Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | sehansen's commentslogin

Sure, but the problem with coal and oil is not their chemical composition, per se. The problem with specifically fossil coal and oil is that the carbon atoms used to be buried deep underground and end up as part of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere. Making synthetic kerosene for jet engines is one of the top contenders for long-distance air travel in a post-fossil fuel world, IMO.

Germany: electricity 56% renewables, 4% GDP growth since 2021Q1, 6.4% unemployment

Denmark: electricity 92% renewables, 14% GDP growth since 2021Q1, 2.7% unemployment

I don't think renewables are what's wrong with Germany, more likely it's a) their lack of infrastructure investment and maintenance in the past decade-an-a-half, b) their excessive coddling of established and well-connected businesses.


135% is quite low for an air source heat pump. For instance a Samsung HHSM-G600005-1 [0] claims to have been tested to be 485% efficient at heating water to 35°C and 283% efficient at heating water to 55°C, both with 7°C air temperature. For Finland you'd want to find a heat pump with a datasheet specifying SCOP for specifically the EN 14825 Northern Europe climate zone. I couldn't find one with some quick googling, but I found a Swedish site selling a air-to-air heat pump[1] claiming 222% efficiency at -25 °C.

0: The Cop numbers in this product spec: https://www.snhtradecentre.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/...

1: https://varmepumpshopen.se/luftvarmepump/panasonic-hz25zke


No, natural gas _peakers_ don't need water for cooling, since they don't have steam turbines like combined cycle gas plants. Cooling is only necessary in thermal plants to condense the steam on the low-pressure side of the steam turbine.

And excessive stability is also a terrible quality in an energy source. The only reason we used to put up with base-load power plants was because they were cheap; if they weren't we might as well have used peaker plants all the time.


Land use per kWh is almost completely unimportant. Here in Denmark solar farms take up 0.09% of the land area and produce 7% of our electricity or ~2.5% of our energy use. That means 4% of our land area would be enough to cover all our energy needs.

The fact that low-grade parasite-infections dampen autoimmune diseases isn't that big of a win. Presumably our immune system is as aggressive as it is in part due to the parasite-load our ancestors were exposed to.

We solved the parasite problem and at the same time changed the ecology we were accustomed to. The irony of dynamic systems.

"Reflections on Trusting Trust" for the new era. MSVC doesn't compile a secret master-password into your software, just a Copilot ad.

("Reflections on Trusting Trust" Turing Award Lecture by Ken Thompson: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...)


+1000 Everyone in technology should read this.


Part of the reason money has such a big influence on elections is that first-past-the-post election system you have over there in the US. When voters have to make a binary choice between two participants, low-information campaigns like hit-pieces are able to make a big difference and are cheap to communicate en-masse. When voters have a actual choice between four parties on the left and four parties on the right, hit-pieces will only make a voter switch from, say, one left-wing party to another. So since the return-on-investment on political advertising is much lower, much less money will be spent on it and there will be less of it. And what will be there will be of higher quality.


If any of what you just said was true in practice, Australia would be a gleaming example of how democracies with strong civil society organisations can be run.

Instead, Australia is best described as pigs at the slops trough.

A nation that seems to only want to vote for leaders who have a public humiliation kink.


Dell has the P5525QC, a 4K 55 inch screen. Here in Denmark they sell it for 8846 DKK (~$1300 USD). I use a predecessor with my Apple TV and it works great.

Link: https://www.dell.com/da-dk/shop/dell-55-4k-sk%C3%A6rm-til-m%...


In 2025[1]: 64.3% in Sweden - 69.3% in Denmark - 55.2% in Finland. Across the EU 2.6 million BEVs were sold out of ~13 million cars in total, i.e. 20% in 2025. That's on top of 1.3 million PHEVs which is an even faster growing segment.

So it's not quite 80% yet, but it's getting there fast.

1: https://www.tradingpedia.com/forex-brokers/global-demand-for...


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: