US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M • Hacker News Board

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#151

Post by s5300 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

alden_penny wrote: post #144

s5300 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite tired and ill right now so I'm unfortunately not going to be able to write this out even slightly well... but for some reason, I want to post the thought anyway so I will. (Note: I'm a U.S. citizen) In short: As an engineering student with quite severe chronic illness that also got fucked over by abusive parents/a broken home I couldn't escape even with scholarships... I simply can't come to the moral conclusio…

I'm a software engineer and have given considerable thought to leaving the US because I am struggling to come to terms with how my taxes are spent and politics in general here. It's universally bad. I'm considering Finland, Sweden, Norway, or Switzerland. They all rank high in happiness, high in democratic representation, and low in corruption. All are difficult to immigrate to but I basically feel a moral obligation…

The only issue I do have with leaving is the war thing. The past few years, I've really been telling myself we're probably at the point that China really does have the U.S. militarily beat if it comes down to it... but despite how many of us HN'ers are aware of some frivolous military budget spending (like literally doing something, tearing it down, and doing it again to spend the budget) - some of those hundreds of billions of dollars are definitely going into tech capable of destroying human life in ways really can't imagine. Plus, if it would somehow come down to large amount of humans actually fighting... the arrogance many Americans have is quite helpful for that.

Moving to a smaller country, I don't know how I would feel in World War just because of population numbers and physical location. Given the arguments we can see between humans in U.S. states, and knowing how trivial it truly is to something like the ideologies of the CCP... I fully expect serious global conflict within my lifetime. That's the one thing I do atleast think I feel safer with being in the slightly rural MidWest than a smaller country....

Maybe this is getting away from the point of things. But fuck. I've experienced a lot of physical pain in life from my body falling apart, but in my mind, the horrors that could be experienced in war makes it seem like nothing. I'd just not like to die in a horrible way because of dumb fucking shit. However, that's probably stupid of me seeing as how that's how most of human history has been.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#152

Post by benrbray » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

s5300 wrote: post #135

flipgimble wrote: post #99

This article has an unexpected resonance for me after several weeks of pandemic lockdown. Just three months ago I would have laughed it off. Now I am increasingly pissed off. In the US, but I see reflection of this in Europe as well, has allowed irresponsible puerile imbeciles to be elected. These people play games with wealth and power, with no regard to the lives and well-being of the society that pays for it. I di…

Quite tired and ill right now so I'm unfortunately not going to be able to write this out even slightly well... but for some reason, I want to post the thought anyway so I will. (Note: I'm a U.S. citizen) In short: As an engineering student with quite severe chronic illness that also got fucked over by abusive parents/a broken home I couldn't escape even with scholarships... I simply can't come to the moral conclusio…

I've had the same thought and it sickens me that we've come to this point.

As someone who has made the transition from teenager to young adult during the Trump era, I feel like I've lost a game I never even had the chance to play. We have clearly gone so far off course but very few seem interested in steering us back to reality (between the impeachment "trial", the primaries, and our handling of COVID-19).

After four years of the disaster that is the Trump administration, any establishment Democrats like Biden elected to office will be praised no matter what they do, simply by virtue of not being Trump. But that's not real progress. They'll continue to neglect wealth inequality / infrastructure / privacy / technology issues.

And Trump isn't the problem, he's just a convenient distraction from the fact that big money controls both parties. It's just that establishment Democrats more or less want to maintain the status quo, while conservatives are using Trump to brazenly roll back regulations.

Four years from now, we'll have even more damning evidence about the true long-term economic/social/environmental damage done during his term (as if it weren't clear enough). If he's not in office long enough, this will all be blamed on the next president, adding more fuel to the fire for a likely 2024 run.

Or worse: Someone more cunning but just as evil comes along, charming voters while more adeptly covering up their true intentions.

Our only hope this that enough voters get really pissed off enough to vote in every local, state, and federal election consistently enough for the next couple decades so that we can start to heal.

Biden's not going to inspire that. Bernie, maybe, had the chance to. Trump will do it. And if we can't survive another four years of Trump, we don't deserve to.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#153

Post by JSavageOne » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:14 AM UTC

Fricken wrote: post #120

Afforess wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude is toxic and worse, incorrect. The majority of Americans did not vote for our President. I live in Austin, and my state district in TX includes a tiny slice of a city hundreds of miles away, Houston. Many state districts are like this, gerrymandered to prevent my vote from counting. Some places have it worse, DC, the capital, has no representation at all (fun trivia: Google the DC license plate). The vo…

You can rise up and fix the system and get the leader you deserve, or you can complain about and do nothing else, and in that case you'll end up with the leader you deserve.

> You can rise up and fix the system and get the leader you deserve

No individual can just "rise up and fix the system".

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#154

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

Afforess wrote: post #109

twomoretime wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an old saying that people deserve their rulers.

