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German digital signage ban prompts confusion

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Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#121

Post by throwaway742 »

lispm wrote: post #74
hnbad wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the problem with nuclear power in Germany is bigger than that the existing nuclear plants are being shut down. It's actually a good idea to shut them down eventually as they're old and inefficient. Calling them "fully functioning" is a bit of a rose tinted glasses type of situation. The bigger problem is that Germany doesn't have any more recent nuclear power plants due to public pressure and instead just…

> The bigger problem is that Germany doesn't have any more recent nuclear power plants due to public pressure France hasn't either and they don't have public pressure against it. The are still trying to build a single one, being a decade late and billions more expensive. > or more recently Fukushima, which really just culturally echoed the existing memories of Chernobyl Currently we think about the nuclear fleet in t…

Hasn't Zaporizhzhia been under Russian control for a while now? Why would they be shelling themselves? That doesn't even make sense.

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#123

Post by ClumsyPilot »

lispm wrote: post #74
hnbad wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the problem with nuclear power in Germany is bigger than that the existing nuclear plants are being shut down. It's actually a good idea to shut them down eventually as they're old and inefficient. Calling them "fully functioning" is a bit of a rose tinted glasses type of situation. The bigger problem is that Germany doesn't have any more recent nuclear power plants due to public pressure and instead just…

> The bigger problem is that Germany doesn't have any more recent nuclear power plants due to public pressure France hasn't either and they don't have public pressure against it. The are still trying to build a single one, being a decade late and billions more expensive. > or more recently Fukushima, which really just culturally echoed the existing memories of Chernobyl Currently we think about the nuclear fleet in t…

> Currently we think about the nuclear fleet in the Ukraine which is literally under fire from Russia.

The 1938 Yellow River flood (Chinese: 花園口決隄事件, literally "Huayuankou embankment breach incident") was a flood created by the Nationalist Government in central China during the early stage of the Second Sino-Japanese War in an attempt to halt the rapid advance of Japanese forces. One million dead.

So by that logic you should be against hydroelectric dams, becauae they've been used in warfare for centuries.

One would think the chief problem in that equasion is war, not infrastructure

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#124

Post by tpxl »

avian wrote: post #46
sva_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For real, when they installed some of these ultra bright billboards by the street, I'd get blinded by them as I waited at the traffic light, especially on shorter winter days. The operator claimed they don't run them in the dark, but that was definitely a lie.

> The operator claimed they don't run them in the dark I think the following progression of events leads to many of those blindingly bright digital signs at night: Original sign conforms with regulations and comes with a light sensor to dynamically adjust brightness. It's bright during the day, dim during the night. After a few months the light sensors gets gunked up with dirt. Display now thinks its night all the ti…

FWIW, it's trivial to determine sunsets and sunrises for years in advance. If the only concern is day/night, and not also clouds/rain/whatever, then that is the cheaper, more reliable solution.

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#125

Post by r_hoods_ghost »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #120
sidkshatriya wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is pretty high for no real value for society in my opinion... There is a widespread belief that Advertising serves no purpose to humanity. Advertising is like anything in life: In high doses it is harmful. In lower doses it is useful. If there are regulators in your country that prevent advertisers from making false claims, even better. Advertising has helped me hone onto products and services in my whole life…

> There is a widespread belief that advertising serves no purpose to humanity. This is highly political and that 'belief' is indeed often ideological. Free flow of information and awareness of products and services on offer is an important aspect of an open society and free market economics.

And beliefs that an open society, free flow of information and free market economics are good things are of course highly political and strongly ideological. They are just largely uncontested (at least amongst the types of people who read hn)

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#126

Post by nicoco »

sidkshatriya wrote: post #102
phartenfeller wrote: post #32

Here in Germany, there was recently a leak in the news. It said that a single LED sign consumes as much energy as 10 single households[0]. Of course, the companies don't want to give any official information. That is pretty high for no real value for society in my opinion... [0] https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/technologie/led-reklame...

> That is pretty high for no real value for society in my opinion... There is a widespread belief that Advertising serves no purpose to humanity. Advertising is like anything in life: In high doses it is harmful. In lower doses it is useful. If there are regulators in your country that prevent advertisers from making false claims, even better. Advertising has helped me hone onto products and services in my whole life…

But lying, manipulating your emotions, etc. are efficient ways of doing ads. If something is OK when done poorly and harmful when optimised, maybe it was a bad thing in the first place?

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#127

Post by mschuster91 »

YawningAngel wrote: post #107
mschuster91 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sorry, but this is hearfelt: the German greens are climate criminals. And they were fully warned of exactly this situation decades ago, so no, they have zero "circumstances forced our hand" defence. The Greens have not been in government for the last sixteen years . It was the conservative governments under Merkel and particularly the environment and later economy minister Altmaier who openly celebrated reducin…

Can you elaborate on the problems with France? If I were in government in France I'd be thrilled with nuclear power as an investment right about now

> Can you elaborate on the problems with France?

