HN user
I mean Trump didn't intend to help. But somehow NATO is in a better state and Ukraine is winning. Its only in the largely imaginary political narrative where NATO is somehow weaker. What is weaker is the credibility of several European leaders. And nobody here thinks that this was some master plan or 10D chess by Trump.
Russia invaded in 2022, Trump was elected in late 2024 and took office in 2025. The out of context quote that kicked all this off was in 2017 or 2018. Somehow you picked the one year out of the last 10 or so that didn't matter for any of this.
The really wild thing about this whole narrative is how unlikely this entire sequence of events was. Let's review:
1) Trump gives some rambling answer to an Estonian journalist in 2017 (or 2018) in which he says about 4 different things, all of which conflict with each other.
2) That journalist clips the answer to make it sound like Trump wants to leave NATO.
3) European leaders lose their mind and for the first time in 35 years actually up their military spending. Something that every US president since Bush Sr has made a major foreign policy goal that ever single administration failed at.
4) So completely by mistake, a journalist nobody has ever heard of, handed Trump the biggest foreign policy win for any US president since Bush Sr.
5) Russia invades Ukraine
6) Sweden and Finland join NATO
7) Trump wins the 2024 election and cuts off some of the Ukrainian aid (but not intelligence sharing).
8) The removal of US limitations on Ukraine allows them to strike Russian oil infrastructure.
9) Russia can no longer afford to fund their war in the way they had been.
10) Ukraine is now actually winning.
So somehow, Trump has gotten a huge foreign policy win and helped turn around the war in Ukraine completely by accident. Its like watching a cow talk.
Stop playing political with science!
correct
They do and how they do the price tranches has changed a lot in the last 5 years. It used to be 4 tranches, 10, 20, 30 and 40. It was very hard to get into the 20 tranch for a single home (maybe if you were bitcoin mining or something). Now the tranches are multiple times higher and its easier to get into the higher tranches. Look on PG&E's website for the specifics.
We don't measure capacity in GWh, we measure it in GW. And if Ireland had 600GW of wind, their entire island would be surrounded by a forest of windmills. Also, Ireland lacks any energy storage so none of that wind can be used for baseload, only variable load.
Also, I don't want a different article, I want one informed by someone who has a real understanding of these topics. For example, if a datacenter is in Washington state, fresh water (and its fresh water we care about here) isn't consumed. In Ireland, probably some is consumed. This is because of wind patterns and where water vapor will be carried to from the datacenter. If its carried over land, fresh water isn't consumed. If its carried over ocean, then it is. Stuff like this is why you actually need knowledge of the issue, and not just an understanding of datacenter cooling systems.
"Many people with a STEM background understand these things .. they are not generally called "scientists" in Commonwealth English."
Sure, but none of them work at the institution referenced by the article. That isn't what they do.
Your post doesn't have a reply link for some reasons but here is my response. What they need is expertise in energy generation. They need to understand concepts like a duck curve, power storage and its material requirements, relative EROEI of various power generation sources and a basic understanding of when newer forms of generation are likely to be ready. For instance, they should understand that renewables need to be well sited. They need to understand that the solar albino of Ireland is (far) too low for solar PV to be effective. Things of this nature. Engineering things around energy generation and the physics of how a grid works. If you don't understand these things, you are throwing darts at a dart board when you try to provide analysis of various types of industrial infrastructure.
Do you honestly think that the very detailed understanding of cooling systems that you have has anything in common with the popular opinion that datacenters use lots of water?
Also, you are arguing jargon...and data centers use completely closed loop designs where it makes sense (very cheap power) and use what you describe where it makes sense (with more expensive power and cheaper water). Finally, nothing you said disproves that there is a significant propaganda effort to demonize datacenters by a foreign power.
Those are not scientists. They also compute GDP.
That's the thing, the popular impression is that this is the case. But if you read what scientists actually wrote/said you would realize that what science says and what activists and journalists claim science says are quite different. That's why its almost impossible for a journalist to get a quote from a scientists on this topic anymore. Its also why there are almost no scientists who are members of "green" political entities (eg Sierra Club) anymore. Did you see a quote from a scientist in this article? When was the last time you saw one?
