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This whole thing started because of some power pylons got destroyed and electricity was not restored for about a year right?


Not quite. It was already starting, but the Federal government at the time was very anti RE.

South Australia had a single interconnect to the rest of the Australian Energy Market that covers the states except for WA and Northern Territory.

There was a big storm that took out an interstate interconnect and the voltage spike caused all the other generators to disconnect to protect themselves.

Then Elon promised to build utility storage in 6 months or the state would get it for free.

That was the Hornsby battery which is mainly used for Frequency services (basically when supply/demand fluctuates, it keeps things stable).

That used to be done by gas plants, but the battery saved a large chunk of its cost in the first year by being able to switch on much faster.


>That was the Hornsby battery

Hornsdale - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve


Was going on memory and didn't want to google. :)


Best solution is to never use any of those useless apps ever again.


Best move you could have possibly done.


The article states that they do not offer any guarantee that my data will stay in the EU!

I feel that that's the whole point. And the whole point of them making this article/advertisement.


How could they possibly guarantee such a thing?

Do you only send and receive emails with people in the EU?


Your reply is dishonest. I obviously couldn't replicate the entire article, but I'm assuming everyone that reads my comment also has read the article. And so you know very well what I meant.

If you advertise foolproof safes, but they end up not in fact being exactly that very thing you advertised then I'm sure you will have a great reason as to why actually your 'foolproof' safe can not be foolproof and you never guaranteed such a thing in your tos.

But at the end of the day, you promised foolproof safes, and you did not deliver.

Your argument is "well if you leave the lock open then...". And the reply to that argument is that "yes, we all know". The fact that I the user can make a mistake, does not excuse the company from saying "well, anyway, he would have made a mistake anyway so why bother"


At the moment all your data is still replicated in the US (they say it will change in the future, sure) and all the logs are also stored there, with no plans to change it or more details into what they contain.

As of now there's no guarantee of... anything, really.

Obviously if you decide to send an email to the US you're choosing to send your data there, that's a strawman.


Its not about the people you send emails to, its about who has access to your entire mailbox.

In the moment that would be the Trump Administration for example.


Scary as well though. All those cosmic powers, and here we are, not even ants standing on a hilltop.


There's a diagram of the size of everything in the universe from quarks to the whole observable universe. https://www.universetoday.com/163927/everything-in-the-unive...


On the flip side of scary, it can put your problems in perspective and offer some kind of solace. I guess it's a bit of both :)


Doing this in my early 20s helped me out of a depression.

The perspective shift is massive.


I honestly find it extremely comforting. Having something so much bigger than oneself in the world is calming. All my worries, all my loves, everything that goes well, everything that goes poorly, just a tiny blip in the hugeness of it all. To me, it makes the good things better, and the worse things less meaningful. I watch DESI animations every few months for a reminder.


Yeah ... for all our accomplishments there's still a decent amount of people globally (though it's falling) living without basics (food, clean water, safe living conditions), and we still fight over fossil fuels despite having clean energy like wind, solar, nuclear and others.

I'd give the human race a C-. Let's see if in our lifetimes we can improve on this.


I find this sentiment so bizarre ... scared of what, exactly? There are real threats that people ignore, like rip tides, global warming, RFK Jr., and fascism, but those "cosmic powers" aren't coming to get us.


Love how you throw in RFK Jr. His muscular tone is certainly impressive!


I referred to real threats, and he is one. His muscles aren't relevant.


They are if you ever try to take his raw milk away


Or measles


Neither is 'fascism' or 'rip tides'! Some of us find the beauty and power of nature awe-inspiring, regardless of our day-to-day problems.


Knowing how precious the current state of Earth is at human scale makes me fear the asshats acting like everything revolves around “progress” a lot more than knowing how insignificant we are at cosmic scales.


Exactly. "We did ruing the only planet we ever knew, but at least for a brief moment in time we made a lot of value for Musk and his friends"


If we all die, whom will they charge 100 Euros per 1M tokens I wonder. True dilemma right here.


