Week 24

The Buzz EV News: "Schaeffler showcases hydrogen electrolyzers, fuel cells.. [the company] is also demonstrating progress toward commercialization of green hydrogen at the Hydrogen Americas 2024 Summit and Exhibition.

Schaeffler says its core competencies – honed through its bearings production that requires exact tolerances in engine, transmission and industrial component manufacturing, along with its team of scientists, technology labs and strategic acquisitions of hydrogen-focused technology companies – equip it to deliver the products and technologies needed to scale the market, the company said.

According to Schaeffler, its experience with cold forming, stamping, coating, sealing and assembly technologies positions the motion technology company as an important player in the construction of electrolyzer and fuel cell stacks"

Politico: "Kevin McCarthy’s vaunted political operation launched its revenge tour against the Republicans who ousted him from the speakership with a multimillion-dollar blitz against Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina... But after Mace crushed her challengers in a Tuesday primary, Republicans in Washington are openly asking: What’s the point of all this?"

Politico: "Hakeem Jeffries is locked in an electoral battle with socialist activists in his home district, and he's in danger of losing"

Even a casual reading of Abrahamic religions suggests they value peace more than war, including Christianity. Is Hanson that dumb or has another agenda?

Victor Davis Hanson: "Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens Do Not Represent Most Christians Or Americans On Israel"

Lefty move from Trudeau.. Very good.

CBC: "Liberal government takes first step toward changing capital gains tax.. Provinces should use revenue boost from capital gains to compensate doctors for impact to income"

Russia could become a center of science. US acted as the steward of world science after Europe lost its crown, but their scorecard on it has been spotty. The scientific enterprise needs to be driven from Eurasia..

TASS: "Russia will significantly expand its program on attracting specialists from abroad.. 'Following the new decision that we made very recently, the mega grant program will be significantly expanded, its funding will be increased, new areas will be included, and more effective mechanisms for distributing grants with the help of the Russian Science Foundation will be proposed,' the President said"

WION: "Putin slams West's 'hypocrisy', sets out conditions for peace talks with Ukraine.. 'So far, the West has been ignoring our interests. While they forbid Kyiv to negotiate, they hypocritically call on us to start some sort of negotiations. It just looks idiotic,' he said during the address"

UA is switching to 155? Starting with 152 was a bad idea... Another example demonstrating Ukraine wasn't truly ready for real war, only acting as a dumping ground for Western military tech.

Lawfare: "One specific aspect of military aid reflects.. its partners’ current failure: the Ukrainian armed forces’ artillery shell shortage... Part of the problem is the dated Ukrainian arsenal, which consists mostly of Soviet-era designs of 122 mm and 152 mm caliber artillery. The Ukrainian armed forces have begun to transition to more modern.. 155 mm caliber artillery systems provide longer range, higher rate of fire, greater accuracy, and a greater variety of specialized munitions than the 152 mm systems"

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Forbes: "Hydrogen Crane Deployment At The Port Of Los Angeles.. The Port of Los Angeles will serve as one of the primary locations for the ARCHESH2 projects, known as the California Hydrogen Hub, which was recently designated by the Department of Energy. The California hydrogen hub is expected to receive a substantial amount of funding, up to $1.2 billion from DOE, facilitating an overall investment of up to 15 billion in hydrogen technologies. Pioneering projects like PACECO's hydrogen-powered crane are indicative of the exciting deployments to come in decarbonizing ports in Los Angeles and reducing pollution in the region as a whole"

After "the deluge" the BEV makers probably won't be completely crushed. They have powertrain technology, they can simply swap out the battery with H2 gas tank, connect it to their powertrain, power the electric motor that way. All their efforts were not in vain, but they cannot stay around in their current form and expect not to be (partly) crushed. They bet on an inferior technology. There will be a price to pay.

McQuarrie, Jennerson, these are all great names.

