largolagrande

There is an experimental documentary about the CLODO available here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGVMu5OPu7E

I did exactly the same. So many good laughs !!! :))

HAHA. Very smart. The more you review the Copilot Agent's PRs, the better is gets at submitting new PRs... (basics of supervised machine learning, right?)

The whole podcast series is a gem. One of my favourite podcast of all time ! Highly recommended : https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2012/06/25/episode-2-the...

(Former Microsoft employee speaking :)

Windows has become ---let's face it--- a kind of malware. The various tricks they use to force you to use Edge & Bing are deplorable.

I almost only use Ubuntu now, which is much, much, much faster than Windows. I only use Windows for PhotoShop.

That said, some other Microsoft products and technologies are excellent: Office, Visual Studio Code, TypeScript to name a few...

With Microsoft, it's hate or love :)

For podcasts downloads, I highly recommend Greg (https://github.com/manolomartinez/greg)

Concerning the public key cryptography for the exchange of private encrypted messages, I would have rather represented the shared public keys by padlocks, and the private key by the key allowing to open the padlocks. This way, it is easier to understand that there is a relationship between the two keys. In his drawing, 2 different keys can open the safe door, which is not possible in the physical world...

Hydrogen peroxide as not a developer for the cyanotype process. There is indeed no developer involved in the cyanotype process.Hydrogen peroxide just speeds up oxidation.

Thanks, I didn't know that.

From "Electrochemical synthesis of ammonia as a potential alternative to the Haber–Bosch process" (2019) :

Water electrolysis, combined with an improved smallerscale Haber–Bosch process, seems to be a short-term solution for the generation of ammonia from renewables at a matching scale. There is a major research focus on reducing the NH3 synthesis reaction pressure and temperature, while keeping the catalyst cost and means to follow the intermittent electrical power input. These technologies are anticipated to be developed within next few years. Electrochemical ammonia production is much more distant from commercialization, however, potential benefits of electrochemical ammonia production, such as reduced energy consumption and associated footprint, scalability, lower process pressures and temperatures, the ability to follow the intermittent electrical power input and use nitrogen with reduced purity justify further research.

From "Electrochemical Synthesis of Ammonia: Progress and Challenges" (2021) :

On the whole, a lot of attempts and significant progress have been made, but the electrochemical synthesis of ammonia is still in the infancy stage with great challenges remained to be addressed.

[A sidenote about investing in nuclear plants, with the example of the UK]

The United Kingdom is an interesting example of a country which is very interested in having nuclear power and which has less and less of it at the moment because of a lack of investment.

As you probably know, the UK is fairly liberal country, which means that it relies heavily on private companies to get things achieved. Nuclear power, as opposed to coal and gas, has the particularity of having an economic structure in which you have to pay for almost everything before starting up the plant.

You have a huge share of initial investment, and then the relative share of operating costs is very small. And when you are in a context where you have to pay for just about everything before you start the plant, it's a context in which, in the world of private capital, it's hard to to do. In other words, private companies like not to wait too long to see the ROI.

So when you have to put in a lot of money, build for 8 years, possibly 10, possibly even 12 years, before you start to have a €1 turnover, this is stuff that the private sector doesn't like at all. So in the UK, the fact that the electricity production system was placed in the private domain (as in many other places in Europe, but it has been done even earlier in the UK than in the other places) led to a lack of investment in nuclear plants.

(Exactly the same process happened with the railways in the UK)

You need hydrogen to synthesize ammonia.

Not workable.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and is found in great abundance in all galaxies. It is particularly present in the Sun, which is problematic because it is not very accessible to us :) On Earth, there is also a lot of hydrogen in water and in hydrocarbons. However, it does not exist in free form, i.e. just hydrogen. It is always associated with something else, for example with oxygen in water, or with carbon in hydrocarbons.

There are, however, small sources of native hydrogen in the earth underground, but the quantities are nowhere near what we would need to use if we wanted to do anything significant with it. At least not beyond what we are already doing, because hydrogen is already used a lot these days. Nearly 100 million metric tonnes of this element are produced in the world every year.

To be transported, hydrogen must be kept under high pressure or extremely low temperature. This should already raises some question about the feasibility :)

Half of this production is used to de-sulphurize fuels and the other half to make fertilizers (Haber-Bosch process). Thus, hydrogen is already used extensively in the world, but there is a small problem: it is made from hydrocarbons, fossil natural gas, oil or coal, which represents 10 to 30 (metric) tonnes of CO2 per metric ton of hydrogen.

