greengnu

joined 2 years ago
[–] greengnu@slrpnk.net 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So you feel China is betting on Silicon and that the actual future is Gallium arsenide ?

Because it has a direct band gap and at 1/50 of the thickness would be cheaper and more efficient than silicon?

[–] greengnu@slrpnk.net 3 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Tell us more about your field of solar research and what bit around it you think we might need to know about.

[–] greengnu@slrpnk.net 4 points 3 months ago

Well, it lacks a proper bootstrap and its documentation is basically empty trash.

hell live bootstrap has those and did it without requiring a file system or a kernel to get there https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap

[–] greengnu@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 year ago

Warzone 2100 (you can download for free as it is an old PC game that went GPL)

gets more on the nose by the day

[–] greengnu@slrpnk.net 14 points 1 year ago

That is just the gateway drug to bootstrapping.

Check out https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap

if you want the real hard stuff.

[–] greengnu@slrpnk.net 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They already did: https://www.commanderx16.com/

you just probably want something better.

and that is the problem building higher performance requires more advanced lithography and that is expensive and until recently was not even an option for a hobbyist (without taking a mortgage on their house).

Given current stagnation, you need only wait about 10 years for that viable option.

[–] greengnu@slrpnk.net 7 points 2 years ago

rxvt-unicode with tabbedex.

I refuse to use a terminal emulator that needs more than 100MB of RAM to display 80x24 green text on a black display

[–] greengnu@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

heating is not done year around (365.25 days/year) for the majority of the world's population.

Hence why places which need heating year around are generally considered an edge case.

[–] greengnu@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Yes in a scenario, which you are in a cold climate which it is always cold outside. Then yes, thermal energy storage would be an extremely efficient option.

It doesn't apply to most living humans but I grant you that special case.

yes, I did look at your link and noted all of sites are those near mountain ranges; which I certainly grant you is near (within 100 miles of) most human population centers.

[–] greengnu@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There are a great many "promising" technologies in the pipeline, the real question is which of them actually suit our needs and only via real world trials will we discover the flaws and see if the benefits outweigh the flaws.

[–] greengnu@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago (5 children)

well no storage can be 100% efficient but you are correct that thermal storage is very efficient if you want a thermal gradient to leverage for heating (cooling as well)

I am assuming you mean Pumped-storage hydroelectricity when you say PHES and no it also falls under F=ma, but when using the terrain is able to increase the amount of mass to a more industrial useful scale. The larger the scale the smaller the losses. Hence most economical when one has mountains for the storage of the water. (metal/plastic tanks on elevated platforms tend to be much less efficient and more expensive).

I guess it depends on what you mean by rare long duration events but yes one can imagine a situation where the burning of hydrogen is justified on an energy needs basis.

[–] greengnu@slrpnk.net 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Depends on what you mean by a huge problem.

If you are referring to energy loses due to the large distances and the electrical resistance of the wires carrying that power; you'll discover those loses are directed related to current and that you can trade current for voltage and trade voltage for current; so we can avoid losses by upping the voltage.

If you are referring to the fact that the Earth's crust is moving, we can have geologists do some work; estimate the distances spaces where we will be running our wires and put in sufficient slack to cover the time period until the next maintenance window.

If you are referring to weather event induced disruptions in the grid (wind/tornadoes/etc taking out power lines) then you build alternate paths to route around damage.

If you are referring to solar storms and coronal mass ejections, then you need standards in your equipment to deal with out of spec distribution lines.

All of which are technical problems and easy to solve.

If you are referring to the bureaucratic hellscape that is international coordination and cooperation, then yes that is the only huge problem preventing such a solution, despite its numerous global economic and environmental advantages.

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