Week 43
Time for a chillax
Andersen: "The year that manifesto was published [1984] companies bought back only a few billion dollars’ worth of their stock, but as the decade ended five years later, the annual average was tens of billions. That’s when Jack Welch (Jack Welch!) announced that GE (GE!) was going to buy back the equivalent of $21 billion worth of its own stock because that was so much easier than 'going out and taking a wild swing' at developing new technologies or new businesses. It was the biggest single buyback yet. Welch was acting even more like a Wall Street guy, and Wall Street redoubled its love for him. Unquestionably a new party had started"
H2 Insight: "Up-to-2.5GW green hydrogen hub in Australia ‘to begin construction early next year’ after $45m federal grant"
FuelCellsWorks: "Fluxys And OQGN Ink MoU To Collaborate On Hydrogen And CO2 Infrastructure Projects In Oman"
Pickling beans - Slavic style.. We'll see how it turns out
So El - Le Vicomte #music
China Daily: "Two green hydrogen project agreements were signed at the third Belt and Road Forum on Oct 17th to 18th, which marked a milestone that green hydrogen projects enter the stage of China’s BRI"
FuelCellsWorks: "European Commission Backs RINA’s Hydra Project to Drive 100% Hydrogen Fuelled Steel Production"
The Verge: "Google paid a whopping $26.3 billion in 2021 to be the default search engine everywhere.. We knew Google paid handsomely to be the default browser in Safari, Firefox, and elsewhere. Now we know, after years of guessing, exactly what it cost"
FuelCellsWorks: "UK Passes New Laws to Bolster Energy Security, Hydrogen & Deliver Net Zero.. Landmark legislation, the Energy Act 2023, has received Royal Assent, signaling a transformation in the United Kingdom’s approach to energy security, affordability, and the road to net zero emissions"
Green Car Congress: "Hyzon Motors Deploys Hydrogen-Powered Waste Collection Truck in Australia"
Libya emits massive amts of pollution, it goes all the way to Greece, Crete, TR, who also emit their own and can pollute eachother depending on wind conditions. Dark areas show highest levels.. Cannot live in these places and they pollute neighbors.
#Pollution from Ventusky
![[-]](https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/111/306/726/170/127/350/original/61699b5a36cc8876.jpg){kind=link}
H2 Central: "Krefeld invests in hydrogen powered public transport - Solaris"
![[-]](https://files.mastodon.social/cache/preview_cards/images/077/114/241/original/ff8999ecbc7765df.png){kind=link}
FuelCellsWorks: "H2X Global And KTM Unveil Revolutionary Hydrogen Van Prototype"
Info below addresses Mearsheimer's point too, US has been an enabler of Israel, there is no two-state right now because noone on either side (US, ISR) wanted it, despite declerations to the contrary. US has aided and abetted Israel's state terrorism for decades. Ever since HW noone truly gave them a hard-time on anything.
I remember the announcement for this, Netan was there with Obama, even mfker's usual smart alec smirk was gone, he was like "Dam. I'm getting paid here. Lovin it".
Check the date, a month before election. Hillary Clinton still lost.
Reuters: [2016/10] U.S., Israel sign $38 billion military aid package"
#Mearsheimer #ISR #PAL
Firstpost: "Ukraine war orders beginning to boost revenues for big US defence contractors"
Shady characters connected to battery-electric interests tried but they could not sink Adani. It's now the Round Two bitch! Are you ready?
Reuters: "India's Adani Group to raise $4 bln to fund green hydrogen plans"
"@w7voa@journa.host
An Australian company plans to build a $100 million green hydrogen research and manufacturing complex in New Mexico"
"@respectmyplanet@mstdn.social
.. If you’re asking about powertain systems that are good for the environment & economy and available for mass adoption now, the answer is PHEVs and HVs as #hydrogen production infrastructure ramps. Toyota just coined a new axiom called the 1-6-90 rule meaning one long range BEV could have made 6 PHEVs or 90 HVs. The 1-6-90 rule is how we can finally communicate that long range BEVs are not as effective for impacting climate change goals as other technologies"
TNW: "Netherlands starts building €1.5bn hydrogen pipeline to cut reliance on natural gas"
Good one
Llama in a Tux: "don't you understand? the human race IS an endless number of monkeys. and everyday we produce an endless number of words. and one of us already wrote hamlet"
Not questioning "their right to exist" - exist, but how?
