Interesting Links for 23-08-2022

[andrewducker]

1. What's going on in Ukraine

(tags:Ukraine Russia war )

2. A Dad Took Photos of His Naked Toddler for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal. (And deleted his account permanently)

(tags:children nudity google censorship OhForFucksSake )

3. What teens need to survive their digital life is agency

(tags:teenagers internet nudity society agency )

4. Recreating famous album covers with DALL-E

(tags:ai music art )

5. Wind farm deals secured for three sites off Shetland

(tags:windpower scotland )

6. The gathering UK crisis

(tags:uk doom )

7. Bicycles: Threat or Menace?

(tags:bicycles history journalism viaDanielDWilliam )

8. Europe is seriously considering a major investment in space-based solar power - even though it's a really stupid idea

(tags:solarpower space OhForFucksSake europe )

Comments

[autopope]

The space-based solar thing: Starship has a touted design target of $1-2M per hundred tons to orbit. So a 5000 ton solar power station would take 50 launches costing on the order of $50-100M. Economies of scale obviously apply, so launch costs are actually a minor constraint.

Modern space-based PV cells are insanely thin and light -- we're talking thin film polymer sheets that can be rolled up, comparable to newsprint in terms of weight per square metre -- and production prices are still dropping exponentially.

Putting them in GEO would cost more (about 2x to 3x the launch price), but is still not that bad compared to the cost of building ground-based power stations. And in GEO, they're in direct sunlight almost all the time, no occulted by the Earth for 12 out of every 24 hours.

The real imponderable is how to beam stable base load power back to Earth, 24x365, without huge transmission losses. There are proposals, but so far the sums don't look competitive with anything existing -- except maybe fusion reactors (or new-build fission plants).

[calimac]

"so far the sums don't look competitive with anything existing -- except maybe fusion reactors"

That's appropriate, since solar is also getting its power from a fusion reactor.

[andrewducker]

The constancy is useful. But the big question is the cheapness compared to solar+storage or solar+HVDC.

This, for instance puts the losses on a transatlantic HVDC cable at around 9%. That gives us an energy market off by 5 hours from us, which should be enough to be put our peaks in very different places. Do the same thing the other way and Kazakhstan can send us power.

Or we can just tunnel into a few more mountains for a lot of hydro storage.

(I am interested to know what the proposals for getting it back without huge losses are - if you can point me in the right direction.)

[ninetydegrees]

2. That's... to be expected? I mean this is how American giant corporations operate. Have been for years. (Now I'm in fandom and was on DW before they got in trouble w/ Paypal so I may be better informed about these issues.) There are several sites dedicated to using alternatives to Google et al services if anyone's interested. Also what he says about putting all your eggs in the same basket.

I wonder if the doctor was also investigated for receiving pics of naked children or if law enforcement services automatically assume he doesn't mean no harm, or if they only investigate the person they got a red flag for? I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.

[andrewducker]

Clearly wasn't expected, as multiple newspapers have now picked it up.

[ninetydegrees]

I don't know why this particular story made it to the news but that doesn't mean this is new or unexpected. Google has hardly ever cared about false positive reports in any area ever and often rejects appeals. Some services also don't even bother reviewing them unless you know someone who knows someone, etc. Many services also consider any material involving naked children, real or not, as problematic and prefer banning them than trying to see if they meet the criteria of child pornography laws or not (seeing as this involves using human resources most of the time and legal experts).

[andrewducker]

I know that. You know that. The vast majority of people have no idea about that, and when they hear that sending a photo of their child to their doctor might lose them their account they get very upset.

[ninetydegrees]

Oh I see what you mean now. *thumbs up*

[bens_dad]

8. How many times the Sun's power/area are we talking at the receiving station ?
Even in the UK the sun can be strong enough to burn your skin or give you cancer - a couple of orders of magnitude increase in density is probably enough to produce something worrying similar to a death-ray.

If we go for a focussed beam, do we need photo-voltaics or can we just use mirrors ?

[andrewducker]

I'd try to answer that question but nobody has ever managed to successfully answer the question in any way that made economic sense.

(But the equivalent of the sun at the equator on an area the size of a few football fields 24/7 would be both manageable and pretty safe in the grand scheme of things)

[channelpenguin]

I love how we're mostly discussing the solar power and not the doom :-).

[andrewducker]

Not sure I can add much to the Doom!