OP describes systems which seed tests with non-determinism to catch users who write tests relying on undefined behavior, such as order of equal elements. Writing tests against these systems is a game changer (once you figure out what’s going on and why there are flakes). I’m a huge fan of this subtle change which has spared me at least one bug. It also allows library authors to gain the advantage of not accidentally producing a behavior that induces Hyrum’s law. Kudos to the team for making this work at scale.
Not mentioned in the article is power density. How quickly can the energy be released? Consider solar panels, you need a table sized cell to get 100W. That can make for a big battery to get grid scale power output if these cells are only as power dense as solar panels. The energy density of a heat based solution can be very high- metals can get very hot and they are dense enough to store a lot of energy. But if you can’t get the energy out of the battery fast enough that limits the applications. By comparison lithium ion batteries can dump power out extremely quickly, which is what makes them great for cars. Hydro is even better.
I was curious to see if anyone had tried the coal mine bit. This is the closest I could find, a business plan to sell coal attached to carbon credits. Not sure what’s happened since 2016.
I worried about this too. But I think my attitude has changed after watching lots of the PBS Space Time youtube channel. They do a great job of breaking down these concepts at a level where highly interested non-physicists can get what feel like the real details without dumbing it down too much. They have good videos on many physics topics, and regularly explain new discoveries.
If a Netflix subcontractor didn’t pay their actors, writers, etc, they would catch a well deserved deluge of criticism. Of course it wouldn’t happen because those workers are organized to prevent these abuses.
I haven’t done the analysis myself, but I highly doubt winterization would double the cost of energy. It’s probably some small portion of the capex to build the plant in the first place. Would you pay an additional 5% or 10%? Probably, especially if you get to avoid your home being flooded by burst pipes, rendering it potentially unlivable for much longer than the week of power outage.
Stamping out the above board market for hacks, is not a perfect solution. But limiting the free flow of these hacks from private companies to law enforcement and governments will decrease their availability and abuse. The expertise to build these hacks is high, and so is the potential for abuse. If government needs to build it in house instead of calling up a vendor like NSO and forking over a few, we can expect a better outcome.
As someone who writes <5 commits of C++ per year, it is very frustrating. I can’t get through a code review without reviewers referencing at least 2 blog posts about proper style for modern C++. I’m sure if I were an expert who used it every day I could remember all the gotchas and best practices, but it sure is tedious to deal with occasionally. Too many foot guns and conventions, not enough constraints in the language.
This comment hits on one particular issue of ulterior motives in the actions of a non-profit.
But more generally, there is a whitewashing going on. Look at the Sackler family, which for decades got to put their names on museums, hospitals, etc. they get to go around spreading a story about how good they are while rotting out communities with their dirty opioid pushing. They got called out, sure, but how many other Sacklers are out there with their reputations unburnished?
Racial inequality isn’t a one percenter problem if your child was Killed by the police. Pollution isn’t a one percenter problem if your kids all have asthma from inhaling coal fumes or have been drinking water with lead. I could go on.
These problems sound like they have nothing to do with wealthy people standing up for one cause or another. The issue is that the wealth is so often created or amplified by greedily outsourcing these problems to the powerless. The wealth begets more power, and institutions that launder the story of that wealth into a whitewashed canvas of do goodery.
I read Giridharadas' book, and I found it to be pretty narrowly focused on hypocrisy of the wealthy class. Sure, there is a lot of undeserved back patting about how much good people are really doing in the world, but that's probably always been the case. I would have preferred a serious treatment of the ways in which the world has been improved through the mass reduction of deadly infectious disease, famine, and extreme poverty. Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now explores these topics. To read Giridharadas, you might think that all social ills are caused by the wealthy in society, which made it harder for me to take his side on everything.
Still, his main point stands that elites should feel bad about their concentrations of power and that the link between money and political power should be weakened.
https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nycdot-pedestria...