FDR was against the creation of Israel. Later Truman ok'd the idea.. but we know his entire IRel team was against it, to a man. Hell even the Brits were against it at the time. Imagine that! Colonizers who caused upwards of millions of deaths in India alone via a simple act of partition - against.
SCMP: "China PLA stationed up to 6 warships in Middle East over past week amid rising tensions from Israel-Gaza war"
The National: "Plans for hydrogen pipeline from Scotland to Germany accelerated"
FuelCellsWorks: "Hyzon Announces Agreement With New Zealand’s Largest Heavy-duty Truck Fleet Owner"
Informed Comment: "Military Contractors Are Targeting Commuters.. Weapons and tech interests are skirting advertising rules and using Washington, D.C.'s subway system to influence policymakers"
CNBC: "Alphabet's stock is having its worst day in a year after cloud revenue missed estimates"
Hansson: "[2022] Why we're leaving the cloud.. Now the argument [against running your own servers] always goes: Sure, but you have to manage these machines! The cloud is so much simpler! The savings will all be there in labor costs! Except no. Anyone who thinks running a major service like [ours] in the cloud is 'simple' has clearly never tried. Some things are simpler, others more complex, but on the whole, I've yet to hear of organizations at our scale being able to materially shrink their operations team, just because they moved to the cloud.
It was a wonderful marketing coup, though. Sold with analogies like 'well you don't run your own powerplant either, do you?' or 'are infrastructure services really your core competency?'. Then lathered up with a thick coat of NEW-NEW-NEW paint, and The Cloud has beamed so brightly only the luddites would consider running their own servers in its shadow..
Meanwhile Amazon in particular is printing profits renting out servers at obscene margins... Of course it's expensive to rent your computers from someone else. But it's never presented in those terms. The cloud is sold as computing on demand, which sounds futuristic and cool, and very much not like something as mundane as 'renting computers', even though that's mostly what it is.
But this isn't just about cost. It's also about what kind of internet we want to operate in the future. It strikes me as downright tragic that this decentralized wonder of the world is now largely operating on computers owned by a handful of mega corporations. If one of the primary AWS regions go down, seemingly half the internet is offline along with it. This is not what DARPA designed!"
CNBC: "Japan probes Google for alleged antitrust violations in search practices"
The Sound Stylistics - Freedom Sound #music
The Guardian: "EU-funded report calls for wealth of super-rich to be taxed, not income.. Wealthiest 3,000 working on ‘edge of legality’ using shell companies to funnel dividends and own property to avoid income tax, says study"
"100,000 EVs Suddenly Turn To JUNK! China’s No.2 EV Company Goes Bankrupt! China’s EVs Have No Future"
Electrek: "WM Motor latest startup to file for bankruptcy in China's EV [sector]"
It looks great.. I've mentioned range requests before.. It is a scalable idea.
"@scy@chaos.social
.. #Protomaps, a way to serve vector #maps of the entire world using a single static file and HTTP range requests.
It’s basically a static site generator for interactive maps. Tile servers are pretty much obsolete now. No database needed, you can run your interactive, smooth-zooming vector map from any HTTP storage. S3, Caddy running on your Wi-Fi router, even GitHub pages.
It’s open source & free to use. Wow. 🤯"
Mitteldeutsche Zeitung: "Germany's first certified #hydrogen power plant went into operation in #Leipzig on Monday"
Hindustan Times: "Hamas attacks don't justify killing 'millions of innocents': Brazil's president"
Ars Technica: "Jon Stewart and his weekly talk show The Problem with Jon Stewart are out at Apple, according to reports from The New York Times and Variety. Apple canceled the show just weeks before its third season began taping"
"Lower Pay and Fewer Benefits" #Stewart
Lower than four months ago. Whatz wit dis bizaznitch? Wheres my FOMO biznatches
Covering short means getting out of treasury short position judging price will rise yield will fall which usually reflect fed rates so this guess suggests there will be a recession and fed will lower rates soon. There is a certain pessimism among some investors 2024 will be the year of recession. We'll see..