#Burnett #Trek

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"@ian@hachyderm.io

At what point does the industry in need of disruption become the tech industry"

He'll be sweatin

"@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social

Microsoft are having a good day 😬"

Cyberscoop: "Microsoft’s Recall puts the Biden administration’s cyber credibility on the line.. Why has the White House remained silent on the launch of a product that violates the spirit and letter of its flagship cybersecurity initiatives?"

The statement below assumes extracted carbon = newly deposed carbon which cancels out, we get net zero. But after carbon is extracted to make synthetic methane, the produced methane needs to be tracked seperately from carbon, methane is its own GHG, 20 times more potent than carbon. The budgeting makes incorrect assumptions.

I am not a big fan of synthetic fuels made by recycling carbon. The world needs the cleanest solution, in its purest form. We need to cut the knot, like Alexander, not untie it. Attempting to extend existing systems, like "the grid", or fossil fuels by supposedly making synthetic versions of the latter while "being careful about their carbon budgeting" will result in a fragile system and be too open to cheating. Imagine the Volkswagen situation multiplied by 10.

Hmm

"Combined with carbon extracted from the atmosphere, biomass or industrial emissions, [we can produce] methane, synthetic oil, ammonia, methanol or other net-zero-emissions fuels"

Design News: "Honda Launches Production of Hydrogen Fuel Cell SUV.. Honda has converted its Performance Manufacturing Center low-volume factory in Marysville, Ohio from building the Acura NSX sports car to building hydrogen fuel cell-powered versions of the company's CR-V compact crossover SUV"

Anatolian Agency: "UN-backed commission says Israel committed 'war crimes, crimes against humanity' in Gaza since Oct. 7"

Elektrek: "This past week, I attended the Micromobility Europe event in Amsterdam, where I saw many familiar company faces and several new ones in the broader micromobility world. One of the most fascinating new startups I saw at the show was Hydroride Europe AG, which showed off several hydrogen-powered bicycles and a small at-home hydrogen generator for [refueling] the bike by producing small bottles of hydrogen gas..

Those little hydrogen tanks, around the size of a 500 mL water bottle, hold enough hydrogen for around 60 km or 36 miles of riding. They feed hydrogen into an on-board hydrogen fuel cell, which uses a chemical process to convert the hydrogen into electricity, with the only output being water.

[H2 bikes have] a few advantages over traditional e-bikes. Almost all electric bicycles these days use lithium-ion batteries, which usually require problematic or otherwise rare materials to produce. As much as battery makers have tried to limit the amount of such minerals, we’re often still beholden to suppliers from a handful of countries using sometimes unethical means to procure the necessary materials to produce these batteries.

Hydrogen, on the other hand, can be produced in your living room or kitchen using a small hydrogen generator. Heck, you can even buy one on Amazon if you want"

Business Insider: "China's EV Market Could Soon Face a Brutal Reckoning"

Reuters: "In Tesla Autopilot probe, US prosecutors focus on securities, wire fraud.. U.S. regulators have separately investigated hundreds of crashes, including fatal ones, that have occurred in Teslas with Autopilot engaged... Investigators are exploring whether Tesla committed wire fraud, which involves deception in interstate communications, by misleading consumers about its driver-assistance systems... They are also examining whether Tesla committed securities fraud by deceiving investors"

TDB: "Jon Stewart Delivers Searing Takedown of Corporate Pride Pandering.. 'And then.. there’s Target,' Stewart said. 'Pride month means so much to them that they set up one small area in their 20,000 square feet of store, to sell you a Pride T-shirt they had made in Indonesia for 29 cents'"

#TuckerCarlson

Thomas Massie: "[T]o understand AIPAC, I think it's easiest to model them as a military-industrial lobby.. [T]heir biggest thing is they want more equipment, more military equipment from the United States going to Israel. In fact, when they used to be allowed in my office.. the argument they would make is 'oh, we're just stimulating the US military-industrial-complex' because every single penny of the 3.8 billion that they nominally get (now they're getting way more than that).. goes to US military contractors... And so they're kind of like what the NRA is to gun owners, or what the Farm Bureau is to farmers.. They represent a faction. Right? They represent a faction, but usually a corporate faction, and they're using the imprimatur of grass roots that they've diluted or confused into bullying Congressmen"

The Nation: "[05/28] Meet the Kentucky Republican Who Beat AIPAC.. So many Democrats are afraid to stand up to the powerful pro-Israel group. But a Republican congressman has done so, and he just scored a big primary win"

The moneyed class likely paid someone to assasinate Long. Imagine how scared they must have been to have the guy killed, knowing that it would help FDR's election who wasn't a big friend of the rich either.

