restart its retired Hsinta coal-fired power plant if supply disruptions persisted through April. South Korea is also preparing to boost nuclear and coal-fired power generation to offset volatility in oil and L.N.G. supply, its industry minister said last week.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on Iran hits Gulf energy sites, escalating war, as US mulls sanctions rollback in ~society

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    After an Israeli strike Wednesday on Iran’s portion of the South Pars gas field, which it shares with Qatar, Iran retaliated with attacks that caused “extensive damage” at Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility, officials said. The attacks sent the global oil benchmark soaring and prompted a scramble in Washington. President Donald Trump threatened “to blow up the entirety” of Iran’s South Pars gas holdings if Iran attacked Qatar again, and his treasury secretary said the United States would consider lifting sanctions on millions of barrels of Iranian oil.

    [...]

    As the latest attacks rattled markets and the price of Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, briefly climbed past $119 per barrel before falling back to $108 on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the administration might lift restrictions on some 140 million barrels of Iranian oil that have already been loaded onto vessels — a week after lifting sanctions on Russian oil already in tankers.

    [...]

    Although the attacks on energy infrastructure in recent days are a substantial escalation, they make up a fraction of the damage both sides could inflict, analysts say. Some are warning that if the attacks on oil and gas fields, liquefaction facilities and shipping terminals continue, the cost of a barrel of crude could spike to $150.

    [...]

    Iranian drones in recent days have struck two refineries in Kuwait and one in Saudi Arabia, officials said. Iran also attacked the Saudi Red Sea port of Yanbu, from which the kingdom was exporting oil to avoid the Strait of Hormuz.Ask The Post AIDive deeper

    [...]

    After Iran warned early Thursday that it would be attacking five specific Gulf state energy facilities, Rystad Energy warned that oil could quickly hit $120 a barrel and keep rising.

    [...]

    Saraswat noted that Iranian strikes have yet to affect port loadings of fuel in Saudi Arabia, but that could change. If the port of Yanbu was substantially damaged, for example, that “could remove 5 to 6 million barrels per day from the market and potentially push oil prices to $150 or higher.”

    1 vote

  5. Comment on Android to debut "advanced flow" for sideloading unverified applications in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Apologies in advance for the cheap shot, but to update the Shrek meme: "Some of you may lose your life savings, but that's a risk I'm willing to take."

    Apologies in advance for the cheap shot, but to update the Shrek meme: "Some of you may lose your life savings, but that's a risk I'm willing to take."

    3 votes

  6. Comment on Android to debut "advanced flow" for sideloading unverified applications in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I'm in favor of public education and I also prefer web apps to mobile apps. But a solution where one of the steps is "let's educate everyone worldwide" is kind of big project? A stopgap measure...

    I'm in favor of public education and I also prefer web apps to mobile apps. But a solution where one of the steps is "let's educate everyone worldwide" is kind of big project? A stopgap measure that only takes years of work by one big tech company is also a big project, but I'd guess a couple of orders of magnitude smaller.

    3 votes

  7. Comment on Android to debut "advanced flow" for sideloading unverified applications in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    It seems like open source organizations like Debian should be able to get someone to pitch in $25 to support shipping lots of different apps? It's true that the $25 fee would affect people who...

    It seems like open source organizations like Debian should be able to get someone to pitch in $25 to support shipping lots of different apps? It's true that the $25 fee would affect people who want to ship software independently, sort of like having your own record label.

  8. Comment on Android to debut "advanced flow" for sideloading unverified applications in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I was thinking more along the lines of a Raspberry Pi or the many fine microcontroller boards available from AdaFruit. There are also many portable video game devices.

    I was thinking more along the lines of a Raspberry Pi or the many fine microcontroller boards available from AdaFruit. There are also many portable video game devices.

  9. Comment on Android to debut "advanced flow" for sideloading unverified applications in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I'm not sure every developer needs to pay $25. This depends on how the project is organized. It could be a smaller number of developers doing the releases, provided that they're willing to review...

    I'm not sure every developer needs to pay $25. This depends on how the project is organized. It could be a smaller number of developers doing the releases, provided that they're willing to review and vouch for multiple apps.

    It's a bit of friction, but might increase software quality too if people team up. Consider how Linux distros work.

  10. Comment on OpenAI to acquire Astral (creators of ruff, uv, and ty) in ~comp

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Perhaps maintaining forks will become cheaper than it has been, now that we have coding agents.

    Perhaps maintaining forks will become cheaper than it has been, now that we have coding agents.

    3 votes

  11. Comment on Android to debut "advanced flow" for sideloading unverified applications in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    It's true that it does more than one thing. I'm not sure there's any way around it? The ability to install apps written by complete strangers is both a security risk and a way of enabling...

    It's true that it does more than one thing. I'm not sure there's any way around it? The ability to install apps written by complete strangers is both a security risk and a way of enabling competition.

    But for any serious competitior, paying $25 for an id check doesn't seem like all that big a hurdle? It seems like a rather minor speedbump.

    Also, I'll point out that this isn't needed for websites, which are easier to build and very capable. Writing Android apps is a real slog.

    5 votes

  12. Comment on Android to debut "advanced flow" for sideloading unverified applications in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link
    I'm cautiously thinking this is a good thing. I don't normally do this, but I'll make an argument based on ablism. Android devices are primarily for mainstream users, not us techies. Technically...