CNBC: "Bill Ackman covers bet against Treasurys, says 'too much risk in the world' to bet against bonds"
Nice move by gov.. The recent announcement on support for H2 cars is good too
The Guardian: "Hydrogen boiler push to continue despite verdict of UK watchdog.. Government.. resist[s] conclusion that heat pumps are ‘only viable’ option for heating UK homes"
H2 for heating would be the perfect solution for this problem.
Grist: "It turns out gas stoves have much more in common with cigarettes. A new investigation by NPR and the Climate Investigations Center found that the gas industry tried to downplay the health risks of gas stoves for decades"
Car Expert: "Australia is about to get its first hydrogen-powered fuel cell car. It’s a two-seater sports car being developed by the team from the University of NSW that previously set a Guinness World Record with its four-seater solar car"
NBC News: "Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson elected House speaker"
That is funny
Yahoo News: "Trump boasts that he ‘killed’ Tom Emmer’s speaker bid"
Politico: "‘Look what came in the mail today!’ Orbán poses in a hat from Trump.. ‘Viktor, you are great,’ is handwritten on a cap worn by Hungarian leader"
F24: "Guterres: 'It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation'"
Al-Monitor: "Jordan's Queen Rania accused Western leaders of a "glaring double standard" for not condemning Israel's killing of Palestinian civilians in its bombardment of Gaza"
TDB: "Al Jazeera Journalist Learns Israeli Airstrike Wiped Out His Family While On-Air"
Doctorow: "Woe betide the internet user looking for a simple omelette recipe - the top-ranked specimens have all been prepended with thousands of words of SEO verbiage about 'the first time I ate an egg.'
With the advent of Large Language Models, Google results have gotten even worse, as chatbots churn out nonsense on a superhuman scale. Incredibly, Google’s response to this is its own chatbot, which will summarize the garbage novellas generated by SEO creeps into florid paragraphs laden with 'hallucinated' lies presented with the conscienceless of a narcissist.
Search and spam have always been at war. In the Altavista days, “search engine optimization” consisted of ending every page with seven paragraphs of white-on-white keywords ('keyword stuffing').
Today, the SEO industry uses much more sophisticated techniques.. Google is losing. Search for your local restaurant - a verified Google merchant, no less!- and the top result will be a scammer that cloned their website, jacked up their prices by 15 percent, who’ll take your order.. place the order with the restaurant [taking its cut]"
Why is pollution bad for North Africa, even Northwest Australia? The pollution likely correlates with fossil fuel producers (Libya, the Gulf), and major consumers (China, India) but some areas don't make sense. US is a major producer, mostly clean. Australia is seen as an advanced country, a major producer too like US, but there is pollution.
The MENA area, China has it bad. Europe fine except Greece, west TR, and parts of Italy.
PM 2.5 pollution levels - the world, as of 10/24 21:00 GMT
![[-]](https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/111/291/540/723/993/945/original/285c720cba51c84d.jpg){kind=link}
Trying very hard to be inside the circle of trust 👌
A proper libertarian, aren't you Focker?
😂 😂
The Verge: "Peter Thiel was reportedly an FBI informant"
"@JohanEmpa@mastodon.green
Just saw that some trucks in Australia drive two 800 km round trips per day with a total weight of 175 ton in one of the directions... Two Cellcentric 150 kW fuel cells can haul 65 ton 1000 km and fill up H2 in 15 minutes. Surely doubling that would be enough for an Australian road train.
Nikkei Asia: "Isuzu and Toyota to mass produce light hydrogen fuel cell truck"
China H2 Bulletin: "HyFun, a hydrogen storage and transportation solution innovator headquartered in Shanghai, announced it began construction of 10,000 ton magnesium-based hydrides production plant in Yixing, Jiangsu province. The plant is set to be the first industrial scale solid-state hydrogen storage material production line in China..
