HN user
Ex-nuclear power plant engineer
Could Palantir be compared with Raytheon? A major U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. Raytheon makes air traffic control systems, radars and sensors, satellite sensors, missile defense systems, missiles.
All the biometrics technologies are not perfect, e.g. there is a small chance of false positive, be it fingerprints, DNA, hair analysis, etc.
Veritasium had a nice video about this biometrics errors:
Andrew Kelleys original motivation for creating Zig was language that allowed precise low-level control for real-time audio processing.
"Kelley describes why he created Zig, when other options including C, C++, Rust, and Go already exist. He said he set out to develop a digital audio workstation. He tried Go, but found interoperability with C libraries difficult, and said the garbage collector caused audio delays. He tried C++, or coding C-style using a C++ compiler, but found that small mistakes led to memory corruption bugs that took weeks to fix. He tried Rust but "really struggled to write code that would satisfy Rust's rules," and spent a month trying to make font rendering work."
https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/05/28/zig-creator-...
Palantir is de-facto military contractor and the Palantir CEO knows it.
"“Our product is used, on occasion, to kill people,” Karp said in an interview with news website Axios in 2020."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChwSTuDa9RY
https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/inside-palant...
Foreign government officials choosing Microsoft is not always the result of Microsoft been the best option. Sometimes, little bit of bribing helps.
"Microsoft is paying more than $25 million to settle federal corruption charges involving a bribery scheme in Hungary and other foreign offices."
https://apnews.com/article/f6852284a2154ac5ab422d51495c4056
Trump government now makes bribing more useful.
https://apnews.com/article/fcpa-bribery-trump-antibribery-la...
In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s investment arm, was early investor into Palantir.
"The company has found itself at the center of a topic that has become especially important for the United States: how to use AI in defense, intelligence and government management. Palantir has historically been close to this market. Its early investor was In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s investment arm, and its largest customers for a long time were U.S. government agencies and the military. That connection has become even stronger: last year, Palantir had nearly $900 million in contracts with the Pentagon, and earlier the company received a U.S. Army contract worth up to $10 billion over 10 years."
https://tradersunion.com/news/editors-picks/show/1992613-pal...
Harvest Now Decrypt Later principle holds very well for intelligence work, the harvested information could be useful for very long time.
You can see this in the long time intervals specified for Declassification of classified documents.
"Executive Order 13526 establishes the mechanisms for most declassifications, within the laws passed by Congress.[1] The originating agency assigns a declassification date, by default 25 years. After 25 years, declassification review is automatic with nine narrow exceptions that allow information to remain as classified. At 50 years, there are two exceptions, and classifications beyond 75 years require special permission."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declassification#United_States
"Decrypt Later" should generalized to "Use Later", many recordings are useful without decryption, just from the metadata you can establish who, when communicated. Identification of relations between persons, building of social graphs, is the basic of intelligence work. Much of this relationship analysis can be done just from metadata.
One example of such analysis is the NSA Co-Travel Analytics
"CO-TRAVELER does not simply collect location information. It creates a portrait of travel times and people who crossed paths, revealing our physical interactions and relationships. The cell site information goes beyond email and phone calls and ordinary telephony data, allowing the U.S. government to know who we are with in-person and where. This is information that would be impossible to collect using traditional law enforcement methods. "
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/meet-co-traveler-nsas-...
https://www.eff.org/files/2013/12/11/20131210-wapo-cotravele...
"The Halloween documents comprise a series of confidential Microsoft memoranda on potential strategies relating to free software, open-source software, and to Linux in particular, and a series of media responses to these memoranda. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-accused-being-conne...
The main reason why datacenters are using own gas power plants are delays in connecting to grids.
"In recent years, the time to connect a data center to the power grid has grown significantly. In response, many data center developers are choosing to build their own power plants and avoid the grid—or connect later."
The invisible hand of the market is already disabled by regulation, in this case trademark protection.
For example: if Nike is willing to destroy 100$ shoes, instead of selling them at 40$ discount, for brand protection, another shoemaker could try make identical shoes and sell them at discount. But the alternative shoemaker is not allowed to make identical shoes, this would infringe Nike trademark.
Its an irony that in 2022 the most problematic were the newest N4 reactors, not the oldest one.
Another irony was that already in in 2015, the French National Assembly voted that by 2025 only 50% of France's energy will be produced by nuclear plants. So in a way the nuclear reactors themself helped to fullfill the 2015 promise.
