Skysails tried, now they appear to have fully pivoted to land based power generation.
My dream future would see the oceans swarming with kite driven robotic boats that just cruise around under kite power, harvesting electricity with hydrogenerators as they go, feeding that power into a hydrolyser slowly filling some hydrogen storage unit that they drop off for sale at a port when full.
But yeah, that entire IG Farben episode might have toned down their enthusiasm for identifying with dyes a little. Same for their peers up and down the Rhine.
That view has been accompanying me for a while as well. Difficult to really put a finger on it, because what I'm thinking of are fields where "enthusiast dilettantes" did not have their joy in honing their skills in the slightest way affected by the existence of trained professionals so much better than them. But when anyone can just throw a few ktoken at it, that joy has to be, uhm, "renegotiated".
I guess sub-fields with little tool use won't be affected a lot, tool-heavy sub-fields.. might pretty much be over. (think playing the guitar at a campfire vs going wild on a set of TB-303 + TR-909 vs going wild on emulations thereof)
The other "ai took our..."
I like that term, I have been looking for a while now and haven't yet been been able to come up with a better one.
> there hasn’t been any significant investment in Eastern part to build an industrial base (except for in Berlin and its suburbs)
Dresden is not a Berlin suburb. When it comes to investment in semiconductor industry, Dresden has likely seen more than the entire rest of Germany together.
I tend to share that position, but there's one counter argument that's not without merit at all: too much to lose. Even the worst climate change outcome would be less bad than the outcome of climate change plus some botched radical fix attempt could be.
Mars on the other hand, what's the worst that could happen? Someone writing the Coca Cola logotype across the red?
Yeah, "when have national-socialists ever been fascist!" is all I read in GP's post after I got to that part. It's just a brain crash for me (I'm German)
Not to mention they’re talking about lead-acid batteries, which have been replaced for pretty much every application, except (for now) starter motor batteries for combustion vehicles, by the various lithium batteries.
To be fair (as a joke), it's from Low Tech Magazine. Lithium batteries are too high-tech for them. They want you to power your mechanical blender, mixer, and other machines with a drive belt. Turn the drum of your washing machine with a wood fire heating the water.
I remember reading about low tech efficient cook stoves for poor countries and thinking the misses would rather have an induction burner, microwave, and an ice chest running off a solar panel.
> the misses would rather have an induction burner, microwave, and an ice chest running off a solar panel.
Those would definitely be hits.
Also, solar panels are old. Bell Labs demonstrated the first practical silicon solar cell in 1954. At some point, you're just trying to split (possibly nonexistent) hairs for an aesthetic, as opposed to making a principled stand against technology.
I would too...but an off-grid solar and battery setup sufficient to run the induction stove and microwave is still well into four figures - cheap for a developed country resident who wants some basic comforts in their wilderness lodge, but still well out of reach for a subsistence farmer in the poorest parts of the world.
That's the thing, like the used to be very expensive swing compressor ice chests that you can buy in the US for $150. You'd only need a 100 amp hour battery and a 100W solar panel to power it.
"have" is doing most of the work here. Most EVs have a small 12v battery to power 12v components. But the driving the car to the store part is done with lithium.
Perhaps if OpenAI promises to never ever get involved with the music economy?
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