Avatar

Hypx

Hypx@fedia.io
Joined
2 posts • 18 comments
Direct message

SpaceX, from a financial standpoint, is just an elaborate Ponzi scheme for Musk, who treats all of his companies as his private fiefdom and personal piggy bank. In reality, none of them are genuinely profitable, and depend on government subsidies and capital investments to survive. The goal is to just build a barely viable business and then scam people with bullshit promises. Any real cash flow is immediately converted into cash for his personal use. Though from time to time, he uses that cash prop up another of his ventures. Very likely, all of this will come crashing down at some point, and it will be revealed that his companies are nothing like what they seem.

permalink
report
reply

Reddit has never been a business capable of generating significant profit. It only exists because it was less monetized than the alternatives. By abandoning this philosophy, Reddit is guaranteed to be the next Digg.

permalink
report
reply

This is the same conversation we had throughout the entire rumorwave about this project: Who is going to buy this and which developers will actually anything worthwhile with the new hardware? Because all signs points to an expensive console (at least $600) with the only upgrades being a slight graphical bump and higher resolution. There are no new gameplay features.

I think people would be much more happy with a smaller, more power efficient version of the PS5 instead.

permalink
report
reply

The author is wrong. It is only a matter of time before Germany goes back to nuclear. Physics won’t change regardless of short-term opinion.

permalink
report
reply

Nearly all cars will switch to hydrogen (or e-fuels). Using giant batteries to power cars is insanity. If you want to power cars directly with electricity, use mass transit systems with overhead powerlines.

permalink
report
parent
reply

You have inverted reality here. It is much easier to transport hydrogen long distances versus electricity. Pipelines are cheaper than HVDC cables. You can actually ship hydrogen across oceans if necessary. It is electricity that has to be made locally, but hydrogen can made anywhere it is cost effective.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Only for certain types of steel. And there are many materials that are impermeable to hydrogen. This is mostly a marketing argument rather than one based on fact. Pipelines are far cheaper and send far more energy than high voltage wires.

permalink
report
parent
reply

We do not send much electricity over that amount of distance. More than several hundred km, and most conventional wires are cannot send much power through them. For thousands of km, we have to use HVDC, but that is very expensive. In reality, we tend to switch to pipelines instead of wires for long distance energy transfers.

Put it this way, if wires could really send power thousands of km without any hiccups, then why do natural gas pipelines exist in quantity? After all, most of them are just delivering natural gas to a gas turbine to make power. So why not put all the gas turbines in one area, and use wires instead? Because in reality, pipelines are much better at moving energy than wires over long distances.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Which is about the upper limit of a reasonable powerline. I’m pretty sure they had to resort to HVDC to get it that long. Note that I did not say it was impossible, only impractical. You lose a lot of energy when it gets very long.

I also know that Quebec is making hydrogen with their hydropower. Clearly, they know something you don’t.

Pipelines go for thousands of km too, and send far more energy with smaller losses than wires. This is due to physics: A pipe is a hollow tube and scales up better the larger the diameter of the tube. Wires do not scale up as well.

A battery car does not “skip the middle part.” It relies on a huge and resource intensive battery to store energy. This is electrochemical energy storage, and works the same way as how a hydrogen car stores energy. As a result, there is no fundamental advantage to using a battery. As costs comes down and as fuel cell technology advances, it is likely that there will be zero or next to zero efficiency advantage for the battery car.

permalink
report
parent
reply

You are not reading my post. The entire set of steps is exactly the same number of steps as charging a battery. Both are electrochemical processes and have similar losses. In theory, we can make a fuel cell that operates just as efficient as a li-ion battery.

The other point is that the process of moving hydrogen around is cheaper than moving energy via electricity. Losses of distribution are similar too. People are forgetting how big and complex the grid is.

permalink
report
parent
reply