Live data from Hacker News

Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

nytimes.com

321–330 of 357 posts

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine what makes someone object to moving cables underground.

Rocks. Frost. Not all locations are amenable to underground cables. Here is a white paper that lays out all the tradeoffs and includes some costs. New construction costs can differ between overhead and underground by 2-10x. Conversion costs aren't negligible either. https://www.eei.org/issuesandpolicy/electricreliability/unde...

From the paper it seams that overhead cables are also >10x more frequently failing, so I think that'll balance out easily.

Where I live, 99.9% of power is delivered via underground cables, I get power outages like once every 5 years. Brownouts are more often but usually not related to cable issues. America needs to catch up to the rest of the world there.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"so we are “flying blind” to quote a U.S. senator. " Quoting a US senator on technology is not exactly a strong argument. Like arguing about email security and quoting a senator on the technology committee saying he has never sent an email. https://www.engadget.com/2015-03-09-lindsey-graham-never-sen... In many cases senators are the least possible informed people on a topic, and are almost certainly not focused on t…

Hmm, I was selling and installing a lot of Cell Phones in Silicon Valley in 1983 (C-Tell Cellular, Santa Clara), and we had an office in Sacramento that was doing even better than I was sales wise. To characterize the nearly ten years of cell phone growth as "virtually zero" makes me seriously question the authors fact checking and thought process. To whit: "While American cell-phone usage has grown from virtually ze…

That's anecdotal evidence. My anecdotal evidence is that I lived in a suburb of a major city on the east coast, and no one I knew had a cellphone until probably the mid-90s.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#323
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, the US is a constitutional republic and not a democracy, and the constant use of the word democracy dilutes this fact.

This is a red herring, here is the definition of democracy: "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives." The US clearly fits in here. The US is not a direct democracy, but neither is any other country in the world, including Switzerland that perhaps is the one I know of that comes closest.

Given the subtopic I commented on was bringing up NYMBYs and political process and the word democracy, I don't see this as a red herring, or an attempt to divert or smokescreen the argument; I simply stated the US is a constitutional republic, which some would argue further and label it a federal republic. It seems your quote is from lexico.com. How do you respond when someone asks you what type of government does the US have?

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Strange to think that many of the folks who live there are in charge of a lot of the companies on HN (or are senior execs there). As someone who lives in Marin I’m not sure where you got this idea. Most people who live in Marin have been there for 20-30+ years and are retired. They probably paid less than 300k for their home.

> Most people who live in Marin have been there for 20-30+ years and are retired. 64.1% of those in the county 16 or older are in the labor force. Most people living in Marin County are not retired. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/marincountycali...

Most of the homeowners are probably retired and bought it for Which is related, but not totally, to who lives there.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#325
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, the US is a constitutional republic and not a democracy, and the constant use of the word democracy dilutes this fact.

I don't know where you picked up the meme of "the US is a republic not a democracy" but you might want to read up about the reaction against it: https://mises.org/wire/stop-saying-were-republic-not-democra... https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-11/is-u-s... https://thebaffler.com/latest/were-a-republic-not-a-democrac...

I picked up the "meme" long before the word "meme" entered the vernacular in the sense that I think you are using it. I had the good fortune of attending a Jesuit HS in NYC when grammar was prescriptive rather than descriptive, you took two years of Latin, and studied world religions, and the preciseness of language mattered. Mr. Caruso, my sophomore year History teacher, asked the first day back to school, "Is the United States a democracy?". Like most I said 'Yes'. He then lectured on early U.S., and other types of governments. It was an eye opener for me, and taught me to question my assumptions, and try to be more precise in my language and arguments (logical ones, not emotional ones). My comment about "diluting" comes from people throwing the term about to a point that it becomes meaningless out of context. For a similar commentary, this quote in the Wikipedia entry for a search on "democracy", seems in agreement: " However, the noun "democracy" has, over time, been modified by more than 3,500 adjectives which suggests that it may have types that can elude and elide this duality."

Thanks for the links. I found the first link interesting and then disappointing, since I had worked at a bookstore in NYC in the early 90s that carried a lot of philosophy books, economics books mainly from the Austrian School, and so the mises.org link caught my eye. Ryan McKaken the author of the article basically dismisses the use of "we're a republic and not a democracy" when used as an argument in two cases of what he believes people are thinking. I was pointing out that we are not simply "a democracy", but more precisely constitutional republic, no more, no less.

How do you answer the question, "What type of government does the U.S. have?"

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wild claims related to electromagnetism what follows is speculation, so you can grab your pitchforks if you want but it will be a hollow victory. I've always been suspicious of the claim that EM fields have zero effect on human beings, especially near high-volts lines. It doesnt seem possible. Our bodies function based on electrical signals and many cellular mechanisms are mediated with ions. do we have a list of a…

Wouldn't we see those effects on the animals and plants that live around the power lines?