80% of their power is generated by nuclear. Of their nuclear plants, way over half the fleet has been offline for months because of inspections and sometimes substantial damages from age-related corrosion issues [1], and the other half is severely limited or cut off as well because the rivers that they depend on for cooling can't keep up [2]. And since the entire continent is a single synced grid, someone has to cover the gap, and that's German gas peakers [3].

Unfortunately, European energy markets operate at the "merit order" principle [4] which means that the highest bidder on the spot market sets the price for everyone else - which means while gas peaker plants generate extremely expensive energy for France, the operators of any other type of plant get the exact same high price leading to billions of euros in excess profit for them [5].

France also has another problem, and that's the EPR design that has led to severe budget and time overruns. Not just generic issues, but massive design defects [6]. They bet on Flamanville replacing a bunch of the aged plants, the bet failed, and no one knows when that reactor will finally come online. Flamanville was projected to cost 3.3 billion euros and be ready in 2012 - current estimates are at 12.7 billion euros at the least and a start in Q2/23 [7], and other EPR projects are just as bad.

[1] https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220825-france-prolongs-...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/03/edf-to-redu...

[3] https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/suedbaden/w...

[4] https://www.focus.de/finanzen/boerse/merit-order-wie-ein-gut...

[5] https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000137852348/gas-und-oelpr...

[6] https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1645421/energy-crisis...

[7] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-hopeful-end-sigh...

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#128

Post by 7steps2much »

yrro wrote: post #14
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #3

I wish the whole world would do this stuff. Light pollution sucks. It's understandable from street lights but other sources aren't as excusable.

At first I loved LED street lights because I could see so much better by them (and I presume that they have an increased deterrent effect on crime though I have not checked this). These days I think disrupting wildlife is more important than human safety and I wish we could get rid of nearly all street lighting.

But wouldn't animals be able to adapt to a single, predictable light source that illuminates a certain area more easily than to an arbitrary number of individual light sources in an arbitrary number of configurations/angles moving around?

That said, maybe one could equip street lights with a sensor so they don't need to run at all times?

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#129

Post by xxs »

morsch wrote: post #69
phartenfeller wrote: post #32

Here in Germany, there was recently a leak in the news. It said that a single LED sign consumes as much energy as 10 single households[0]. Of course, the companies don't want to give any official information. That is pretty high for no real value for society in my opinion... [0] https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/technologie/led-reklame...

Average power usage for a 1 person household in Germany is 1300 kwh/year (roughly, numbers vary, but not to a degree that it matters). That's about 150W sustained. So 1500W for a large sign, that's like 150 high power LED light bulbs, I guess that checks out. Anything that reduces ads in the public sphere is fine by me.

>1300 kwh/year

this is extremely, extremely low. No heating, no cooling, no hot water, no car charging. A fridge alone tends to be over 400KW/h.

Edit: polycaster listed close to 5kWh/year for 3+ household. 1person being 2k. So, extremely low estimate.

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#130

Post by phtrivier »

lispm wrote: post #74
hnbad wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the problem with nuclear power in Germany is bigger than that the existing nuclear plants are being shut down. It's actually a good idea to shut them down eventually as they're old and inefficient. Calling them "fully functioning" is a bit of a rose tinted glasses type of situation. The bigger problem is that Germany doesn't have any more recent nuclear power plants due to public pressure and instead just…

> The bigger problem is that Germany doesn't have any more recent nuclear power plants due to public pressure France hasn't either and they don't have public pressure against it. The are still trying to build a single one, being a decade late and billions more expensive. > or more recently Fukushima, which really just culturally echoed the existing memories of Chernobyl Currently we think about the nuclear fleet in t…

> they don't have public pressure against it

There _is_ public pressure against nuclear, but it's at 50/50 vs support for nuclear. It has become a mostly partisan topic.

> We are not far away from a new Fukushima, but this time in Europe.

Except we technically _already_ had "Fukushima in Europe" 40 years ago, and for most people, life just went on.

I agree that if anything goes bad a the Ukrainian plant (FSM forbids), the politicians who have been pro-nuclear in the past few years will have a hard time keeping face, and the sentiments would change, and the experts would spent some unconfortable interviews.

However, I can not blame government for being even more scared at Union-wide blackouts than at a local incident at a plant.

The latter is horrible, and puts you at the mercy of winds, but _has been managed in the past_.

The former gives me worst nightmares (than the other scenario that also gives me nightmares.)

Let's all remember it made _sense_ to live in Pompei in 79.

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