Philips: "Many historians have regarded FDR's 1935 attack on 'an unjust concentration of wealth and economic power' that had been abetted by the tax code as partly reluctant and largely a response to the rise in the polls of populist Louisiana U.S. senator Huey Long, whose 'Share the Wealth' Clubs were claiming seven million members. Democratic polls suggested that Long's threat to run as an independent in the 1936 presidential race could jeopardize Roosevelt's reelection prospects. As things turned out, Long was assassinated and Roosevelt won in a landslide"

Reuters: "Hamas seeking US guarantees in Gaza ceasefire plan, sources say.. Hamas wants written guarantees from the United States for a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip in order to sign off on a U.S.-backed truce proposal, two Egyptian security sources said... The United States has said Israel accepted the proposal, but Israel has not publicly stated this"

EPFL: "Hydrogen, the net-zero hero? Green hydrogen could transform our energy system and solve many supply and emissions challenges... Already today, hydrogen is at the core of our energy system. Packing more energy per unit mass than any other substance known to man, hydrogen serves as the primary energy carrier in our fossil fuels. Hydrogen's free combustion with oxygen has blasted rockets into space. And thanks to our ability to control its combustion in fuel cells, it now powers a steadily growing fleet of vehicles on our roads"

Microshaft purchased Finland's Nokia destroyed the prospects of the company, recently Finland joined NATO. Go watch Sisu while you are slowly brainwashed into your dystopia. It's all downhill from here.

US corps kill a lot of innovation by simply buying them. The Nokia purchase should never been allowed to happen. Angus Hanton is right.

"@cwebber@octodon.social

The N900 was a Debian-and-GTK-based [Linux] phone with the best mobile UI I've ever used to this date, made by Nokia before they were bought by Microsoft.. It was incredible. It was the only good smartphone ever made"

Jonathan Oppenheim (not to be confused with Oppenheimer) posted "experimental evidence for stochastic fluctuations of spacetime!" referencing this. I believe the post was tongue-in-cheek, but seriously JO is trying to marry quantum w/ classic by introducing stochasticity into classical physics. His approach is different from quantizing gravity which he describes as a failure along with String Theory.

Powerful rocket is needed so it can carry everything needed in one go. Apollo missions achieved that with Saturn V. Starship was supposed to be more powerful, but it looks like it can only carry less than half of SV payload capacity.

AmericaSpace: "[04/20] Starship Faces Performance Shortfall for Lunar Missions.. Starship is facing a 50% underperformance in terms of the payload which it can deliver to orbit. If this issue is not rectified, it could have grave implications for Starship’s ability to complete a lunar mission"

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"US objected". Why do you object? You should aim to learn from this man, not be a fluffer for your corporate interests.. Who is running the show over there?

I guess nationalizations worked, Mexican voters rewarded his protege

QZ: "[2023/04] The Mexican government continues nationalizing key industries despite US objections.. With AMLO's purchase of 13 Spanish-owned power plants, the majority of Mexico's electricity production is now state-controlled"

That's right.

NYT: "Mexico’s Leftists Won Big"

"Here’s How America Really Runs Britain" #Hanton #NovaraMedia

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Col Wilkerson: "The four stars in the Armed Forces of the United States are a basket case of wooden headedness and stupidity. Just look at what they've been doing of late. 26 out of 32, 80% of the recently retiring flag officers at that rank level went to military contractors post-retirement. This is their dream, this is their glory. Look at Admiral Burke who used to boast that he [was a great commander].. Now he's up on charges, it looks like he's been involved in corruption, been offered a $500,000 a year job because of that corruption after his retirement. This guy I thought was one of the last four stars in the United States Navy that was worth a damn. Now I've got to revisit that opinion completely and cast him with the rest of the fools.

