skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>the de-regulation of the power grid[0] allowed looser operating temperature tolerances.

Absolutely silly tolerances, mind you. Texas was colder in 1930.

> the wind turbine is absolutely an easy narrative to "blame someone else" instead of "us" being the problem.

It's not only an easy narrative. It's an easy picture. It's easy to imagine a wind turbine frozen stuck. It's harder to imagine how extreme cold affects, say, a nuclear power plant.

It's fundamentally populist because nobody has to explain how it works. It's also obviously wrong: there are wind turbines in Canada. It's the kind of thing that allows people to think they understand, without any deference to an authoritative source of information.

It's a low-trust theory that suggests a United States in transition to a low-trust society[1], and that's the worst part.

1: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/07/22/the-state-of...
It's like 3.6 roentgen.

Not great. Not terrible.
Wow, is there a source for that? That would be $1000 per person every three days, right?

(edit: found a Bloomberg article confirming it for Monday)
Gas fireplaces generally do not require electricity and many have no fans. Exhaust is passive, and thermostats use a thermopile that generates a small current from the heat of the pilot light. The pilot light is started manually with a piezoelectric starter, or a lighter.

Gas fireplaces are slightly less efficient than high-efficiency furnaces because some heat goes out the exhaust.
Each dollar an American owns is being diluted by 2 that a foreign person owns. That debt also has huge interest payments. What you're arguing is the equivalent of credit card debt isn't a problem on the Amex black because it has no credit limit. If it doesn't work in a small community, it wont work for a large one in the long run. You can't borrow forever and still expect people to 1) lend to you or 2) not want to kill you
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/
According to their data the average includes all customers. For residential alone (their table 8) the average was 19.15 cents.
I said Texas

>Spot electricity prices at the West [Texas] hub have soared above the grid’s $9,000 per megawatt-hour cap

That's 10X more than even OP headline price.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Texas-Freeze-Rais...
What does "to your door" mean here, because it's exactly how the process works in the US.

Typically if don't pay a bill you'll get a few months to rectify with fees tacked on, then internal collections will happen or it'll be sold to a collection service.

In both cases you'll get letters and eventually if the amount is high enough or the debt other otherwise motivated, a summons for pre trial mediation and then a civil suit.
Southwest Gas asked their Arizona natural gas customers to cut back as the pipeline through Arizona feeds Texas.
I told AT&T I was moving out of the country. The very valiant retention specialist still offered a discount on text messages for a year.
I'm sorry dude, you really don't understand how this works. It isn't about finding a greater fool willing to pay $1k more than you did.
The reality is there are plenty of people that will keep buying. There is no 'run out of buyers'. Years ago we spoke of 'buyers of last resort'. This used to be suckers like me. Its now large institutions playing games with each other. This world is far larger than you are imagining.

I will buy BTC as long as I am able, with fiat currency, regularly. I do this as a hedge against inflating fiat currencies, and as you can buy a part of a coin, the actual price per unit doesn't matter as much. What matters is the store of value over longer times, in an deflating asset class.

Can I recommend you watch some of Andreas videos at https://aantonop.com/videos/ to inform yourself?
I pre-ordered and will probably not get it until July/August, I'm pretty excited about it. One thing I noticed when pre-ordering is that it didn't offer to sell me roof mount, which I'll need... I hope I can buy this later? I know they sell them but it wasn't an add on for the pre-order.
I used to work at a Cable company with commissioned CSRs and that has to be the alltime peak for dirty cancellation tactics.

I wasn't a CSR but my office was next to theirs and what I heard was tragic. The commissioned nature of the CSRs and the penalties they received for cancelations created all sorts of perverse incentives.

I used to listen to reps who would drag out a particular person's cancelation for hours, days or even months. People would beg to cancel their service (usually because they were seniors who couldn't afford it) only to be given endless runaround.

A couple of nasty reps in particular would browbeat the customer for a while but then cancel them and note down the customer's information. Then at the end of the grace window that was built in for people to un-cancel service, they would go in and reactivate the person's subscription.

I'm pretty loathe to sign up for anything with recurring billing these days.
Beautiful website, good content. Most horrible customer experience ever. It is almost extortion.
Upside-Down-Ternet (2007)
Note the part about 'entirely'
There is far more than a zero percent chance that there ends up being a speculative mania over this cheapETH.
Children are very rarely harmed by strangers, when they are harmed they are overwhelming harmed by people they known - parents, family, friends, neighbors, etc.

When a young child is murdered, the killer is usually a parent or stepparent, not a stranger.