    I'm cautiously thinking this is a good thing. I don't normally do this, but I'll make an argument based on ablism.

    Android devices are primarily for mainstream users, not us techies. Technically adept users are the minority and we can deal with a few hoops to customize our phones the way we like. Or we can buy non-mainstream devices.

    If a society should be judged by how it treats its least able members. It seems selfish to advocate against better protections for all the naive people out there who will get ripped off by scam artists, just for our own convenience?

    14 votes

  13. Comment on BYD claims five-minute electric vehicle charging with new battery tech in ~transport

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Yeah, it's funny that people are upset already about data center electricity usage, but if everyone buys electric vehicles and we go all-electric for housing, we're going to need a lot more...

    Yeah, it's funny that people are upset already about data center electricity usage, but if everyone buys electric vehicles and we go all-electric for housing, we're going to need a lot more electrical infrastructure than that.

    1 vote

  14. Comment on Water and sanitation in the developing world in ~society

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Most companies and nonprofits aren't democracies, but how well they do depends on leadership.

    Most companies and nonprofits aren't democracies, but how well they do depends on leadership.

    1 vote

  15. Comment on BYD claims five-minute electric vehicle charging with new battery tech in ~transport

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    It’s been done before - see Wikipedia. It doesn’t seem to have been all that popular?

    It’s been done before - see Wikipedia. It doesn’t seem to have been all that popular?

    4 votes

  16. Comment on I hope you don't use generative AI - an essay about my experience offering an open-source tool in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I’m no expert, but I think there was a lot more going on after the Panic of 1873. For one thing, modern economics hadn’t been invented yet and a result monetary policy was way too tight; in the...

    I’m no expert, but I think there was a lot more going on after the Panic of 1873. For one thing, modern economics hadn’t been invented yet and a result monetary policy was way too tight; in the US, there was deflation for much of that time period. But it’s not a clean experiment with a simple explanation. The Wikipedia article you linked to goes into various theories.

    History is terrible and the time period is no exception, but during that time period life expectancy in the US and UK started to rise, from about 40 to 45 years by 1900, eyeballing the charts on Our World In Data. And that seems to show that what came before the Guilded Age was worse?

    I didn’t find good data on poverty rates. Do you remember where you saw that?

  17. Comment on I hope you don't use generative AI - an essay about my experience offering an open-source tool in ~tech

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Meanwhile, Google’s office suite is free for consumers. (Sure, it’s ad supported. But still.)

    Meanwhile, Google’s office suite is free for consumers. (Sure, it’s ad supported. But still.)

    1 vote

  18. Comment on I hope you don't use generative AI - an essay about my experience offering an open-source tool in ~tech

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Skepticism about who profits is understandable, but I find it strange to hear people arguing against higher productivity, as such. Getting more work done with less labor is basically the...

    Skepticism about who profits is understandable, but I find it strange to hear people arguing against higher productivity, as such. Getting more work done with less labor is basically the foundation of modern prosperity. Without labor-saving improvements we’d all be peasant farmers.

    This is kind of obvious when using a washing machine rather than washing clothes by hand, but it’s also supposed to work that way for industry, too. The result of productivity improvements, combined with competition, is that the main benefits of higher productivity go to neither capitalists nor labor - they go to consumers as lower prices. And there is certainly a lot of cheap stuff available, and cheap software as well.

    That’s the theory anyway. Yes, also, there are huge fortunes to be made as a side effect. But along with Bezo’s wealth there are an awful lot of Amazon deliveries.

    The reality is often messy and it’s going to take years for the software industry to come to grips with this. Yes, AI is nondeterministic but so are programmers. With rigorous automatic testing and static analysis, hopefully it will become less so. Code health is a choice and maybe we could use these new tools to improve quality?

    3 votes

  19. Comment on BYD claims five-minute electric vehicle charging with new battery tech in ~transport

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...]

    From the article:

    The company unveiled its second-generation Blade Battery alongside a 1,500-kW charging system called FLASH Charging. Put together and in optimal conditions, BYD says the technologies allow compatible vehicles to recharge from 10% to 70% in about five minutes and from 10% to 97% in roughly nine. Even in subzero temperatures the system can charge a battery from 20% to 97% in about 12 minutes.

    [...]

    BYD says the Blade Battery 2.0 improves both charging speed and energy density, and increases energy density by about five percent compared with the original version, enabling driving ranges of more than 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) under China’s CLTC test cycle, which could translate to well north of 400 miles EPA.

    The mechanism behind such an improvement is what BYD is calling a “FlashPass” ion transport system, which uses specially designed cathode, electrolyte, and anode that reduce internal resistance and heat buildup and allow for faster lithium-ion movement within the battery.

    [...]

    The charging hardware itself is designed to be easier to use than conventional stations. BYD’s FLASH Charger features a T-shaped overhead cable system that keeps connectors off the ground and allows drivers to plug in more easily.

    BYD has already installed more than 4,200 of the new charging stations in China and plans to deploy about 20,000 by the end of the year. The stations include energy-storage systems that help deliver ultra-high charging power even where local electrical grids may have limitations.

    The first vehicle expected to use the new technology in Europe will be the Denza Z9GT, a premium electric wagon from BYD’s luxury sub-brand Denza. Additional details about international rollout plans for the charging network are expected later.

    16 votes