I have tried freecad a number of times to replace solidworks as a critical piece of closed source software in hardware development toolchains. I have always struggled. Yesterday someone spent an hour with me at a makespace saying… “FreeCAD has a different way of doing this/try realthunder branch/use symmetry condition/delete all conditions that coincide” … it has been worth years of trying alone. When I started solidworks the reseller gave me a week of training - this is often why complex FOSS software gets a reputation for being clunky, because alone you will spend ages hunting a GUI button in a complex interface.

TLDR: Go outside, go to makespace or a FREECAD conference - meet other people who use open source software - its much easier to use/learn from others than alone.

I am 99% sure that film was called “Lise Meitner”

Its not the ‘eat the rich’ that I was hoping for… Might be the one we deserve.

Don’t pay this! You just reinforce their predatory practices. How renewals at much higher prices are allowed - no clue!

Something similar happened to a company I know - it expired and was immediately bought by domain squatters, when they found them they were told that it couldn’t be sold back because the squatter had paid $XXXX for and had big plans (I assume it was BS, just a premise to get paid - no site was ever put on the domain)

Solution: they bought the .org version and bought the .com back a year later.

edit:grammar

Sorry this is a late reply. I can see that mentioning molten salt was a bit left-field, However, it is one of the more realistic ways to store the huge amounts of power needed to fuel an economy for a couple of weeks (which you need in northern europe if you want to use solar/wind). Here’s a link about it:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cite.202000137

I am pro nuclear, but if we are going to descend into this renewable hell, then we need to actually think about how you store terawatt-hours of power. I really think that this kind of storage might be the nearest we have to a solution. we’ll only need it once we try to turn off the gas turbines, of course. It is fascinating that so many smart people don’t see that the whole jigsaw is missing vital pieces.

Sorry - What?

You said Denmark had converted to green energy. I pointed out that they haven’t done anything like that. You are now moving the goal posts and saying “where is the comparative essay defending nuclear power”…

If you must, France turned completely green in the 70s. So they’ve provided 50 years of clean energy. Its a classic story and not as simple as I’m going to make out, but still. Look at the map link in the last post - any area that stays green is either using hydro or nuclear. Hydro is great, but you need mountains and water.

That is actually very impressive. Thanks! I remain a bit skeptical as its only 1/5th of what they need and it’s only one region of one (rich) country. Still, 10GW of lithium battery would be one hell of a fire ;-)

The fact that you descend into complete science fiction should give you pause for thought. I doubt it will, but please think about how fantastical your proposed solutions are - “a massive lake of molten salt under every city” (I actually like that one!)…

Negative energy prices are a bad thing! That means that someone is dumping energy into the grid (you should be paying the grid if you have solar panels!!) In the UK all renewable energy had to be called ‘experimental’ so that the pricing was fixed and the government picks up the tab - that’s not good. Check this map - right now the wind isn’t blowing and solar hasn’t got out of bed - so most of the countries using renewables are looking shit - later today solar will kick in, but tonight it will be bad again. That isn’t a solution.

Yeah! Let’s dig a big hole till we hit lava and then throw everything into it. :)

This is wrong. Right now, europe is experiencing high pressure and doesn’t have any wind. Check this out its map that shows you how much wind is being produced right now! Can you provide a source that says " the wind is always blowing somewhere" or is it just a platitude?

No, there is pumped storage. Honestly, despite the plethora of start-ups claiming to have a solution (sodium batteries, molten-salt, etc) The only really proven way to store electricity for later is pumped storage, but that relies on geography (hills) which not everyone has. Batteries are great for phones, and cars but they simply don’t scale to countries.

Denmark looking decidedly not green this morning. It’s sunny, but virtually no wind - might be like this for another week. Check the map regularly to understand why unreliable energy is actually just a way of increasing gas usage.

Please understand that negative prices are the market for electricity breaking down! That is not a good thing. It should mean that if you have solar panels on your roof you have to pay to participate in the national grid because you are dumping energy into the grid when it can’t use it, but special rules have been made for renewable plants. Literally, imagine a contract-to-supply for wind or solar…

Just a thought… Google wrote the ‘we have no moat’ document. Is it possible that they are intentionally trying to turn public opinion against AI? [no moat document] It’s a bit like they are intentionally churning out shit AI (it won’t damage their monopoly) to turn people against using AI (which might topple some serious business interests)… In short you’re right, but I get suspicious when big business seems to be doing the right thing. :D [edit: espirit d’escalier!]

There! In the spine of the dictionary the words are worthless. They are a mere weight pressing against my thoughtlessness.

There is an intrinsic micro-mort rate for working on a roof. If you take this number and work out how many hours are spent working at height fitting solar panels it’s fairly easy to put the annual deaths from fitting solar panels far above that of nuclear.

certain cancers in areas surrounding the plant did rise

just a note to add that if you start checking the population for something routinely like thyroid cancer… the rate that you find it goes up. This is why the detected cancer rate increasing is not considered a cause for alarm.