perestroika

Good move, but 2030 looks so far in today's world. As for wind generator blades - decomposable composites are here already, but not yet widespread, and probably still far from optimal.

Wow, that was interesting... and it really hit the nerve in terms of pointing out the final destination, if people proceed forever to give up autonomy for comfort.

I wonder if the makers of The Matrix had read this story? :D

P.S. Unrelated

Reading this, I could not help remember a piece of science fiction of the same era named The Night Land (1912), which I struggled to read recently. :) It's also an end-of-the-world story, but a very different one, where the Sun has died and humans have gradually retreated forever, finally coming under siege in a single remaining habitat powered by Earth Current (geothermal? geoelectric?) and protected by an Air Clog, on an Earth that is inhabited by more than slightly Lovecraftian kinds of life - a very depressing world, and an unrealistic world, but good quality horror... written deliberately in an approximation of 18th century English across 500 pages, so a pestilence to read. :) It's ironic that the author of the Night Land, leaning a bit conservative socially, managed to imagine telepathy and force fields, but failed to imagine gender equality. :D (also failed to imagine tanks or protected fighting vehicles - his hero journeys through the land on foot) The author died as an artillerist shortly after, in WW I, in the same kind of trenches where Tolkien made his first drafts about Gondolin...

The article was interesting, but remarkably low on numbers - no distribution in percentages, no estimate in mass, no graphs. I'll try to fill the gaps then.

• drivers of climate chance, side by side
• methane concentrations
• methane budget, illustrated
• satellite map of methane concentration
• satellite map of methane flux

The article assiciated with the last map is here.

Basically, there are various sources of methane on Earth:

• agriculture (~217 Tg / year)
• natural wetlands (~181 Tg / year)
• industry (~111 Tg / year)
• other natural sources (~37 Tg / year)
• biomass and biofuel (~30 Tg / year)
• Arctic permafrost and oceanic hydrates (varies, estimated contribution 0.5 C warming during this century)

My overall conclusion: agriculture is the lowest-hanging fruit, its emissions are the biggest. However, industrial emissions may be easier to regulate since it's more centralized.

P.S.

After a long wait, it is now sure that LK-99 is not a superconductor. The process of finding that out was fun to watch, though. :)

The first sample’s resistivity increased relatively smoothly as it cooled, and appeared similar to samples from other replication attempts. But the second sample’s resistivity plunged near 112 ºC (385K) — closely matching the Korean team’s observations.

“That was the moment where I said, ‘Well, obviously, that’s what made them think this was a superconductor,’” says Fuhrer. “The nail in the coffin was this copper sulfide thing.”

If Chat gave me a broken answer, I would appreciate if someone said "hey, look - it's broken here".

The solution is obvious: wind energy can be collected outside a building, on an empty field, or at sea for maximum emptiness. Which is what people already do.

instead of having me listen to your gripes

Not my preferred way of dealing with criticism. You wrote a proposal (well, you let Chat write a proposal and presented it). I read it through, and considered if it was OK. I found parts that weren't and said so. If you don't want to listen to that, why did you post?

I am splitting a hair, but the goal is pointing out - Chat is nice at producing text and searching for information, but unreliable at actually evaluating if something would work. Unless you're extremely good at asking, it will spew proposals that won't work.

P.S.

As for non-rotating wind generators, yep, I've read about them. They aren't efficient. In the equations determining performance, there is a term named "swept area". For a non-rotating generator, swept area is the surface of its profile viewed from upwind/downwind. For a rotor, swept area is the surface of the circle reached by blades. The difference is huge.

...and that is why Chat cannot be trusted to build houses. It hallucinates:

Exhibit A:

At its core, this building incorporates an innovative vertical farming system. Towering gardens thrive within its walls,

Exhibit B:

The building’s walls are constructed using rammed earth or compressed earth blocks, utilizing the surrounding soil and natural resources abundantly available in the area.

One can go vertical, or one can go rammed earth. One does not go vertical with rammed earth. :) And wind turbines attached to building structure are a nuisance. An efficient turbine needs to be clear of obstacles.

Beyond that, it has done a good job. The write-up was streamlined with my cultural sensibilities, before it collided head on with my sense of engineering. :)

I tried, and that GitLab page requires logging in. I don't have an account, so I can't comment more.

To address both of your points.

To my understanding, Veilid is a piece of network infrastructure. It is not a singular end-user app, but an app for other apps to communicate over. Just like TOR, just like I2P, just like (RIP) Entropy and (maybe it still has a pulse) Freenet.

How to make a convenient environment for users, is not within the task scope of network infrastructure.

However, I can tell about a decentralized messaging app (probably RIP) that exists / existed on I2P. It was named Syndie, and it was a very ambitious goal (which failed). It had 3 levels of access controls: a node operator could refuse to serve certain (cryptographically identified) channels from their node. A channel creator could protect their channels from reading and posting in various ways (pre-shared key, passphrase-derived key, a key encrypted to a user identity, maybe more). Finally, a user could block any other (cryptographically identified) user from interacting with them. Identity was cheap, but since there were many countermeasures, environment was manageable.

Example actions might be:

• being the node operator, I designate that channel AAA won't be served from here
• being the channel operator of channel AAA, I designate that users A, B, C and D get keys to read and post
• being the user A, I block user D from my view

More information can be found here: https://veilid.com/framework

I read it, haven't tested it - commentary below.

Before I go into commentary, I will summarize: my background is from I2P - I helped build bits and pieces of that network a decade ago. As far as I can tell, Veilid deals in concepts that are considerably similar to I2P. If the makers have implemented things well, it could be a capable tool for many occasions. :) My own interest in recent years has shifted towards things like Briar. With that project, there is less common ground. Veilid is when you use public infrastructure to communicate securely, with anonymity. Briar is when you bring your own infrastructure.

• Networking

Looks like I2P, but I2P is coded in Java only. Veilid seems to have newer and more diverse languages (more capability, but likely more maintenance needs in future). I2P has a lot of legacy attached by now, and is not known for achieving great performance. A superficial reading of the network protocol doesn't enable me to tell if Veilid will do better - I can only tell that they have thought of the same problems and found their own solutions. I would hope that when measured in a realistic situation, Veilid would exceed the performance of I2P. How to find out? By trying, in masses and droves...

• Cryptography

Impressive list of ciphers. Times have changed, I'm not qualified to say anything about any of them. It leaves the appearance that these people know what they are doing, and are familiar with recent developments in cryptography. They also seem to know that times will change ("Veilid has ensured that upgrading to newer cryptosystems is streamlined and minimally invasive to app developers, and handled transparently at the node level."), which is good. Keeping local storage encrypted is an improvement over I2P - last time I worked with I2P, an I2P router required external protection (e.g. Linux disk encryption) against seizing the hardware. With mobile devices ever-present everywhere, storage encryption is a reasonable addition. I notice that the BlockStore functionality is not implemented yet. If they intend to get it working, storage encryption is a must, of course.

• RPC (remote procedure calls)

Their choice of a procedure call system is unfamiliar to me, but I read about it. I didn't find anything to complain about.

• DHT (distributed hash table)

Looks somewhat like I2P.

• Private routing

Looks very much like I2P.

It really should have six, since the local parish often fails to plow snow in winter, but I'm trying to stay civil and will limit things to four. :)

I also have an e-bike, but biking season ends with endless autumn rains - typically in September. Arriving at a customer's place whilst muddy and wet is problematic.