Look at Afghanistan, 20 years no one held to account, no one fired, no one ripped up (one person was sort of pseudo-fired). And then look at Iraq, all the four stars, three stars there that came home and were service chiefs or something else, got their promotions, got their big job in the military-industrial complex. No one punished, no one held accountable. We have fools, fools running the United States military today.

So I gotta believe that Biden is getting a whole plateful of really bad advice. You had David Petraeus out there months ago saying there was no way Russia was going to prevail, Ukraine was going to prevail. Well David I'm sorry, I knew you lied about Iraq when you were telling me at the State Department that Iraqi battalions were ready for action, and my spy in Baghdad was telling me that 10 to 30% on any given day of your Iraqi battalions were AWOL, so I know David Petraeus lies for a profession. But it's a combination of things like that...

Look at the correlation of forces once again, which I was looking at on the day of the invasion, and said no way Ukraine prevails not unless NATO in force joins it, and then it'll be touch and go, because [Russia is a] 140 to 150 million nation with 11 times zones and a latent industrial base that now is cooking on all eight cylinders by the way, against less than 40 million. Most of [Ukraine's] industrial base was shipped off to the new Russia once the Soviet Union stood stood down along with their nuclear weapons, and what remained in Ukraine was producing heavy equipment for the Russians. This is absurd for any military professional unless he's interested in politics and interested in getting a really good well-paying job in the military-industrial complex who by the way are making billions off this Ukraine conflict"

Albawaba: "The former chief of Mossad's intelligence and operations, Haim Tomer, issued a dire warning in a recent interview, stating that war with Hezbollah may seriously damage Israel's economy, society, and reputation abroad"

WION: "Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz and the Israeli general in charge of the Gaza Strip area announced their resignations'

H2 View: "HVS to supply heavy-duty hydrogen units to haulage and plant hire business"

"@brianb@fosstodon.org

I've noticed a big shift toward, 'We should be teaching kids how to cite AI.'

That's antithetical to citations. A citation points you to the original source. Citing AI is effectively erasing original sources in a misguided effort to 'teach students how to responsibly use AI tools.'

Responsible use is teaching people that AI tools are plagiarism machines. Period"

Stefan Rahmstorf: "What does 3 °C of global warming mean for us?.. A useful perspective on a warming of 3 degrees is provided by the Earth’s history. According to current knowledge, one must go back about three million years, to the Pliocene, to find a similarly high global temperature. This already indicates that large parts of today’s biosphere are not adapted by evolution to such a warm Earth. Many species would not survive it. In the Pliocene, our ancestors, the australopitheci, still lived partly on trees...

The US has already reached around 1.7 °C of warming.. Because the US is a land area, this is not surprising, since many land areas are warming about twice as fast as the global mean, 70% of which draws on ocean temperatures. The average warming of all land areas in 2020 was 2.0 °C. With 3 degrees of global warming, we can therefore expect around 6 degrees of warming on land.

A 6-degree rise in the annual average temperature—that’s a lot. This would make New York roughly as warm as Los Angeles is today. And while some might dream of California weather conditions, this completely new climate will not please farmers or the local fora and fauna at all. It is likely to lead to widespread drought problems, wild fires and forest dieback.

