HaraldvonBlauzahn

Even in Germany, there are now regularly more deaths from heat waves than traffic deaths (and air pollution is another big killer whose effects are multiplied by heat waves)

cross-posted from: feddit.org/post/28133646 The war goes on, and so does the global energy crisis. In fact, I believe that prices of oil futures remain too low given how much spot prices will need to rise to resolve the shortages that will hit once oil supplies that were shipped before the Strait of Hormuz was closed are exhausted. But a better future is coming, despite Donald Trump’s assault on renewable energy as he tries to drag us back into the fossil fuel past. Regardless of Trump’s chest-thumping, America is not the world. We account for only 15 percent of global energy consumption, compared with China’s 28 percent. And the rest of the world is moving rapidly to renewables, thanks to a technological revolution in solar power, wind power, and, less visibly, batteries. So let me take an optimism break and talk about why batteries may save the world. The decline in battery prices has been incredible. It’s like nothing anyone has ever seen before. Big, strong men with tears in their eyes come up to me and say, “Sir, have you seen the progress in batteries?” Why does this matter? [ … ] Furthermore, we’ve seen rapid progress in all components of the green energy transformation, even though their underlying technologies have little in common. Solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries are very different, yet all have seen revolutionary improvements. This strongly suggests that the whole renewable energy complex is experiencing a virtuous circle: ever-growing use leads to falling costs and falling costs lead to ever-growing use. [ … ] So although we are now in the midst of a severe energy crisis that could easily go on for many months, this too shall pass. A better, cheaper, cleaner energy future is on the way, and not even Trump can stop it.

The war goes on, and so does the global energy crisis. In fact, I believe that prices of oil futures remain too low given how much spot prices will need to rise to resolve the shortages that will hit once oil supplies that were shipped before the Strait of Hormuz was closed are exhausted. But a better future is coming, despite Donald Trump’s assault on renewable energy as he tries to drag us back into the fossil fuel past. Regardless of Trump’s chest-thumping, America is not the world. We account for only 15 percent of global energy consumption, compared with China’s 28 percent. And the rest of the world is moving rapidly to renewables, thanks to a technological revolution in solar power, wind power, and, less visibly, batteries. So let me take an optimism break and talk about why batteries may save the world. The decline in battery prices has been incredible. It’s like nothing anyone has ever seen before. Big, strong men with tears in their eyes come up to me and say, “Sir, have you seen the progress in batteries?”: [ … ] [ … ] So although we are now in the midst of a severe energy crisis that could easily go on for many months, this too shall pass. A better, cheaper, cleaner energy future is on the way, and not even Trump can stop it.

The open web isn't dying. We're killing it

If you have technical problems, try this link.

The fossil fuel economy is finished. The only question is whether it manages to drag a lot of human civilization into it’s grave

On the kernel security list we’ve seen a huge bump of reports. We were between 2 and 3 per week maybe two years ago, then reached probably 10 a week over the last year with the only difference being only AI slop, and now since the beginning of the year we’re around 5-10 per day depending on the days (fridays and tuesdays seem the worst). Now most of these reports are correct, to the point that we had to bring in more maintainers to help us. Something I’m predicting is that at least it will change the approach to security fixes: [ … ] software that used to follow the “release-then-go-back-to-cave” model will have to change to start dealing with maintenance for real, or to just stop being proposed to the world as the ultimate-tool-for-this-and-that because every piece of software becomes a target. [ … ] Overall I think we’re going to see a much higher quality of software, ironically around the same level than before 2000 when the net became usable by everyone to download fixes. When the software had to be pressed to CDs or written to millions of floppies, it had to survive an amazing quantity of tests that are mostly neglected nowadays since updates are easy to distribute. But before this happens, we have to experience a huge mess that might last for a few years to come! Interesting times…

On Wednesday, NASA will attempt to send four astronauts around the moon on a mission called Artemis II. This will be second flight of NASA’s SLS rocket, and the first time the 20-year-old Orion capsule flies with people on board. The trouble is that the heat shield on Orion blows chunks. Not in some figurative, pejorative sense, but in the sense that when NASA flew this exact mission in 2022, large pieces of material blew out of Orion’s heat shield during re-entry, leaving divots. Large bolts embedded in the heat shield also partially eroded and melted through. […] All of this was kind of preposterous. As the YouTuber Eager Space has pointed out, if a commercial crew capsule (SpaceX Dragon or Boeing Starliner) returned to Earth with the kind of damage seen on Orion, NASA would insist on a redesign and an unmanned test flight to validate it. But the agency does not hold its flagship program to the high standard it demands from commercial crew, even though the same astronaut lives are at stake. Nor was it lost on observers that the tools and models NASA used to arrive at its new analysis were the same ones that had failed to predict the spalling problem in the first place. While the agency was able to work backwards from flight data to induce flaking in a test coupon of Avcoat, they had no way of predicting how the full-size heat shield would behave in the new flight conditions it would experience on Artemis II. You don’t have to be a random space blogger to find all this fishy. The most energetic voice of public dissent has been heat shield expert and Shuttle astronaut Charles Camarda, the former Director of Engineering at Johnson Space Center. Aghast at what he saw as a repeat of the motivated reasoning that had led to the loss of Columbia and Challenger, Camarda began making noise both inside and outside the agency, believing that astronauts’ lives were at stake. In a show of openness, NASA invited Camarda and two journalists to attend a briefing on the heat shield in January of 2026, and gave him limited access to some research materials that have not been made public. But the experience only deepened Camarda’s distress, and he ended up publishing a cri de coeur that I encourage everyone to read in full. Fascinating read.

Solar, wind and battery storage are forecasted to provide 99% of new electricity generating capacity in 2026 according to new data released by the Energy Information Administration.

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/43801404 Following in the footsteps of Hashicorp, Hudson, etc. Zed has chosen to cash in the good will of its now substantial user base and start going to full corporate enshittification. Among other things like minimum age nonsense, they have also added binding mandatory opt-OUT arbitration. I find such agreements very troubling, because it gives up public funded dispute resolution for private which nearly unanimously benefits larger entities, it lowers transparency to near zero, and eliminates the abilities to act as a class and to appeal. But I worry most will just accept it, as is the norm. You can however opt out by emailing arbitration-opt-out@zed.dev with full legal name, the email address associated with your account, and a statement that you want to opt out. I’ll just consider my days of advocating for Zed as an interesting new editor over and go back to Neovim bliss.