To be serious. After event in 2011 Fukushima, French nuclear energy didn't get much support from French politicians and was seen only as a necessary evil, which will be sooner or later replaced with German style energie transition. Only after the 2022 Russian invasion and stopping of Russian gas started the French politicians to understand the value of electricity source not dependent on foreign gas imports.
Germany imports all of its gas and batteries, has no significant potential for pumped storage (in relation to the size of its electricity grid).
Solar panels were not the cause of Spain's blackout, insufficient voltage control in solar invertors was a contributing factor. Like with many serious accidents, there was not a single cause of Spain's blackout, but many factors.
Germany invested a lot money and still burns coal, imports a lot of natural gas for electricity production, has higher electricty prices then France and higher emmisions then France.
"The energy transition will require considerable added investment. Estimates of the total amount of annual investment vary from 15 to 40 billion euros, or 0.5 to 1.2 percent of Germany’s current gross domestic product (GDP) of around 3,200 billion euros."
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/how-much-does-ger...
Transuranic radioactive waste from US nuclear weapon programs is stored in WIPP. The storage rooms at the WIPP are 2,150 feet (660 m) underground in a salt formation of the Delaware Basin.
In most places, thermal conductivity of rock is very low.
"The conductive heat flux averages 0.1 MW/km2. These values are much higher near tectonic plate boundaries where the crust is thinner. They may be further augmented by combinations of fluid circulation, either through magma conduits, hot springs, hydrothermal circulation."
The Flammable Range (also called Explosive Range), the concentration range of a gas or vapor that will burn (or explode) if an ignition source is introduced, for hydrogen is much larger then for methane.
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/explosive-concentration-l...
Becuse of hydrogen embrittlement you have to be carefull with material selection for pipes, storage tanks holding hydrogen. This not a big problem, but it means old pipes used for natural gas can not be used for hydrogen.
Germans public should be informed that:
1. Deuterium - Tritium fueled fussion power plants will produce low-level radioactive waste, in form of neutron activated structural matterials. Tritium is radioactive gas with tendency to leak. Antinuclear activists are already concerned with tritium leaks in current nuclear plants. Future nuclear fussion plants will handle much larger tritium inventories then current fission plants.
2. There exist designs for nuclear fusion–fission hybrid plants. You can use hybrid plant to make nuclear bomb material - plutonium.
"One of the most detailed of these studies was published in 1980 by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). They noted that the hybrid would produce most of its energy indirectly, both through the fission events in the reactor, and much more by providing 239Pu to fuel other fission reactors. In this overall picture, the hybrid is filling a role that is essentially identical to the breeder reactor. Both require chemical processing to remove the bred 239Pu, both presented the same proliferation and safety risks as a result, and both produced about the same amount of fuel. Since the bred fuel is the primary source of energy in the overall cycle, the two systems were almost identical in the end."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion%E2%80%93fission...
Investing enough into renewables combined with grid scale storage to cover a prolonged Dunkelflaute is very expensive, therefor German government is investing in new gas-fired power plants with capacity of 11 GW, with state subsidies.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-passes-law-subs...
Even a weak long Dunkelflaute can happen:
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/prolonged-dunkelflaute-...
Munich sits on a massive geothermal aquifer system (the Molasse Basin)
"Medium-deep geothermal resources in the Molasse Basin: A geological, techno-economic, and ecological study of large-scale heat pump integration"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014812...
Tapping a geothermal aquifer system is much easier than to get useful quantities of heat from dry rock, because in most places the thermal conductivity of rock is very low.
"The enthusiasm in the research community is justified by the vast extent of the energy supply and the low environmental impact of the method, however significant breakthroughs will be required to make this a commercial energy resource."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_dry_rock_geothermal_energy
The "invisible hand of the free market" works only, if you have many market participants competing one against another. When a participant wins the competition you get monopoly, when multiple participants collude you get oligopoly, or cartel. Market can not solve this.
Historical examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
If the company culture doesn't allow you to argue you with your boss, then you can expect that your boss is not allowed to argue with his boss and so on, up to CEO level. Such companies should, in time, go bankrupt because nobody could argue, if CEO makes a bad decision, CEO operates without feedback.
On the other hand, many such companies are protected because: they are too big to fail, have political connections, have monopoly, or oligopoly.
Storing energy in hot water is common is sunny regions, for example Turkey.
Some large cold storage facilities in Germany are trying to optimize electric demand to use cheap peak day electricity. But they have to observe limitations in range of temperatures and capacity of cooling devices.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/cold-storage-facilities...
" Compared to conventional cold storage systems, renewable energy-driven cold storage demonstrates a 10–35 % reduction in energy losses"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23521...