Not only that but you are comparing apples (mortality) to pineapples (crimes in general).
Balance of trade...
Yeah, the companies are what kicked this into overdrive, I think. I mean if you want to get at the historical and philosophical roots of this problem it's an enormous discussion that won't fit here, but a few broad strokes worth bringing up:

1. We're obviously materially better off than any point in history.

2. Much of modern economic theory is built on the idea of selfish individuals pursuing their own interest. It's clearly been effective in a material sense (see #1).

3. Modern companies are obviously better than some of the obscene abuses of early capitalism.

All of that said, it seems like there was a time when a person's work was connected to and respected by the society around them. You could argue that was always a sucker's game, but I don't think so. Human beings are wired to operate in social communities, and we take a lot of our cues from the people around us respecting and admiring our work.

Many companies at one point followed that model. You were "part of the team/family/whatever." What you contributed was valued. That made it possible to take pride in it. You might work your entire career at one company.

That model is obviously totally dead, and I think the companies fired the first shot. Once workers became chips in a game instead of fellow human beings, they were bound to play the game right back. So here we are, trying to scrounge out some sort of structural meaning to the work we do, when it's obvious to most people that nobody around us really cares or respects what we do. It's just "let's churn this out so we can all get paid." That's a poor way to motivate human beings and I think contributed to a lot of our malaise.
A quick look at the committers confirms Microsoft e.g. https://github.com/yaron2
God, the game industry must have wrecked my brain. I read TFA and was like "Hells yes, I want to work with this guy!" ... but reading some of the criticisms ... huh interesting.

Then again, there's a real high to being part of a team of 10 people who are shipping a product that people love all across the globe. Interesting. I'm definitely not a big-co guy.
Just because something else sucks more shouldn't normalize this. NYT (and all other subscription based businesses) should make it easy to unsubscribe online without requiring customer service.
Wells Fargo "accidentally" failed to close my account when I went in person to close it--though they did give me a check for the balance and told me it was closed--and then when I realized six months later it wasn't actually closed, they tried to make me pay them 6 months worth of monthly fees before they would close it.
Note there are three tabs in this graphic: Day-ahead, 15 minute, and real-time.

Day-ahead contracts are high because uncertainty is also high.

15 minute and real-time prices are an order of magnitude lower, despite the sun being down and electric heaters presumably consuming a lot of electricity.

Energy companies need to decide how much of their capacity they want to lock in at the high $900 rate for tomorrow, and how much they want to risk on the shorter interval contracts.

This does not mean that every MWh of electricity costs $900. It does mean power companies are doing a lot of risk management calculations right now, though.
Fun fact: the Adobe Creative Suite is insanely simple to pirate.
>the main barrier to good US infrastructure construction, or at least one of the main barriers, is personal incompetence on behalf of decisionmakers. Those decisionmakers can be elected officials

The real message here is that this guy thinks he is too good for democracy and has found a better way. That scares me more than our infrastructure problems (which are pretty terrifying)
If you think Bitcoin has no value, why not short it? Bet on your beliefs. I think it has value, which is why I'm long.

Skin in the game > debate
I was able to (temporarily) cancel my WSJ subscription with a couple clicks last year, so looks like they've improved on that front.
I regularly get 25-250ms latency (average is maybe 60ms) to google or 8.8.8.8 over my DOCSIS3 cable coax connection in addition to 2-5% packet loss.

The ISP network and node is oversaturated and they plan to do nothing about it (Cox).

So I'm actually excited if Starlink can provide 20-30ms stable latency, I have an option which is not tied to the regional operators.
One thing my current ISP still does is returns an ad-laden search page any time you visit a domain that doesn't resolve.
No one knows. There are many reasons why “this time, it’s different.” Our playbooks are based on very small datasets. Every time I hear someone say: “the Schiller P/E ratio has only been this high once, and here’s what always happened after”, I think, we’ve got a sample size of what? Maybe 100 years worth of decent stock market data? There’s nothing that says this will end the way it did at other points in an incomplete and small dataset.

So, with that caveat, I don’t think it’s different this time. I think there’s a deflationary bust near term. Probably inflation hits hard afterwards. When the market gives off the kinds of signals it’s currently giving off, I think it’s reasonable to cash up.
Heh, comcast says the same thing. I was snookered into accepting a improved internet plan with "free HBO". Which after a few months added TV broadcast fee, and substantial other costs. I tried to move back and they literally said the are not an ISP and will not sell me an internet only plan.

I had to cancel the plan and have my "roommate" (actually my wife), start as a new customer to get an internet only plan.
The argument only provides support for the lows.

Tether backing is not just dollar. They recursively use bitcoin as part of their reserve.
Bitcoin price rises, and they print more usdt to buy more btc.