I think there is progress on allowing agents to pay?


A fully agentified economy. I'm sure some tech-overlord will love the idea. Let's hope they don't frequent HN.


> "We welcome RWE's agreement and voluntary investment in projects that strengthen our nation's energy security,".

We do live in a dystopia don't we?


Breaking news: "Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in <insert_European_country> for the first time" for the 10th time this year.

Also on other unrelated news German economy is rocketing to the bottom, their industry is dying with thousands of layoffs, closing factories, and complains on energy prices and they can't even maintain their rail and road networks for the first time since forever. The signs of decline are not even signs anymore they are bright neon signs. But at least we are taxing cows farting. While china is steamrolling ahead and we are regulated to death by bureaucrats.


The continent is literally on fire due to global warming. Europe does not produce any fossil fuels and needs energy independence. It's because politicians dragged their feet for so long on net zero that we are even in this mess in the first place. Better now than never.


The only thing that I'll agree with you is that European politicians are worse than having a literal random number generator making decisions. And no, we all appreciate the fact that Europe has the highest living standards to ever exist in the planet. We don't have them thanks to political parties though. We have them thanks to our ingenuity and quality of character.

I don't want to become china obviously, I love the environment especially in my village. But the 'green' craze is not it. It's just a scam to extract even more money that will go to friends and family of the various parasites we have as leaders. We were and still are the best in nuclear energy, we have infinite amounts of fossil fuels, and Europe contributes almost nothing to global warming, even if we removed the entire continent then the amount of air/sea pollution would drop by no more than 2%. And crippling our feat because the sheep fell for one more 'global warming' scam is not something I'm OK with.

For 40 years now we have increasingly richer wolves screaming global warming will kill us all in a year (while they fly on private jets to buy a coffee and have 9 seaside villas each) and increasingly more stupid sheep that enable them (and are poorer and more sad every single year). The temperatures are normal, that's how it has always been. And if they are not, me destroying the economy and civilization of my country is not going to stop that. You can try and gather cow farts though. I'm sure that will 'save' the environment.


Europe doesn't produce any fossil fuels?


Effectively. Europe and the UK do, but there isn't much easily accessible left and besides they aren't in the EU. Netherlands has had to close their gas fields. Germany still mines some coal...there are probably a couple of other gas fields etc but the big picture is that Europe is highly dependent on imports.


Europe has a seemingly infinite amount of coal (same as everyone else), but obviously it's not exactly what anyone really wants (gas and even oil is more climate friendly than coal sadly).

North Sea oil and gas are long past its prime, Norwegian supply is already nearly as expensive as LNG shipped from half the world away. The ideal gas station is Siberia, but that is what it is currently.

So, dunno, what's left, the Arctic? Frack the polar bears?


Russia and Norway do. Most of that is Russia, which other countries in Europe still import from. Germany doesn't directly anymore, but there are indirect routes like through Azerbaijan.


Average German industrial electricity prices spiked in 2021, 2022, and 2023. 3 years. That's it. By 2024, they were back to the same level as 2017.

https://www.dw.com/en/high-electricity-prices-a-threat-to-ge...

In other words it's been approximately 2.5 years since prices recovered. If Germany industry can be irrecoverably damaged by 3 years of high power bills, maybe there were deeper issues.


What’s your point in relation to this article?


While achieving renewable "success", the domestic manufacturing industry has been decimated/made uncompetitive. Great news for China on the green success!


Which is in part the fault of the industry itself! There's a high degree of arrogance in German management. Especially when it comes to China. The German car industry's refusal to go all in on BEV is a prime example how this arrogance lead to losing to the Chinese who now make better cars than Germany. And this wasn't the first time German industry lost to China due to their own arrogance and being stuck in the past. They always treated China as an export market instead of a seriuous competitor. Same with Eastern Europe.

People always blame German politics, but German management is as responsible if not more responsible for the decline. They simply made bad management decisions for decades and they didn't see the future coming.


Long time ago German car industry's decided that they need not to manufacture the most important component of EVs - batteries in Europe, that they can always buy the cheaply in Asia.

