davis

based upon recent events

Climate change has been in the zeitgeist for decades now. Pretty sure many people are cognizant of this and want to move away from fossil fuels. This is just a boost to do so.

Damn, this is really cool man. I'm a big fan of Gary Kildall, he's one of my heroes so this is great to read.

Do you have a source? Curious to learn more about this

Agreed. The Soul of a New Machine is my personal favorite but I think Mountains Beyond Mountains as well as Strength in What Remains are the more powerful and interesting books.

I can't believe I had to scroll this long to see this comment. Like what the heck is wrong with people on this site. I thought I clicked the wrong comment section.

I've been using Readwise's Reader and have been really happy with it. It's great: https://readwise.io/read

Dude is drinking the koolaid for sure. Did you see his take on Meta's Vibes? It was so embarrassing.

Exactly this. This is essentially a new consumer tax in your electrical bill. The buildout of the electrical grid is being put on consumers essentially as a monthly tax with the increase in electrical costs. Everyone in the country is paying for the grid infrastructure to power these data centers owned by trillion dollar companies who aren't paying for their needs.

Load growth for the last 15 years has been very small but load growth going forward is expected to rise due to electrification of all things to decarbonize the economy. This means home heating, electrical cars, heavy industries, obviously data centers and the list goes on. So even if we have more grid capacity than demand (this seems unlikely), it will be used before too long.

My comment went into details why this month was an outlier by the way.

It is an insane number but May 2025 is a bit of an outlier. The entire first half of the year they installed 197.85 and in May they installed 92.92 of that.

Much of this solar was rushed construction to get them in before the new electricity pricing policy goes into effect. It isn't known yet how much the buildout will drop off for the remainder of the year but it is pretty conceivable that some fraction of the construction for the rest of the year was "pulled" forward and rushed to get it in before June. I'm hopeful China's insane buildout will continue but we probably won't see numbers like May 2025 for awhile at least.

The short summary: if a renewable project was built and finished before June, it gets the old, more profitable electricity rates, but if it is finished after June, it is less profitable.

More details on this here: https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-chinas-renewable-p...

The decline in emissions is due to the massive build out of renewables of solar and wind. The amount they are building is insane. Your theory is ignorant and you are spreading misinformation and nonsense.

I love this

Man, you need to hang around different and good people if this is your world view.

Here they are: https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/114881419368778558

Being born in the US means you are a citizen. He holds dual citizenships

I saw the Grok image and just closed it. So cringe

Articles like this are just such a delight. History + common software + code snippets is a great combo

Just curious: where do you work given it is your industry?

I think electricity grids are very very impressive. Even the US' which is considered out of date works in that it spreads across the entire country, needs to meet demand and supply down to milliseconds, has do many points that withdraw power and points that add power to the grid. Crazy stuff

It doesn't matter what the incoming admin thinks, it just matters what makes the most economic sense. If interconnection queues are backed up and the grid is lacking the electricity required, offgrid might be the way to go: https://www.offgridai.us/

People assume gas plants are the fastest and easiest to build and power but you have to get the natural gas to the plant. Nat gas pipelines take years to build and also there are gas turbine supply issues. Offgrid solar + battery solves all of these.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/coAvU

What type of pipes did you have? How did you know they had lead issues?

Another vote for The Soul of a New Machine. It's one of my favorite books.

We are trading partners for sure but the American model and Chinese model are fundamentally opposed. For the last 10-15 years, tensions have been getting hotter because Xi has been consolidating power and flexing his strength across the region and exporting censorship. You can look at Hong Kong as an example of this. It's clear China doesn't want to live under a Western hegemony and has been trying to get more power and the US sees this. Trump instituted tariffs and we've also banned Huawei 5G equipment and it's all in the interest of national security and China hasn't liked this. So things have been going back and forth. TikTok is just seen as a scary possibility in that they could influence American minds at a scale that is unprecedented. There's a law in the US that no foreign entity can own a large share of any US broadcasting company. This is just to prevent hostile takeovers and controlling media. This is pretty similar to that in that TikTok is a media company and the US wants to exert that same control. User data is a red herring and honestly the least of the concern if you think about the soft power they control with the TikTok algorithm. Even though we have a trading relationship, things have been heating up under the surface for decades.

Wow, that's absolutely fascinating. Thanks for sharing that history

It's also partially self inflicted due to the Jones Act which means boats to do the work need to be made by the US. A special boat that has legs that makes installation possible is required to do the work but we can't just use foreign boats which are already made and designed for this kind of thing.

https://www.wired.com/story/us-energy-offshore-wind-jones-ac...

Building more housing (of all kinds) == cheaper housing. Sorry but it really is that simple.

We've known this for over a decade at least https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-03/how-time-flie...

This rough idea is the basis of A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. It has this idea of "zones of thought" where there's basically a speed limit on the speed of thought and advanced civilizations move up into the higher zone with a faster limit. It's an incredible book and well worth the read.