It's hard to say how much btc would drop or pump.

Tether bootstrapped crypto demand, even if it was done so fraudulently
Does that mean ones only hope to scale would be to deploy on a bigger server (I know one can get pretty far just by that)
For anyone wondering - no this definitively isn't fraud - no it will have no impact your credit (there isn't even a mechanism for this to happen), nor will it get debt collectors after you (you don't owe a subscription continual payment, failure to pay only means they can terminate your service).
This is not fraud at all. You could just as easily file a dispute. You're under no obligation to continue allowing a company to charge you a recurring subscription that you do not wish to continue with.

Cards stop working due to fraud or lost cards all the time. Businesses must accept this as a fact of life. Forcibly dunning is a malicious business practice.
All of this also applies to BMW or, say, Tesla cars, but nobody is claiming that they have absolutely no competition.

The only claim one could make is “hey, 30% seems a bit high to do business there”. Yet Apple can claim that you pay a premium to get access to millions of consumers which they’ve cultivated a strong relationship with. Running an App Store isn’t hard. Running a successful App Store is very hard. This is why Epic doesn’t want to do it themselves, but rather sue it out of Apple.
I'm now a little upset that my family's house converted from propane heat to natural gas years ago. That big propane tank that got filled up a few times a year was such a resilient decentralized system. Now being reliant on the regional just-in-time nature of gas and increasing amounts of just-in-time-as-long-as-windy/sunny wind & solar feels really sketchy. And batteries wouldn't really help in Texas since the wind/sun lull is like 6 days long. At least there's also a wood stove!
People have torn it down and messed about with it, I believe I recall seeing some found the test pads on the pcb and were able to watch its bootloader through a serial connection.

It is a fairly simple design.

https://youtu.be/ObCTB8ol3Ng
They've blocked any page that provides news, as defined by the code:

core news content means content that reports, investigates or explains:

a) issues or events that are relevant in engaging Australians in public debate and in informing democratic decision-making; or

b) current issues or events of public significance for Australians at a local, regional or national level

DFES, BOM & other government services would fall under definition b. Candidate page would fall under definition a.
> it can be shut down in a couple years.

This is true for almost any energy project nowadays. EPA regulations change and bam, you're out of business.

> too many regulations

I don't think there's "too many", but I'm very far from an expert on this. What seems evident is that a prefab reactor/plant can amortize the cost of getting approved, whereas template plants, like the AP1000 are unique every time, even if they are fundamentally very-very similar, they are not identical. Hence the need for going through all the site specific differences, and their effects on the whole system.
If you want a more nuanced understanding of the "Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme" claim then I'd highly recommend:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT2e6dnY-Co
Sad to see it go, CTP has been an essential resource for colleagues and I over the last year.

Post March, the Covid data space is going to change drastically (frankly, it already has) with this news as well as SafeGraph ending its Covid data consortium. Only a matter of time before JHU CSSE and the NYTimes wind down their efforts.

The reality is two fold and unfortunate. Case data is seemingly less pertinent, but vaccine data is less fruitful. It’s going to be at least a few quarters before vaccination is widely available and Covid is going to become endemic. Thus, both metrics are vitally important to how we traverse the next year.

It has been amazing to see widespread data efforts around Covid, and the entire field of epidemiology could benefit from collaborations of this scale. So thank you folks at the Covid Tracking Project and anyone else who has contributed to similar data efforts in the last year.
You have to look at the three tabs to get the full picture.

The day-ahead contracts are high ($900) but the 15 minute and real-time prices are only $900 in a smaller region.

Still not great.
I used to work with an NGO that funded schools and orphanages in some particularly under-serviced parts of SEA. The retail prices of this would be affordable for a lot of institutions as it stands (places where the school fees were typically between $100-$200 USD/year). It doesn’t solve the problem of having reliable electricity, or any actual computing equipment. But I can certainly see some rather cool use cases for it.
the only risk to shorting tether would be the interest. it’s not like it will ever be worth more than a dollar.
Also, having a Cormen handy is always a good idea regardless of your expertise level with data structures/algorithms!
> People that read HN are absolutely the type that would consider paying for NYT (or at least the two cohorts have great overlap).

Unlikely considering the general popularity of articles highlighting their incompetence/malfeasance. See: slatestarcodex articles of the last week
> Reading the front page of Reddit, you'd be convinced the world has never been worse and we're on the verge of societal collapse. Combine this with politicians eager to fan the flames of discontent and promise easy solutions (much like this article) and of course people will be angry and disillusioned. The social media effect works to amplify the negative and dismiss the positive.

