syllable_studio

I don't agree with this assessment at all. I think the immense value of bitcoin and other technologically advanced, secure, decentralized networks comes from the detailed network communications which they enable. They allow global financial transactions through a powerful medium in a way that has never existed before. This has nothing to do with baseball cards. The fact that decentralized networks enable NFTs and collectibles is a small subset of the value and power of decentralized networks.

The network is the value. To me, this is what bitcoin is. https://medium.com/the-capital/the-network-is-the-value-an-e...

What people don't realize, is that we already have fantastic alternatives to Ethereum for low-energy, world-class decentralized networks with built in NFTs. My favorite is avalanche. This is all so new, but we CAN have a future that is feature-rich, fast, cheap, decentralized, and good for the environment.

https://docs.avax.network/build/tutorials/smart-digital-asse...

Here is how I fixed it.

(Error 81 due to a false positive filament jam -- occurs because the encoder wheel gets stuck and isn't turned by the moving filament)

The problem was indeed the encoder wheel getting stuck which triggered a false error. Your instructions do discuss the encoder wheel here. They say to move the encoder wheel to the "back side." This was confusing to me for a few reasons: - I didn't know which side was the back side - I didn't know why this would help - The wheel didn't seem to move when I nudged it anyway.

If this is indeed the right fix for some people, can I suggest that the instructions give a little more detail? Like: - Check if the wheel groove is not aligned with the top plastic hole. If necessary to fix the alignment, use a flat head screwdriver or a similar tool to gently push the wheel closer to the back side of the Smart Extruder.

_The real problem_ For me, the real problem was that the wheel didn't turn because there was a combination of too much wheel axle friction (between the wheel and its axle) and/or not enough wheel groove friction (between the wheel groove and the plastic filament)

_Verifying this problem_ While the printing is in progress, shine a light through the top or right side of the 3D printer case. You can watch the encoder wheel. It should turn in sync with the filament passing through the wheel groove. If there is an error, you can verify that the error happens because the encoder wheel stopped turning while the filament was flowing. This was happening for me in one particular sticky part of the encoder wheel's rotation.

_The solution_ 1: I applied lubricant to the encoder wheel axle. - I didn't even need to take the cartridge apart, I just used a needle to carefully apply some to the axle and manually turned the wheel while letting it drip down into the bearing.

2: I roughed the plastic of the encoder wheel groove. - I used an exacto knife to make tiny scrapes all around both sides of the inside groove of the wheel.

3: Test that these steps are working by holding the (cooled down) extruder in your hand, and manually inserting a small length of plastic into the top hole. Move the filament in and out and ensure that the wheel is turning smoothly in sync with the filament passing through the wheel groove inside the cartridge.

I hope this helps others! I know it's a very old product now, but maybe there's still some people out there still having this problem. Good luck :thumbs-up:

So glad you asked! I wrote a blog post about exactly this. My answer is "The Network is the value." The price of a bitcoin reflects the value of the network using it. https://blog.syllablehq.com/the-network-is-the-value/

Thanks to paroneayea and team for doing this! It's so important that we move this technology forward. I'm looking forward to digging in and maybe getting involved.

I hope this will be much easier for people to do when there are decentralized options. (other thread here discussing that.) And then the big players can't just buy the competitors and keep locking us into the same problem.

same as now, encryption and permissions. We'll just have more options and less lock-in.

Just a general response to some of the skeptics here (I hear your points, I just think we're still early in the game). I do believe this will happen. I believe it's inevitable, it will just take time. The main advantage over current networks+apps is that it breaks the barrier to entry for new competitors. Mastodon etc are still early newcomers who still have to break that barrier. But once there are many of them playing in the same water, they can gradually build a competing network - slowly at first, then they'll win over the entire new generation. Whatever the next "tik-tok" is could be decentralized, and then the flood gates open. Advertising and privacy issues will still exist, but it will be competitive. There will no longer be a monopoly gate keeper who that sets the rules. Lots of details to be worked out for sure. We need user interfaces to improve and get simplified. I agree that right now federated platforms like mastodon are still too cumbersome for users. But I believe all of this will improve and this will work eventually. I think it's coming this decade.

I CAN'T WAIT for decentralized infrastructure to finally become robust enough that clones of instagram and facebook can all share a network -- they'll all become portals to the same social graph data. When that happens, there will no longer be any reason to put up with this abuse of privacy garbage.