Near Vancouver.
Which is most of Ireland's economy. I am fine with pulling the plug on them. They are not. I mean, who wants to lose 2/3rd of their GDP overnight?
Objectively no, 23% of nothing is nothing. Ireland has no industry. Their grid is smaller than a major city's grid. That this is 23% says a lot more about the size of the Irish grid and their lack of industry than it does about how much energy a datacenter uses.
The vast majority of the anti-datacenter movement is funded by the CCP. That's why it is so lacking in facts. Most datacenters use closed loop cooling. That means it doesn't consume water for anything more than the toilets and water fountains. Yet this talking point pops up in almost every article on the topic. Part of the reason you are seeing closed door meetings now is because leaders know that the public is profoundly misinformed on this topic. It doesn't help when AOC is waving a jar of dirty water as if it is proof of something.
That opinion should be informed by facts and data. This opinion isn't really informed by anything except scientifically illiterate propaganda. That's the problem. Journalists larping as experts in something that they have absolutely no expertise or even the basic scientific background to understand. The amount of misinformation on topics surrounding energy generation is absolutely criminal and journalists are far and away the biggest spreaders of misinformation on this topic. If I could, I would make a journalist without scientific or engineering credentials talking about this topic a felony on par with murder. After all, they are causing significant amounts of misery in the 3rd world with their lies.
Credibility is a thing. Articles like this burn it quite quickly. It really is past time that the scientific community needs to make a public statement rejecting these types of "journalists".
Sure, $1B for the plant and $19B for the lawyers. Korea and China build them in 4 years for about $1B each. This is entirely self-inflicted by people who are completely scientifically illiterate.
The rest of Europe sued Ireland to get them to stop being a tax haven. Ireland basically refuses to do so. If they did, most of their economy evaporates overnight (and the US government gets a lot more tax revenue). Ireland's economy is basically 2 tax shelters in a trench coat.
That's 7x the cost that I pay in the Pacific NW. Where are you?
"If there were a super-efficient hammering machine, it could be better to figure out ways to use nails to replace screws in designs than to hold onto screws just for nostalgia's sake."
How about for the sake of the bridge continuing to stand? Or is that not a good enough reason for the accountants?
I can't even describe how much I dislike SBT.
Just to put it in perspective, most Scala programmers rejected Scala3 before it was even written. The Scala team, in their infinite wisdom with a collective 2 years of professional programming under their belt knew better. Nobody switched and Scala2 has been slowly dying with their neglect ever since.
PS The Scala team should have been fixing their type inference engine which lacked some important features and needed a better (Horn clause based) architecture. They did a complete rewrite instead.
Python is preferred because Python programmers are cheaper than other languages. Not because of any sort of technical advantages. Its literally the worse performing programming language in popular use. And it uses invisible characters in its syntax. Truly, it is the VHS of our industry.
javac doesn't really do a whole lot. Consequently, whatever compile time you are complaining about would be worse with any other compiled language. Most optimization work in Java happens at runtime.
"proving code correct has been a research topic at some point."
It has been an area of active research for 40 years. But almost all the research returned the null result, meaning that the program proving didn't improve code quality (basically it didn't work). Yet somehow a group of programmers, usually fresh out of academia falls for program proving each generation. Strong types do really help but you need a good compiler which is sometimes lacking in the real work cough Scala cough. The problem with strong types and program proving is that the juice just isn't worth the squeeze meaning the extra time taken doesn't result in reduced debugging time or improved code quality. I don't think that changes with LLMs. It just exposes the flaws more quickly.
Yes, take a look at the idea of "luxury political beliefs" for depth into this idea.
They were trained on the output of Reddit mostly. Its a miracle they even work at all given that.
Again, you are confusing causalities (wounded and dead) with KIA (just the dead). That's why you are getting such different numbers. Its a pretty easy mistake to make and there are lots of media reports that make the same mistakes.
PS Also, some numbers count civilians and others just count military. And usually civilian dead > military dead in most wars.