Which makes their call that we're on the verge of societal collapse kind of true, but not for the reasons they thought, right?
That's a good point.

But even with your suggested change the picture can be misleading. That's because, as a percentage of population, many more Oregonians than Texans are currently without power.
Who did the Anglo-Saxons think they were?
Unless you have a contract, no, you don't owe them anything. Saying that you'd like recurring charges doesn't obligate you to continue paying after you've stopped using a service.
Epic Cycling on Ice
I've heard this a lot, tended to practice it, and have one divorce to show for it.

I come from a family of direct argumentative people. Many people do not, and this style of communication will shut them down, leading to suffering and ultimately only one side being heard. I'm more ambivalent about the value of directness now.
I've seen many people say this. But the reality is that the significant part of BTCs trading volume is in tether. When that dries up it's price will nose dive and the only route out will be into fiat. And if BTCs price is declining, no one is buying. So tether collapsing means BTC will collapse.
Isn't think kind of reasoning the driving force behind city managers? https://ballotpedia.org/Council-manager_government
It seems people getting most value of it are rich people from developed countries with dysfunctional monopolies. People in developing countries (my exp. in India/China and SEA) already have access to decent 4G at much better prices. Most people without not covered will not be able to afford it anyway.
USA prints money. How is the actual dollar any better supported?
Pfizer says South African variant could significantly reduce vaccine protection
This data isn't complete. There is cell service in North Korea for example (with some caveats), but the data just doesn't seem to be present here.
I feel like what we need to do is dump $50 to $100 billion per year into nuclear fusion reactor research, then get them online around the world as soon as possible.

If the patents are to be believed, then Lockheed-Martin's Skunkworks has developed a portable fusion reactor the size of an intermodal shipping container. I'd like to see those scaled up significantly for usage around the world, for a variety of reasons... extraordinarily cheap power for one, but far more manageable nuclear waste storage for another, and more important, reason.
Of all the missing children, less than 1% is non-family abductions. [1]

I live in a safe suburb far from any major city and I let my 6 and 8 year old take themselves on a walk around the neighborhood when they check in with me first. Literally every time they go on a walk one or two adults stops and asks them where their parents are and sometimes the adult even calls us to warn us of the dangers of kidnapping.

When I mention that we let our kids walk themselves to my parents I get lectured like crazy about how people will steal our kids. I am totally confident someone will lecture me in this thread. The stats don't match the fear.

It's unreasonable and unhealthy to deny your children the experience of self-reliance and exploration.

[1] https://www.missingkids.org/footer/media/keyfacts
Here in BC, Canada, our power is 95% hydroelectric and our tier 1 rate is 9.3c/kWh (CAD), which is about 7.2 USD cents per kWh.
>25/5Mbps satellite circuit

>data cap of 80 / 150 MB

So if you had the full 25 mbps available, you would hit your peak cap in 26 seconds? Do you only use it for email/text based applications?
> Of course Apple uses its position to benefit Apple itself as well, but users don't care as long as they got their personal benefits like improved privacy or security. If that comes at a price to other developers, price that those developers would not pay with more open approach, users still don't care.

If this is true, then you need to ask the question "should big companies be forced to be more competitive, even if doing so means a good amount of customers will lose privacy and security", and your answer will be entirely one of preference, what you say can't be correct or incorrect.
It seems to be available here in Brazil (São Paulo). Interesting, but too expensive for me to try (and I don't think I really need it).
I'm not clear on the point here. You can make an application that handles arbitrary SQLite files, (for example: the SQLite shell, or a GUI database broswer), or you can make an application that only uses SQLite files with certain content/schema. Does this mean that SQLite does or does not define a file format?

If not, what do you call the specification of how data is stored in a SQLite file besides a 'file format'?
Reddit is big, but it's still a social media bubble.

The general sentiment and worldview of Reddit doesn't represent the general sentiment of society as a whole.

Step outside of social media, where the worst problems around the world are piped 24/7 into our senses, and you realize that the average person is still doing fairly well.
I did this for the TMS34010 graphics processor many years ago but my notes are long gone. I was inspired by Mach 2 Forth, an amazing compiler for the early Mac. My compiler had local variables and tail call detection to take advantage of a special "one-deep" stack register on the chip.

The key point is that Forth can easily incorporate an RPN assembler which you can write in Forth, and with which you can then build a better Forth. I'm not sure if I even started with the official TI assembler for the chip; I probably first wrote a cross assembler in Mach 2 by transcribing the ISA manual and bootstrapped from that.
Depends on the contract you’ve agreed to. I’ve heard gyms which would sent the invoice to collections if they can’t charge your credit cared anymore.