Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Miscellanea: The War in Iran

acoup.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 1001 posts

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#571

Post by VK-pro »

scoofy wrote: post #561
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> environmentalists were like, "hey look, free energy," It's not free. It costs trilliions of dollars to build and maintain. I think it's worth it. But one place where the climate-change movement lost the plot was in underplaying costs and overplaying the doom.

If I install solar panels, a battery, and a next gen breaker box in CA, even with premium equipment and no subsidies, I'm looking at a max payback period of like 20 years, right? At that point yea, it's effectively free energy. Is it an investment? Sure, but it's an investment that trivially pays for itself.

I’m sleep deprived so maybe not the right words, but isn’t there an implicit IRR that a household would maintain and usually a 20 year payoff would be maybe not the first use of investment dollars? I feel maybe that’s more the problem here with renewables. It’s cheaper but not cheap enough to put the dollars there instead of somewhere else

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#572

Post by jcranmer »

epsters wrote: post #486

Joe Kent [1] offered a possible way out of this - however slim the odds might be. Trump's one quality that may save us all from this quagmire is his ability to do a complete 180 on his previous committed path - "TACO" as his detractors like to call it. Like he did with ICE in Minneapolis, or in Yemen last year when he quit his bombing campaign after one month. If he could be convinced to just declare victory over Ira…

> Trump's one quality that may save us all from this quagmire is his ability to do a complete 180 on his previous committed path - "TACO" as his detractors like to call it.

If you haven't been paying attention, Trump has declared victory and called it quits roughly every other day for the past several weeks. It hasn't stuck, principally because Iran is the main actor that can decide whether or not to call it quits, and they have no reason to call it quits until they believe that Trump is actually serious in calling it quits.

One of the most surreal things is the sheer disconnect going on. The energy sector and everyone who's impacted are basically running around going "the strait's gonna be closed for months, we're turbofucked." The finance people are betting that the crisis will be over if not tomorrow then next week at the latest. And Trump et al are acting as if the crisis ended yesterday.

> I wonder if it will weigh on them at all if another school gets blown up or another thousand people die while they slow-walk the vote on the next war powers resolution.

The Democrats are the minority party. They don't control the agenda of legislative votes. But sure, blame them for the things they don't control, rather than the Republicans who want to avoid embarrassing their dear leader even as he leads his party to what looks to be utterly crushing defeats in the next elections with some of the most historically unpopular policies ever.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#573

Post by tmoertel »

stickfigure wrote: post #501
scottLobster wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair induction ranges aren't without issues, not due to the concept itself but failures in implementation. Touch screen controls are rife and not only become impossible to use when, say, grease is splattered on them or your hands are wet/wearing gloves (common when cooking on a stove top), they can even be falsely activated by such things. Cold spots can also be a concern depending on your cookware. Unfortunate…

LG makes an induction range with knobs. I have one. It's wonderful.

> LG makes an induction range with knobs. I have one. It's wonderful.

It is encrapified with a bunch of intrusive "smart" features that nobody asked for?

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#574

Post by scoofy »

VK-pro wrote: post #571
scoofy wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I install solar panels, a battery, and a next gen breaker box in CA, even with premium equipment and no subsidies, I'm looking at a max payback period of like 20 years, right? At that point yea, it's effectively free energy. Is it an investment? Sure, but it's an investment that trivially pays for itself.

I’m sleep deprived so maybe not the right words, but isn’t there an implicit IRR that a household would maintain and usually a 20 year payoff would be maybe not the first use of investment dollars? I feel maybe that’s more the problem here with renewables. It’s cheaper but not cheap enough to put the dollars there instead of somewhere else

I mean, the payback period is like 5 years if you count all the subsides. My point is only that, you can effectively take most of your house of the grid, even in an urban area, with a relatively short payback period, and an almost guaranteed return.

Is it the most profitable place for investment dollars? Probably not, but it's effectively risk-free, and there are plenty of knock-on benefits, like having power in a blackout, and having the option of getting an EV in the future.

I think most sensible people who are even moderately risk-averse would think that's a fairly winning deal when we're only talking about a small amount of up front capital.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#575

Post by xg15 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #491
Dig1t wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: >Israel could force the United States into a war with Iran at any time. >It should go without saying that creating the conditions where the sometimes unpredictable junior partner in a security relationship can unilaterally bring the senior partner into a major conflict is an enormous strategic error, precisely because it means you end up in a war when it is in the junior partner’s interests to do so…

> it's huge sums of money flowing through our political system and effectively buying our politicians I disagree strongly with this assertion. But for sake of argument, let's assume it's true: American politics is permanently captured to Israel's interests. That still doesn't explain this war. "I think most folks understand that this war was a misfire for the United States, but I suspect it may end up being a terribl…

Israel is currently busy annexing southern Lebanon, and I don't think it's at all decided how the "hearts and minds battle" in the US will eventually end. (Or how important the popular support even is)

So right now, the state of the war is a win for Israel.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#576

Post by redwood »

overfeed wrote: post #519
redwood wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even listen to the link you just posted? He makes very clear in his instructions to the Iranian people that they should stay sheltered as bombs will be dropping.

Do go on - what were his instructions on what they ought to do after the bombing stopped?

Overthrow the regime. Has the bombing stopped?

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#577

Post by [deleted] »

scoofy wrote: post #561
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> environmentalists were like, "hey look, free energy," It's not free. It costs trilliions of dollars to build and maintain. I think it's worth it. But one place where the climate-change movement lost the plot was in underplaying costs and overplaying the doom.

If I install solar panels, a battery, and a next gen breaker box in CA, even with premium equipment and no subsidies, I'm looking at a max payback period of like 20 years, right? At that point yea, it's effectively free energy. Is it an investment? Sure, but it's an investment that trivially pays for itself.

[deleted]

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#578

Post by gottorf »

brightball wrote: post #413
1minusp wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to believe this, but very recent history has shown (in the US at least) that we are moving backwards and trying to resist renewable energy.

Economics will always win in the end. At the rate that costs are dropping for solar, it should just be a matter of time. Biggest concerns are usually placement and durability to bad weather.

> Biggest concerns are usually placement and durability to bad weather.

And energy storage, and peaking, and matching demand to supply at the grid level. None of which are included in the usual "costs" of solar.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#579

Post by yogthos »

manfromchina1 wrote: post #4

> More relevantly for us, Iran is 3.5 times larger than Iraq and roughly twice the population. Worth noting that at the time of invasion of Iraq they had about 25 million people per gemeni. They now have about 46 mil people per wikipedia. All else equal, we are comparing 25 mil to 93 mil and not half of 93 mil to 93 mil.

Also don't forget that Iran is far more technologically advanced than Iraq was. Iraqis had 70s tech, while Iran has stuff like hypersonic missiles that even the US can't produce right now.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#580

Post by yogthos »

credit_guy wrote: post #249
ahmadyan wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, you can view it Iranian are willing to insure the vessel for $2M fee - that it will not get hit by them during the crossing ;). Once they are in the Oman sea, they can use traditional insurance.

You can view it like that, but most people don't. At least the people involved manning those tankers don't. And why should them? It appears that the Iranian armed forces started acted quite autonomously, by design. They know that communications are not secure, so local commanders have a very high latitude in what actions they deem correct to take. If such a commander deems that asking and collecting $2 MM per vessel…

I mean ships are going through right now, so clearly at least some people do view it like that.
Post reply on HN