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"@yogthos@mas.to

Benito Mussolini created the word 'fascism.' He defined it as 'the merging of the state and the corporation.' He also said a more accurate word would be 'corporatism.' This was the definition in Webster's up until 1987 when a corporation bought Webster's and changed it to exclude any mention of corporations"

"@fuck_cars_bot@botsin.space

'Paris deshitifying the air by minimizing car use'"

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The Irish Sun: "Putin was asked about NATO's preparations to defend from a Russian 'invasion' at the meeting with the heads of the world's major news agencies on Wednesday.. 'Look, someone has imagined that Russia wants to attack NATO. Have you gone completely insane?.. Who came up with this nonsense, this bullsh-t?' Putin said. The Russian president suggested that the 'bullsh-t' was in the service of deceiving the people at home in the West, urging them to arm themselves and send more weapons to Ukraine"

H2 Central: "China set to smash national hydrogen targets, solidifying lead in global electrolyzer market"

"@BenjaminHCCarr@hachyderm.io

In a milestone, the #US exceeds 5 million #solar installations.. The 5 million milestone comes just eight years after the U.S. achieved its first million in 2016 -- a stark contrast to the four decades it took to reach that initial milestone... Since the beginning of 2020, more than half of all U.S. solar installations have come online, and over 25% have been activated since #InflationReductionAct became law 20 months ago"

Atlas - not bad.. I'd rate it higher than, say, Kill Command. It references some recent idiotic sci takes, real-life characters in the beginning, but moves on to tell its independent story. I recommend it.

Fall Guy entertaining, though some scenes linger little too long. Generally ok.

I dont think anyone is talking about Furiosa, period. The movie bombed.

TDB: "Why Isn’t Anyone Talking About the Real Star of ‘Furiosa’?"

For things that need to run faster, can always paralelize the task ie run it concurrently. Concurrency is still underutilized in many applications.

"@Shrigglepuss@godforsaken.website

I'm really really really not interested in computers getting more powerful... I am super interested in them being more repairable and modifiable, drawing less power, lasting and being supported for way longer etc"

First order of business outlaw tax havens. Second order of business, outlaw all SEZ.

It's no joke, inside those places private firms rule, the host country turns a blind eye to employer offenses, there are no unions, companies set the rules. I'm convinced they could shoot a man at will, cover it up, and the legal framework would allow it #SEZ

Kennard, Silent Coup: "[W]e next wanted to look into the secession of territory globally to private investors... we found a lawyer.. who had described how [Special Economic Zones] SEZs vary widely in their details, but that they often involve 'excluding or modifying the application of parts of the national law in defined geographic areas'

These weren’t just carve-outs of physical territory, therefore – they were also exceptional spaces where normal rules didn’t necessarily apply. These zones also seemed to often offer the – sometimes explicit – promise of a steady supply of cheap and compliant labour for investors’ factories. The reality of promised jobs included numerous reports of worker’s rights abuses in ‘sweatshops’.

The ILO said ‘trade unions point to these zones as being islands, outside the scope of traditional industrial relations ... that are a symptom of the race to the bottom in the global economy.’ A worldwide patchwork of these spaces seemed to mean that, once one workforce began to mobilize and demand better wages or conditions, companies could leave and move on to another.

The World Bank, we found, had produced many reports studying and promoting SEZs. Along with investing in private businesses, its IFC branch and other bank teams gave developing country governments ‘advice’ on how to make themselves more attractive to private investors, including what laws they should change. Such zones seemed to be a regular item on the menu.. [A] researcher at Utrecht University, had studied SEZs for years. They are commonly 'regulated differently than a nation’s 'normal' territory, to the extent that they may have their own police forces with considerable sovereignty', he said"

The National Interest: "TOS-1A: Russia's Thermobaric Artillery Is One Horrific Nightmare Weapon.. When deployed, thermobaric ordnance is a devastating weapon as it employs oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion. Also known as aerosol or vacuum bombs, these can create a  massive shockwave followed by a fire cloud where the temperature can reach 2500-3000 degrees Celsius (4500-5450 Fahrenheit). In addition to certainly killing anyone within the blast radius, the heat from the weapon can cause significant damage to structures and vehicles –igniting any fuels and lubricants, as well as setting off any ordnance. Many targets are essentially vaporized"

"Mercedes DUMPS EV Production As Profits Are In The Toilet!"

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Al Jazeera: "The United Nations is adding Israel to its so-called “blacklist” of countries that have committed abuses against children in armed conflict"