Dynamic pricing and deployment of digital smart meters should by mandatory in all electric grids dominated by renewables. Large electric consumers are already buying electricity at dynamic prices, small consumers should have the same incentives to shift the demand to day hours.
Japan is slowly decreasing it's oil imports,they consume now 30% less oil than in 2003.
https://opengov.jp/en/economy/energy/crude-oil-imports/
Japan (Panasonic) is important baterry cell manufacturer, but most battery cells are exported, not used for domestic EVs. For example Panasonic is supplying batteries for Tesla.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electric_vehicle_batte...
Japan still has not fully recovered from the asset price bubble's collapse beginning in 1990.
U.S. lead acid baterries recycling has been outsourced.
" As the United States tightened regulations on lead processing to protect Americans over the past three decades, finding domestic lead became a challenge. So the auto industry looked overseas to supplement its supply. In doing so, car and battery manufacturers pushed the health consequences of lead recycling onto countries where enforcement is lax, testing is rare and workers are desperate for jobs. "
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/world/americas/car-batter...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/18/world/africa/...
The US was moving in the wrong direction for a long time.
Three Felonies a Day
" Silverglate’s book first explains how law should work, and then demonstrates how federal law really works as he weaves through dozens of cases showing clear prosecutorial abuse. An ugly, recurrent feature is that prosecutors often manipulate the media. "
https://fee.org/articles/three-felonies-a-day-how-the-feds-t...
Nokia development was limited by its relation with telecom industry (telecoms could limits what Nokias could do, software feautures. The telecoms wanted to profit from software running on Nokias, telecoms didn't wanted to be just dumb Internet providers. Telecoms wanted to be digital service providers - AOLs).
In contrast Apple with iPhone had much stronger position:
"Cingular gave Apple the freedom to develop the iPhone's hardware and software in-house, a rare practice at the time, and paid Apple a fraction of its monthly service revenue (until the iPhone 3G), in exchange for four years of exclusive U.S. sales, until 2011."
This is exactly according the NOBUS ("Nobody But Us") principle. With weak S-box, anybody could break DES, with strong S-box only NSA could bruteforce DES (in the 1980s).
"
Michael Hayden, a former NSA Director, has since acknowledged the concept of NOBUS:
You look at a vulnerability through a different lens if even with the vulnerability it requires substantial computational power or substantial other attributes and you have to make the judgment who else can do this? If there's a vulnerability here that weakens encryption but you still need four acres of Cray computers in the basement in order to work it you kind of think "NOBUS" and that's a vulnerability we are not ethically or legally compelled to try to patch – it's one that ethically and legally we could try to exploit in order to keep Americans safe from others."
In general we can asume that NOBUS applies to everything NSA publishes or supports. If not in direct algorithmic weakness, then in weakened parameters or in selection of algorithms that are hard to implement in secure way without specialized hardware support (side channel attacks of AES, sensitivity of DSA to quality of random number generator, hard to correctly implement NIST curves - generated by NSA).
Because of super energy density of uranium you need to mine only small amounts of ore, per GWh. Uranium enriched is currently done by gas centrifuges, geopolitically sensitive technology. In future it could be done by laser isotope separation, much more efficient technology, but also geopolitically much more sensitive technology. (Exactly because laser isotope separation doesn't require large amounts of energy and space, it could be easier hidden). There have been demonstrated fast neutron reactors that can run on natural uranium without enrichment, can burn plutonium, but for geopolitical reason this programs have been stopped in US and US discouraged other governments from developing this technologies. With fast neutron reactors we already have enough uranium in stockpiles to power world for centuries.
Carter administration - Fast reactors and nuclear nonproliferation problem
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245230381...
The biggest CO2 impact of nuclear energy is from the steel/concrete used to build the containment building. Because of the aircraft impact rules, nuclear containment building has to survive the impact of a fully loaded large aircraft. These buildings are the strongest non-military facilities in existence, no other civilian industrial plants (even chemical plants with very nasty stuff) have this level of protection. Personally, I think much steel/concrete could be saved by moving nuclear reactor deep underground, but this would require changes in regulation. Again, deep underground nuclear facilities, geopolitical questions...
"LNG exports from the U.S. have grown dramatically and steadily since 2016. The rate of increase is a stunning 38% year-over-year."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianpalmer/2026/05/27/exports-of...
The wars in Iran and Ukraine will increase US fossil fuel exports.
We need global carbon tax, to cause decrease in CO2 emissions, solar energy is not enough.