This attitude is toxic and worse, incorrect. The majority of Americans did not vote for our President. I live in Austin, and my state district in TX includes a tiny slice of a city hundreds of miles away, Houston. Many state districts are like this, gerrymandered to prevent my vote from counting. Some places have it worse, DC, the capital, has no representation at all (fun trivia: Google the DC license plate). The vo…

[deleted]

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#155

Post by dboreham » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

nickff wrote: post #141

JSavageOne wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is largely the democratic system itself. The average U.S. Senator spends 2/3 of their time fundraising during the last 2 years of their term. Half of Congress are millionaires, their salaries are in the 95th percentile ($174k/yr), and they receive world-class healthcare. The electoral college means Trump and Bush get elected despite losing the popular vote. We're limited to a two-party system because thir…

Many people dislike the 'easy verify and submit' system of taxes, because they think it basically hides taxes from the public. There are similar objections to employer deduction of taxes. Additionally, the current system of many different taxes on different things makes it very hard for a voter to understand what their total tax burden is (especially if there are VATs which are included in prices). For these reasons,…

Someone doth protest too much.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#156

Post by closeparen » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

s5300 wrote: post #135

flipgimble wrote: post #99

This article has an unexpected resonance for me after several weeks of pandemic lockdown. Just three months ago I would have laughed it off. Now I am increasingly pissed off. In the US, but I see reflection of this in Europe as well, has allowed irresponsible puerile imbeciles to be elected. These people play games with wealth and power, with no regard to the lives and well-being of the society that pays for it. I di…

Quite tired and ill right now so I'm unfortunately not going to be able to write this out even slightly well... but for some reason, I want to post the thought anyway so I will. (Note: I'm a U.S. citizen) In short: As an engineering student with quite severe chronic illness that also got fucked over by abusive parents/a broken home I couldn't escape even with scholarships... I simply can't come to the moral conclusio…

>some drastic form of change and restructuring will have to happen

That's how we got this administration in the first place. There is no rule that smashing the system has to leave you with a better one.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#157

Post by dboreham » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:35 AM UTC

petrocrat wrote: post #23

abeppu wrote: post #10

Maybe someone who knows a bunch about this stuff can enlighten me. I was kind of under the impression that a large solar flare would damage _all sorts_ of electronic equipment, by inducing currents wires all over the place. - If we had extra transformers on hand, how would you protect them from also being damaged? - If a solar flare is powerful enough to damage these transformers, would it also have damaged a large p…

Transformers are usually housed in metal boxes. Any wires inside metal sheeting of whatever geometry would be protected because any current induced would be induced in the metal container which dissipates the power of the pulse. To learn more read about Faraday cages.

Like they say in horror movies: "It's coming from outside the Faraday Cage".

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#158

Post by mrexroad » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:36 AM UTC

JSavageOne wrote: post #138

flipgimble wrote: post #99

This article has an unexpected resonance for me after several weeks of pandemic lockdown. Just three months ago I would have laughed it off. Now I am increasingly pissed off. In the US, but I see reflection of this in Europe as well, has allowed irresponsible puerile imbeciles to be elected. These people play games with wealth and power, with no regard to the lives and well-being of the society that pays for it. I di…

The problem is largely the democratic system itself. The average U.S. Senator spends 2/3 of their time fundraising during the last 2 years of their term. Half of Congress are millionaires, their salaries are in the 95th percentile ($174k/yr), and they receive world-class healthcare. The electoral college means Trump and Bush get elected despite losing the popular vote. We're limited to a two-party system because thir…

> Yet in 2020 I still have to pay TurboTax to help file my taxes because the U.S. government is too incompetent to make it as easy

Normally I’m all about Hanlon’s razor (assume stupidity before malice), but given the absurd amount TurboTax spends lobbying against any meaningful simplification you can’t fully pin place this on gov’t incompetence.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#159

Post by s5300 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:38 AM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #156

s5300 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite tired and ill right now so I'm unfortunately not going to be able to write this out even slightly well... but for some reason, I want to post the thought anyway so I will. (Note: I'm a U.S. citizen) In short: As an engineering student with quite severe chronic illness that also got fucked over by abusive parents/a broken home I couldn't escape even with scholarships... I simply can't come to the moral conclusio…

>some drastic form of change and restructuring will have to happen That's how we got this administration in the first place. There is no rule that smashing the system has to leave you with a better one.

You're going to have to specify...

You talking like, U.S. declaration of Independence, or more/less recent than that...?

While my mind is fuzzier now, I like to think it was a "things change for the better" else - engineers/scientists completely stop giving a fuck about helping the U.S.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#160

Post by nmfisher » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:38 AM UTC

JSavageOne wrote: post #149

nmfisher wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 50% of people who didn’t vote in the last election are equally responsible for the current President as those who did (and every president prior, too). I agree wholeheartedly that a democratic government reflects its voters. A largely apathetic, non-voting populace exaggerates the effect of gerrymandering, campaign finance and media manipulation.

You realize Trump lost the popular vote right? Also due to the electoral college and the winner-take-all way in which voting is designed in the U.S, your vote for president only matters if you live in a swing state. If you live in California or New York, there's basically no point in voting for president because there's such a large Democratic majority and it's winner-take-all.

> You realize Trump lost the popular vote right?

I am well aware, but that has nothing to do with the almost half of eligible voters who didn't vote at all. Californians who didn't vote in 2016 (~9m) far outnumber Hillary's margin over Trump (~4.3m). There's only "no point voting for president in California" because 9m Californians don't vote. That's nothing to do with "the system", that's a choice that every single one of those 9m voters is making.

Which brings me back to my original point, which is that voter apathy exacerbates the influence of gerrymandering and campaign spending in winning elections.