On July 5th, HyFun released the first generation ton-level magnesium-based solid-state hydrogen storage and transportation vehicle (MH-001T) which uses magnesium alloy as the medium to store and transport hydrogen through the reversible reaction of magnesium and hydrogen. This hydrogen storage vehicle has about three times capacity of high-pressure gaseous hydrogen storage, and the storage state is at normal temperature and pressure. It can realize safe, efficient and economical hydrogen storage and transportation"
"@dankennedy_nu@journa.host
It’s unconscionable to keep using the SAT. New data show in stunning detail that it does little more than measure family wealth"
Firstpost: "Hungary blocks EU's $500 million military aid to Ukraine over being called 'sponsor of war'"
I smell psyop. Added it to da list
Mirror: "Russian premier Vladimir Putin suffered a 'cardiac arrest' on Sunday evening [the source] suggests all recent appearances.. have been carried out by a body double or doubles"
Major activity all throughout the front.. The pincer movement around Avdiivka is apparent.
geo = [['Main'],['Andriivka','Klischchiivka'],['Bilohorivka','Verkhnokamianske'],
['Avdiivka','Opytne'],['Bakhmut','Yahidne','Berkhivka'],['Novomykhailivka','Stepne','Marinka'],
['Synkivka','Kupiansk'],['Urozhaine','Staromaiorske'],['Robotyne','Verbove','Novoprokpivka']]
u.sm_plot_ukr4('ukrdata/fl-1024.csv','ukrdata/fl-1004.csv',geo,3,3,zoom=0.03,fsize=(10,10),)
Reuters: "Russian forces pound eastern Ukraine's Avdiivka"
A list of the US H2 hubs, what they are focusing on
H2 Fuel News: "Hydrogen Hubs and Funding Structure"
H2 Central: "The first long-distance gas pipeline in Germany is being converted for hydrogen use, gas infrastructure company Open Grid Europe (OGE) announced... Located in northwestern Germany, the 46-kilometre-long pipeline sections extend from the municipality of Emsbüren to Bad Bentheim in Lower Saxony, and from Bad Bentheim to Legden in neighbouring North Rhine-Wesphalia"
Recommending Begin Again, The Burial, The Tourist, He Never Died.
CBS News: "What is hydrogen energy, and is it a key to fighting climate change?.. The White House calls the development of clean hydrogen 'essential' in weaning the country off fossil fuels.. Over the long terms, hydrogen could help decarbonize a slew of industries and contribute to more than 20% of annual global emissions reductions by 2050, according to an analysis by McKinsey & Co"
The Paris Sound Studio - Cha Ba Da Ba Da #music
Businessline: "Govt initiates talks on green hydrogen exports to EU nations.. India is targeting.. European Union nations such as Netherlands, Austria and Sweden for its green hydrogen exports. Exports are sought under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement"
"@jasongorman@mastodon.cloud
Small, autonomous teams of mostly highly-skilled developers, working closely with customers, doing frequent small releases of working software that's being continually tested.
Or...
Big teams of mostly inexperienced developers being micromanaged by people with no dev experience, working several degrees removed from customers, doing large infrequent releases of buggy software that gets tested late in the day by a separate team.
It's fascinating to watch orgs deliberately choosing the latter"
Apparently Bin Laden quoted the suffering in Iraq, due to sanctions and Clinton bombings, as one of his reasons for 9/11..
The Guardian: "[2000] Half a million children have died in Iraq since UN sanctions were imposed - most enthusiastically by Britain and the US. Three UN officials have resigned in despair. Meanwhile, bombing of Iraq continues almost daily"
It could be argued from two-state perspective Gaza was a problem for Palestinians themselves.. Disconnected from the rest of Palestinians, it is too strategic for Israelis to let be, maybe a Hamas+ plan sacrificed their org (and a portion of their people sadly) for a state in the West Bank. Their initial attack left such a deep mark that invited a response from which there can't be any going back. Then Gaza would make a stand, make a war to be remembered, so the oppo opinion would have to shift to a big change, because both sides would have bled enough for something different by then. Its sale to the rest of decision makers, the public would be easier. That is one scenario.
If ISR fights tooth and nail to "de-Hamasify" Gaza, likely won't want to leave it once they have it. What will happen to Pals living there? Will there be calls to relocate them to the West Bank? Then all Pals will be in one place, is the next move the formation of Palestinian state exclusively in West Bank? The ISR settlers there can be told to go to Gaza, a sort of land swap, and two-state solution starts? One scenario has it this is why someone kickstarted the whole thing starting in Oct 7..