Tidal Power? Though the ocean is not strictly at the bottom of the gravity well. And I assume that's not really what you're asking.

yup it's feasible. It does scale. Here are two links to research that support the feasibility and cost effectiveness of underground gravity storage.

https://www.storage-lab.com/gravity-based-storage https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6517343

My understanding is that Dr Oliver Schmidt was hired by Heindl to do this research independently. It explains everything on the link I sent, so I didn't mean to imply that he wasn't hired to do it, but he's a third party. There is other research like the 1984 U.S. PNNL that validates how underground storage is estimated to be cost effective.

https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6517343

A long time ago I did the napkin math to check if it'd be worth it to lift a skyscraper up and down just slightly for energy storage. You know, you'd just use adjusting ramps as the height changed ever so slowly. Not surprisingly, it's surely not worth it. The empire state building could run some tea kettles, but, yeah, no.

Wow, this is surprisingly less-debunked than I expected. Though, of course my first reaction is extreme skepticism. But I guess we'll see!

https://www.quora.com/What-is-wrong-with-Dr-Mills-Hydrino-Th...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Light_Power

Yeah, I clearly need to change the wording here as it's just adding confusion.

The key thing here is that adding 10x height gives you 10x more PE per weight without extra digging costs (or tower costs assuming the cost per unit of height is constant)

Here's how to think of it: by digging one deep hole instead of many shallow holes (with the same amount of digging) you get (n^2 / 2) instead of (n/2) Potential energy. The average height of all the modules is half the height of the shaft. With one deep shaft, the modules pass through the same excavated volume so they can all go deeper on average.

Here's the simplest quick answer I have regarding "is it worth it." This is just one example of independent research vetting that it is indeed promising. The math checks out.

https://www.storage-lab.com/gravity-based-storage

Wow, I didn't know they went bankrupt! Sad, thank you Heindl for paving the way forward. Innovation is truly a collaborative effort. https://heindl-energy.com/about-us/

My civil engineer partner could speak to this in more detail, but it's a well-understood solvable problem. You seal the shaft wall as you dig past the water table. And some small amount of pumping is used as needed.

Because as noted in other comments here, all the best natural pumped-storage reservoirs are tapped. It's not feasible to build enough dams in enough places to get the job done.

Furthermore, my most optimistic estimates show that underground solid mass gravity storage could compete with pumped hydro on cost anyways. One reason is that solid mass is about 2.5x heavier than water. If excavation is one of your biggest costs, this density is important.

No worries. Here is a good resource that talks about the levelized costs of gravity storage. It's estimated to be much cheaper than Li-ion battery storage on large scales.

https://www.storage-lab.com/gravity-based-storage

- You can't build a mile tall tower though.

- Keeping water out of a hole is a solved problem.

- as discussed in other comments here, adding more height gives you more PE for the same amount of weight so it's a very valuable investment that pays profits over 20-100 years for your one time investment.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/17FI-jrI9RWS3q7Ng44Yh...

Yeah, my startup, Terrament solves the heavy cable problem by using modules which each contain a motor/generator and they each support their own weight. This allows us to truly maximize height and weight per shaft volume. You can see my other comments for context. (https://www.terramenthq.com/)

I just mean for load balancing a city running on wind and solar to optimize their costs.

Maybe not as large as possible, but we're looking at about 10m diameter and about 1 mile deep. Here's an example of existing mining tech that meets this capacity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5vAWR7rpco

thx!

Yeah, this is another promising one. The other disadvantage with that design is that the weight of the water is actually working against them. So if their rock/concrete is about 2.5x heavier than water, the weight of water is subtracted and you only get 1.5x the weight of water. Also their height is limited by the height of their piston. So I'm not yet convinced that their solution is better than just using underground pumped hydro.

corrected, thank you :)

Yeah, very similar. The main reason is that you can get about 10x more height underground. You can dig about a mile deep. An Energy Vault tower is about 500 feet tall. And as mentioned below in other comments, adding more height gives you more storage per weight, so it's super important. Adding more height and weight scales quadratically while just adding more weight (in side by side towers) only scales linearly.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/17FI-jrI9RWS3q7Ng44Yh...

You're thinking too small though ;). You can dig a mile deep. And you can lift enormous weights. As comments show below. Gravity is weak, but cheap. It can scale up to provide 1 GW of storage - enough to balance the load of an entire large city.

Lots of these ideas are popping up right now because it's a very compelling idea which is demonstrated to work. And because climate change is driving massive growth in renewable energy (woot) we will desperately need massive amounts of energy storage in the very new future. The energy storage market is expected to grow massively year over year.

Yeah, I did a feasibility study on underground pumped hydro which you can find here: https://www.terramenthq.com/uphs/

UPHS has never been fully built to my knowledge, but it's been well studied and quite a few projects have tried to get funding for it.

U.S. DOE research from 1984: https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6517343.pdf

Projects trying to work on this: https://utilitymagazine.com.au/pumped-hydro-storage-the-futu...

Other proposed projects: - https://www.waterpowermagazine.com/features/featureinvestiga...

- http://www.eaglecrestenergy.com/project-description.html https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6517343.pdf