"The world's largest automotive supplier has decided against producing its own battery cells despite calls from EU politicians to do exactly that. Bosch said the investment would probably never pay off."

https://www.dw.com/en/bosch-says-battery-cells-are-too-expen...

The importance of BEV for China goes well beyond long-term concerns for climate change. For China the most important are the immediate geopolitical aspects of BEV. Every Chinese BEV in China is driving using domestic electricity and is not dependent on imported oil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malacca_dilemma

"The Malacca dilemma is a strategic vulnerability for the People's Republic of China due to its heavy reliance on the strait of Malacca, a critical maritime choke point connecting the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea."

"The United States is viewed within Chinese strategic analysis as a potential threat to maritime energy flows through the Strait of Malacca. In the event of a conflict, particularly over Taiwan, the United States could interdict oil shipments to China by disrupting maritime routes. China has expressed concern that U.S. naval forces operating near the Strait of Malacca could obstruct critical petroleum shipments, effectively cutting off vital imports. U.S. maritime strategy has included options for restricting China's access to key sea lanes through the use of attack submarines and surface ships."


Perhaps the "uncompetitiveness" (is it with us in the room right now?) is self-inflicted due to lack of ambition and innovations.


Ok, then how about we hit you in the knee right before a 100m sprint, and once you lose we can talk about your 'lack of ambition'. No, regular people have plenty of ambition, and the fake chinese papers and patents that get deleted as garbage every 5 years that ieee cleans them up are not 'innovation'--there's a reason their main survival strategy is copy Western technology and resell it at a cheaper price thanks to slave labour. There is no one truly more innovative that us and has never been.


"Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders."



Even if the entire Germany stopped existing overnight, this would barely make a dent in global carbon emissions and planet destruction rate.


Okay. What is your solution, then? Except for giving up or downplaying the problem.


What is your solution to: >German economy is rocketing to the bottom, their industry is dying with thousands of layoffs, closing factories, and complains on energy prices and they can't even maintain their rail and road networks for the first time since forever.

Except for downplaying the problems or saying they have to suffer?

Mine is re-shore all industry so that products are made according to environmental, health & safety standards. Deploy a mix of renewable and also nuclear power.


> Mine is re-shore all industry

"The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations."


Not sure exactly what the point of quoting Marx at me was supposed to be...

People need jobs and a functioning economy to live.

This thread started with the GGGP talking about the decline of Germany's economy contrasted by the meteoric rise of China.

GGP states it's capitalism's fault.

GP says even if Germany disappeared from the face of the earth the current emission levels wouldn't even notice.

My parent asked why GP was downplaying or ignoring and asked for a solution.

I provided one.

Quoting Marx is not a solution. One of the current largest polluting countries was founded in part according to Marxist ideas. Russia under the Soviets gave us Chernobyl and Lake Karachay they also continued to hunt whales far in excess of their international agreements well into the 1980s.

"As others exited the whaling industry, the Soviets, alongside the Japanese, helped reduce the world’s whales from imperiled to nearly extinct, doing the hard work of an annihilation that flew in the face of economic rationality. The Soviets were able to do this in part because of a planned economy that resisted market forces."

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/history-of-sovie...

So no, your economic ideology has nothing to do with your ecological ideology.

What is your solution?


> Not sure exactly what the point of quoting Marx at me was supposed to be...

You’re 178 years too late. "Reshoring" was a pipe dream then, it is even more of a pipe dream now.

> What is your solution?

What makes you think there is a solution?

Except for really really really wanting there to be one?


Your cause/effect doesn't have all that much truth to it with regards to rail.

German rail has been an under-invested in mess since reunification, it's a long slide not a recent one. They are finally investing the kind of amounts in it they need to, to actually revive it to what it should be. It's going to be a long road to actually get there, of course.

Paywall but a decent read on that note: https://www.ft.com/content/db75e347-b13b-4753-8130-6301bb55c...


So then... the average CEO's behaviour?


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