NYT: "The United States has advised Israel to delay a ground assault of the Gaza Strip to allow for more hostage negotiations and humanitarian aid delivery, U.S. officials say"
I dont think HW hardball with Israel cost him the election. He had a disadvantage going into that election due to larger macro issues. In 2016 Obama gave them billions in aid, it should have helped Hillary Clinton, she lost. Trump during his admin was supportive, had pro ISR rhetoric, it didn't help him either.
Bloomberg: "Germany to Fast-Track Hydrogen Grid in Cleaner Energy Transit.. Country to present acceleration law by the end of the year.. Hydrogen network consists of 11,200 kilometers of pipes"
H2 Insight: "Demand for green hydrogen to skyrocket after EU nations approve mandatory usage targets in industry and transport.. Member states agree that 42% of hydrogen used by industry and 1% of transport fuel must be renewable by 2030"
"@Mjack@petrous.vislae.town
Robocop is about a guy who died on the job and they made him come back to work anyway."
"India to Take All Measures to Make Country Competitive in Producing Green Hydrogen.. Union Minister R K Singh said"
"@kaye@octodon.social
Earlier this year, I was shown an AI-written blog post about "How To Make A 32 Bit Wine Bottle." About 80% of Google search results are now AI-written blog posts, but this one's notable, because it's a great illustration of a failure mode unique to LLMs.
The chatbot that wrote this repeatedly gets confused between 'wine' (the drink) and 'WINE' (the Linux thing.) It attempts to mash these topics together and does so with grammatically plausible sentences that are, however, complete nonsense"
"@shokuninstudio@mastodon.social
[I]f you call someone artificially intelligent it’s the same as calling them stupid"
😂
"@bagder@mastodon.social
The I in LLM stands for Intelligence"
This AI is so smart it is scary. Just kidding, it's funny. Like haha, like clown funny it makes you laugh, as in at it, not with it
"I’m banned for life from advertising on Meta... I’m a full-time instructor in Python and Pandas, teaching in-person courses at companies around the world .. Never mind that the first is a programming language and the second is a library for data analysis in Python. Meta’s AI system noticed that I was talking about Python and Pandas, assumed that I was talking about the animals (not the technology), and banned me. The appeal that I asked for wasn’t reviewed by a human, but was reviewed by another bot, which (not surprisingly) made a similar assessment"
Does the world look like it's being run by an empire? Empire is order, Ottomans, Romans were feudal parasites, but at least they understood the concept of 'unrest'. There is no order here.. It's like everyone is acting within a few months of horizon, well, now that I think about it likely is three months which is the window of a quarterly business report... All is synched to a quarter.. Terrorist attack in Africa? It's not "empire", it is a mining corp paying "Islamic terorists" to scare locals off the land. They get mining rights, possess the land, all is done so some jackass at a posh office abroad can meet his quarterly goals. Columbian trade unionist should not be scared of Jason Bourne coming after them, watch for a local thug or a mercenary hired by Coca-Cola shooting your ass.
There is no empire. There is only Coca-Cola
Stefano Torossi - Running Fast #music
Politico: "The Israel-Hamas war cuts deep into Germany’s soul.. Amid a spate of violent demonstrations and anti-Semitic incidents, Germany’s post-Holocaust identity is on the line...
While similar scenes [protest] have played out across much of the world [as in Berlin], for Germany’s leaders, they are profoundly embarrassing and strike at the heart of the nation’s identity, on account of the country’s Nazi past...
'Free Palestine from German guilt,' [leftist protestors] chanted in English. Germany, the argument went, should get over its Holocaust history, at least when it comes to support for Israel. The irony is that there is much sympathy for this view on the far right"
You start hearing this slogan in protests now, especially in NYC - I guess it is in opposition to "Never Again" of the previous generation.
Tribune: "As a British Jew, I Say: Not in My Name.. In ever-growing numbers, British Jews are opposing the government's attempts to weaponise their grief for authoritarian ends by calling for a ceasefire — and protesting to end the mass murder of the Palestinian people"
With W I remember from a report PM Sharon took him for a helicopter ride showed him a Palestinian settlement in poor downtrodden areas W was sold on Israel. Probably thought 'these Palestenic people are losers, cant support that!'