With the way it is made, should we go even further towards this fuel despite global warming? We could then imagine making hydrogen for other applications that do not exist today. For example, like you imagine, to power vehicles with hydrogen fuel cells or to make steel without emitting CO2.

There is a process for making iron with blast furnaces that do not emit CO2. There are also plans by steelmakers to make steel without emitting CO2 by converting iron ore into iron with hydrogen. The hydrogen then removes the oxygen from the iron ore, which is released into the atmosphere as water vapor. To do this, large quantities of hydrogen are needed and, for example, to replace a blast furnace, a nuclear plant is needed to generate the electricity that will enable the water to be electrolyzed, which is the only way to make "clean" hydrogen without emitting CO2. Something like a thousand wind turbines would be needed to replace a nuclear plant (and remember: wind turbines does not work all the time)

When you see the amount of electricity it would take to be able to produce carbon-free hydrogen in large quantities, you realize that there will never be much of it in transport. Not all the world's aircraft will be replaced by hydrogen-powered aircraft, for example. The applications that could then be made with carbon-free hydrogen would be to keep the production of fertilizers and carbon-free steel. Achieving this would already be a big step.

This video course by Mr Jancovici at l'Ecole des Mines in 2019 is just brilliant. But a bit depressing as well, I had to stop after 90 minutes... :)

(french guy speaking)

Fun fact, I just saw yesterday evening at the theatres an ad by EDF (the French multinational electric utility company, largely owned by the French state, and the only operator of all the nuclear plants in France) to promote nuclear energy as the best climate-change solution, since it is a "97% CO2-free electricity". You can see the ad here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js85xSOamhQ

Look at how they use in the ad a young girl (probably very concerned about CO2) to promote nuclear energy... I was a bit shocked by this gross greenwashing manipulation. Nuclear energy is by no way a solution:

- The cost of dismantling a nuclear plant is huge.

- The storage of nuclear waste (which we will now have to keep in France) is a joke: how can buried silos withstand several millennia?

- We will have a major nuclear accident in France one day. The question is not if it will happen, but when it will happen. In 1999, there was a level 2 incident at the Blaye nuclear power plant (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Blayais_Nuclear_Power_Pla...), admittedly an incident and not an accident, but to use a metaphor, it is like driving a car with no spare wheel and no brakes. On a straight road, no problem, but if there is a bend... When we have our Fukushima, we will have another talk about it ;)

Until we find a proper way to deal with nuclear wastes or succeed with the nuclear fusion, we all know the best way to reduce the CO2 emissions is to reduce the energy consumption drastically. This means somehow giving up with the growth mindset aka capitalism. I'm afraid we won't make it.

Thanks! You just made my day ;)

I recommend that you watch the "Planet of The Humans" documentary to understand why there is no cheap or green energy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE

A lot of cheap solar energy, from the best location.

I recommend that you watch the "Planet of the Humans" documentary to understand why there is no cheap solar energy, no so-called "green" energies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE

So there will never be any "green" planes, no matter if they use hydrogen or kerosen. Since the minimum required amount of energy to fly from point A to point B with N passengers will always be the same.

Since we have been living in a global economy for quite some time now, shouldn't we actually _pay_ Brazil to preserve its forest, a resource that the whole humanity/planet benefits from?

Or take palladium for instance, which price almost doubled over last year. Its price has plummeted 43% in 18 days! In normal times, the demand for palladium (automotive catalytic converters) far exceeds the supply. Wait another week or two and it will be a very, very good investment, believe me! https://www.apmex.com/palladium-price

Doesn't this crash highlight a fundamental problem with stock markets ?

NASDAQ: -25% in one month. CAC40 (french stock market index) : -33% over the same period.

These stock markets collapsing is just stupid, it just shows that it's pure speculation...

The world economy takes a break during let's say 2 months (everything will resume as before afterwards) and hundreds of billions of euros/dollars disappear.

In fact, the question is: If everyone stops working because of the covid19, if the whole economy is paused (which is basically what is happening) why doesn't the stock exchange do not simply stop too? When a company presents quaterly financial results, it's over a period of _activity_. But then at the moment it's a period of total inactivity... ?!

If you like comics and CS (because often nothing beats a good drawing):

- Excellent ebooks by Julia Evans: https://wizardzines.com/ (Twitter account https://twitter.com/b0rk) - (just about DNS): https://howdns.works/ - (just about HTTPS): https://howhttps.works/

If you know of any others, I'm interested!...

I really like the comparison of TD with the Tetris game : "You can’t win. You can only control how quickly you lose"

Already posted on HN here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19353352

You might be interested by this video about the challenges faced by conservation scientists with Rothko murals : https://vimeo.com/111469325