So the deer I saw with two cell phones and solar panels taped to its head speed dialing Dial-A-Joke was a study animal? ;)

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#327
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, the US is a constitutional republic and not a democracy, and the constant use of the word democracy dilutes this fact.

I feel that's nitpicking. The values of democracy are constantly advertised in all political discourse in this country.

The values of democracy are touted in Hong Kong too, but that doesn't make it a democracy. Small groups with a NYMBY position, or large PACs depend operate on our current form of government, which is why I made the precise distinction in my comment. The 2016 election outcome was via the electoral college, and not the popular vote.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#328
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, in response to #2, 5G allows for very fine resolution in location tracking. There are also concerns about the manufacturers of that equipment. I'll direct you to this link for more: https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-5g-requires-new-appro... In response to #3, I have not posted any lies, and anything that disagrees with your narrative is not automatically FUD. There are serious doubts of 5G on many fronts by…

> why do we need Why not? When we moved from 3G to 4G I felt like it was kind of useless, but now that I have it I definitely enjoy all the things that become possible with it (lower latency everything, mostly). It was the same way moving from ISDN to cable. It's never bad to have better stuff - you'll find a use for it even if you don't have one now. > can you explain some concerns you might have about 5G Frankly th…

I think your comment is off-base. One, because I posted a link to Scientific American, where an expert in the effects of cellular telecommunication on human health wrote an opinion piece on why we should tread cautiously with the rollout of 5G transmitting equipment. I'm not spreading misinformation, I'm not claiming 5G to cause COVID-19, and I'm not saying anything that should be controversial.

However, I do think there is an echo chamber here, and I think that anything that cautions against the cavalier use of untested technology is not permitted, which I think is very dangerous.

What you think is a 'lazy defense' is really just a guy trying to subdue what he could already recognize as a geyser of vitriolic, and frankly wrong, comments. But, hey, this is apparently a place where everyone's opinion counts as fact, and no criticism at all of 5G is allowed.

I'm going to stop commenting now.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Strange to think that many of the folks who live there are in charge of a lot of the companies on HN (or are senior execs there). As someone who lives in Marin I’m not sure where you got this idea. Most people who live in Marin have been there for 20-30+ years and are retired. They probably paid less than 300k for their home.

> Most people who live in Marin have been there for 20-30+ years and are retired. 64.1% of those in the county 16 or older are in the labor force. Most people living in Marin County are not retired. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/marincountycali...

[deleted]

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#330
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All is not just about energy absorbed or burns. There are reports of the space between cells becoming larger (less inter-cellular adhesion) because of RF, and this led to the conclusion that the blood-brain barrier was weakened due to some kinds of RF. I've not dig too much in the subject, but I understand that a leaky BBB would increase inflammation in the brain and penetration of many molecules (including carcinoge…

A lot of the active RF spectra that people are concerned about don't penetrate deep into your body. They're either absorbed by the skin, the fatty tissue underneath or at the least, by the bone in the skull and ribcage. The reason your phone keeps working when your body blocks the signal is that the signal bounces of other surfaces. Blocking signals with your body becomes more true as frequency (and bandwidth) goes u…

Then 4G or Wifi may be worse than 5G. Experiments with inter-cellular adhesion were, among others, at 900MHz and 1800MHz, thus closer to 4G. However I don't know if other frequencies were really investigated (or with the same care, with different effects observed on male and female rodents, etc).

I appreciate that in your brief analysis you are considering several mechanisms of action besides just the heating. There may be many kinds of resonances, at molecular level, supra-molecular, etc. If very little 900/1800MHz suffices to alter BBB, then it is like a trigger to worse things, without the need of much energy. In the animals tested, the amount reaching the brain, at typical GSM levels, had already the observed result. Of course my tone is speculative here, but if the effect was confirmed in humans, it would not need much energy, and just the medium-to-weak signal reaching the brain could be worrisome.

There are not yet any studies on it, but if the effects of 5G on BBB were much stronger than with 900/1800MHz, it may also be the case that much lower signal intensities would still alter noticeably the BBB, even after the attenuation of the body traversal.

I am not a luddite at all, but I do hope that scientists working to certify that 5G is healthy are not hand-waving away the problem only by saying that the energy absorbed is too low or that the body is blocking its intensity. That would mean they did not hear at all about the effect of the mere frequency as a signal on the adhesion between cells.

I really would like to see some study elucidate the mechanism (or the absence thereof, and the flaws of the previous study), maybe some sort of resonance, soon enough to avoid to be in a situation were Wifi/4G/5G would be everywhere yet with dangerous long-term effects on health.

Post reply on HN