Most home storage is Lifepo4, rather than lithium ion.

It’s a bit more expensive, and only has 80% of the capacity. In tradeoff, it gains 3-5x the lifespan, and an inability to burst into flames.

Bigger brands tend to be more reliable in capacity and lifespan. Cheap ones are more hit and miss. It might be fine, it might fail after 3 years, rather than 10.

He just really likes pressure.

Assuming 1MW of transfer, and a 10m diameter beam, your looking at 12.5kW/m^2 . Not instant vaporisation, but dangerous in seconds to humans. The penetration was also mean the energy is delivered internally, where it’s harder to deal with (short term).

Any viable power transfer beam also, inherently, makes a good anti personnel weapon.

While the maths is slightly better for short range transfers, like drones, it would still definitely not be something you want hitting your body.

Imagine you have a paper balloon setup. It randomly takes hits from a high powered rifle. In theory, you could harvest the energy. However, it’s delivered in such powerful, random bursts that capturing it is difficult.

Gamma rays punch straight through the structure of the craft. The actual energy is small (around 1/1,000,000 of a joule), but it’s so focused that it damages anything it hits. If it hits the atoms in a transistor, that transistor gets ripped up at an atomic level.

Plenty. Unfortunately it’s mostly the nasty damaging kind, rather than the sort that can be turned into power. It also doesn’t take much damage to add up, when you’re dealing with large millennia time scales.

The sleep deprivation of early parenthood does a lot to break you of social norms.

The UK is still a lot more multi party at the lower levels of government, compared to the US. Unfortunately it’s erring towards the US system, rather than away from it.

We are in a media bubble. Basically all our media is owned by a few rich arseholes and they bury a lot of anti right messages.

The BBC used to be remarkably honest and independent from government. The conservatives getting their claws into it was the beginning of the real problems. Even worse, the BBC’s impartiality has been so sacrosanct that a lot of older people just believe it.

A mild bit of light. The green party seems to also be making significant advances. Labour have often played the “don’t split the left vote” card on them. Now it looks like green is overtaking them in some areas. It just doesn’t show up well in a FPTP voting system.

The Brexit crowd have gone conspicuously silent about it. Their lack of crowing says a lot about it.

Even before Brexit, the tide had turned, and that’s only gotten stronger. Unfortunately, the government had their vote and hammered it through. (The fact there was an EU rule change, on tax transparency, the next day, and would have embarrassed a lot of rich UK toffs had NOTHING to do with the timing)

Unfortunately, the reform party is far too strong, and trying to drag us to the extreme right. Our “left wing” primary party (Labour) is now further right than the conservatives (center right party) traditionally sit.

It’s… frustrating.

I’d recommend foiling it, rather than clipping. A grounded (0V) metal wrapping will become a Faraday cage. It’s a bit more effort, but is reversible, if you so choose. E.g. when selling it. It is also less likely to trigger a fault sensor condition, and doesn’t void the warranty if the computer craps out.

A bit of a guess, but it might be related to software cafés. They are a lot more common in the east.

Since multiple people can log into the same computer, it might over count them. They are also likely exclusively windows machines.

It needs a trifecta. Protests, Politics, and “Persuasion”.

The protests give weight to the political group. They also give cover and a place to organise for harder actions.

The political elements act to focus the will of the protestors, and provide guidance to the agitators.

The “Persuasion” group add teeth to the political demands. They also act to defend the protestors, when the government gets aggressive.

The 3 need to work together to achieve major changes. “The Troubles”, in northern island are a good example. The IRA didn’t achieve much/anything practical. What they did was force the UK government to sit down and negotiate in (vaguely) good faith. The protests and marches acted to show large scale support for the changes.

Against an intelligent, aware government, the need for violence is implicit, rather than explicit. It’s a lot better to engage early and diffuse political hot potatoes. Unfortunately, the US government doesn’t seem like they will take the hints.

The marches should be used to crystallise the other 2 requirements. A political agency, to act as a voice. As well as those willing to go further, to act as the muscle.

Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy had it right. The Galactic President did all the PR events, but had no actual powers. The real decisions were made by a guy, living in a shed, who didn’t believe the rest of the universe existed, when he couldn’t see it.

Have you SEEN the price of pitchforks now?!? How the hell are peasants supposed to afford one?

It’s worth noting that this is talking about plug in solar, so would be at standard mains voltage.

1kw would be around 4A in Europe, but 8A in the USA. Also, since resistive losses scale with I^2 that’s 4x the heat dumped in the walls.

At least in the UK, they tend to run 3 phase to a road, but only a single phase goes into a given house. You need to get a special hook up to get 3 phase to a domestic premise, and they don’t like doing it.

I had a chat about this with a friend who works for the national grid (UK).

Apparently the problem is keeping the grid balanced and stable. Basically, the grid struggles to react fast, so they plan ahead. Things like large scale solar can provide predictions on output. Home solar can’t.

When clouds pass over an area it can cause slumps and surges in the local grid. The more home solar, the worse it gets. The current grid is designed to work top down, with predictable changes in demand. It needs upgrading to deal with large scale bidirectional flows.

The plug in units are (potentially) even more ropey. If used properly, they are no worse than normal home solar. Unfortunately, being cheaper, there are worries over the microinverters not shutting down. Either due to the manufacturer cheaping out, or turning on an “off grid” mode.

There are also worries about overloading household circuits. Back feeding bypasses the household circuit breakers and RCDs. They could overload wall wiring and cause fires, or stop an RCD tripping, allowing for a person to be shocked.

I don’t know how much this would apply to the American Grid, but I would imagine it would be worse. Your grid is older and larger. You also use 120VAC which makes the current overload issue a lot worse.

I fully agree. The only thing to add is that a lot of the economic issues are due to the type of reactors used. The new designs could be a lot more economical. Unfortunately they get buried under the same red tape as the old bomb factory designs.

I suspect we won’t see a lot of them used until after fusion power renders them redundant.

Nuclear should be part of the solution. Unfortunately, most older plants are bomb factories, that happen to make power. No-one built the newer safe designs, till China got hold of the aborted UK designs.

At this point, most of the west doesn’t have the skilled personnel left to spin nuclear up quickly. We also no longer have the time to deal with building nuclear, as part of the near term solution to climate change.

They also likely have detailed plans and supplies set up for exactly this sort of action. It will be less “teenager with an AK” and more competent, trained soldiers fighting to protect his homeland from invaders.

It perplexed me quite a lot. I think it was the only way he could mentally maintain his worldview.

Dealing with that mindset is exhausting. I try and keep an open mind. Unfortunately it’s possible to have it so open your brain falls out.