This is HW, not W
HuffPost: "[Marans, 2021] Although the circumstances today are not identical, Bush’s showdown with Israel in 1991 over the terms of U.S. loan guarantees serves as an illustration of what a more evenhanded U.S. approach to the conflict could look like. Bush withheld the loan guarantees until he was satisfied that the money borrowed with U.S. assistance would not go toward Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories. 'Bush established consequences for bad behavior, and he got results,' said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute"
Politico: "A now-former U.S. official [Josh Paul] explains why he resigned rather than pave the way for more arms transfers to Israel as it battles Hamas...
'I know this is an unpopular opinion and too soon, but maybe the best thing for Israel right now is not security assistance in the sort of volume that makes them think they can afford to just ignore the Palestinian question and hope that, cordoned off, it will go away. Or to put it another way, if we weren’t giving them billions a year for decades, is it more or less likely they would have found it in their interest for the Oslo process to work and we wouldn’t be where we are today...
[W]e always talk about Israel has a right to defend itself. And let’s provide Israel with the Iron Dome, which by the way, I entirely support. They should not have to live under rocket fire.
But we never turned it around and think about the threat to Palestinians from Israeli incursions into their villages in the West Bank on a constant basis, from bombardment from Israel against homes in Gaza, or housing demolitions in the West Bank. We always approach this problem from one perspective, and I think that’s part of the problem.. we’ve seen for over 20 years that the commitment we made to Israel of security for peace, essentially, has not led to security or peace and in fact, leads to insecurity and makes peace further away...
[P]eople don’t grasp the day-to-day realities, and tend to only see one side of the conflict, because that’s the side that’s easy to access, that is media savvy, that is in many ways more relatable from an American perspective'"
New Lines Magazine: "As the Middle East Reels, a New Option Takes Shape: Expulsion.. The idea, which has gone through multiple iterations over the decades since Israel’s founding, by turns illegal, unworkable or extreme, posits the wholesale population transfer of Gazans into the Sinai... Despite the long-standing prima facie rejection by the Arab world of the idea of expulsion, this solution is, apparently, increasingly seen as more feasible than asking Israel to conduct its upcoming war on the strip with a judicious amount of violence or to figure out a way to actually coexist with the Palestinians. It has been floated by European and Israeli officials without irony, which likely prompted Sisi’s response as well as off-the-record comments by Egyptian and Arab officials to the media pointing out the double standard of feigning concern for the human rights of Palestinians while orchestrating a plan to deport them en masse under pain of death..
During Israel’s creation in 1948, Zionist militia groups and the Israeli army that grew out of them followed a blueprint called.. Plan D [which] identified specific Palestinian cities and towns to be targeted and provided instructions for how to expel their inhabitants. An internal Israeli military intelligence document reveals that at least 75% of the Palestinians who fled did so as a result of 'military actions by Zionist militias, psychological campaigns aimed at frightening Arabs into leaving, and dozens of direct expulsions,' scholars Joel Beinin and Lisa Hajjar note.
Indeed, even shortly after 1948, a plan to resettle Palestinians in the Sinai was tried... [I]n the early 1950s, the United Nations hatched a plan to resettle tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Sinai, thereby eliminating the Palestinian right of return. It ultimately failed because, as Adler writes, 'The 1955 uprising in Gaza — what would become known as the March Intifada — forced U.N. officials to abandon refugee resettlement projects and recognize Palestinian claims to a political identity of their own.'"
Zakaria: "Professor Dimitri Shumsky of Hebrew University writes [in Haaretz.. ] provocatively that for years Netanyahu developed and advanced a destructive, warped political doctrine that held that strengthening Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Authority would be good for Israel. This approach divided the Palestinians, undermined the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and made it easy for Netanyahu to claim there was no path to a Palestinian state. Shumsky cites a Jerusalem Post report that at a Likud Party meeting in 2019, Netanyahu made clear that he supported the money that the Qatari government was sending to Hamas. That way, Bibi is reported to have said 'Israel would foil the establishment of a Palestinian state'. Tal Schneider references the same meeting, and also notes that most of the time Israel policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset"