Personally, I don't like to work with black boxes - I feel more comfortable when I know at least something about layers below the layer of abstraction I'm working on even if I don't need this knowledge directly. Articles like this can make Go runtime less of a black box even if they lack rigor.
> Rail is superb for what it does: moving bulk commodities... The problem is last-mile.
Before around 1950x-1970x rail networks were more dense (at least in Europe) - any significant goods source/destination (like a warehouse, a factory e. t. c.) had a railway spur. Lots of rail tracks / spurs were abandoned /removed when it was widely believed that trucks are the future and railways are outdated.
If all these spurs were kept last mile problem would not be as bad for railways. Also electric trucks are well suited to solve this last mile problem.
I think they gloss over a major factor also. They mention:
> Distribution centres are built around motorway junctions (J24 of the M1, the Golden Triangle in the East Midlands) because that’s where road access is.
But they skip _why_ is that road access and motor junction there. It's there because the government decided building roads was something that was it's responsibility. I know this article is UK focused, but for the US if the government decided to build rails also, then they could put them in more convenient places. Instead they allow rail companies to decide which monopoly corridors the companies get to control.
> Even the solar panel market is self defeating. Once there is enough installed power the demand will drop off sharply as the refresh cycle is too long.
It's not going to happen soon - solar is still just 8% of world energy production. Even if solar will cover 100% of consumption on a sunny day it still would make sense to buy more panels to have enough output on a cloudy day or in the morning/evening. It's likely production of solar panels will be a good business till at least 2050 and oil business will start to decline before that unless will be propped by corrupt politicians.
But the growth rate has been huge for as long as records have been kept, and was a factor of just over 10x between 2014 and 2024, speeding up more recently.
PV and wind together are likely to start breaking the electricity market severely in the first half of the 2030s; I hope, but it's not certain yet, that ongoing battery expansion will allow the demand for electricity to increase and this can continue to the end of the 2030s, because at the current pace of development those scale up to all our energy needs, not merely our present electrical needs, in a bit less than 20 years from now. (PV alone would do all of it in 20 years at present rate of change).
Energy use goes up as civilization advances, and Jevon’s paradox suggests that we’ll use more energy as its cost goes down. Couple that with the need to replace some portion of the installed base of solar capacity over time and I think solar will be a growth industry for the foreseeable future.
I can't believe it's taken this long for someone to mention this. Even just phasing out fossil fuels (if we're still serious about that) plus ordinary growth means today's demand is a fraction of what could potentially be fulfilled by additional solar buildout.
It also assumes that there will never be demand for improved solar generation orthogonal to currently-prioritized metrics. As an example, a nice park near my house was clear-cut to install a solar farm a few years ago. I used to enjoy walks under the trees in that park, and seeing the animals that lived there. Perhaps as solar infrastructure becomes more stable and secure, concerns will turn towards the ecological ramifications of covering so much of the Earth's surface with ecological deserts, and there will be a desire to replace older generations of solar panels with ones that somehow can support or integrate more elegantly with nature. And then the next thing. And then the next thing.
Assuming we consume ~20 TW on average, a metre-squared panel kicks out ~40 W on average, and we halve that to account for batteries and other infra... I reckon we're talking about 1 million square kilometres (people will be along in a sec to check my working, but it's just a Fermi estimate).
Call it 10% of the Sahara.
Bear in mind that if we go all-electric, raw energy consumption falls significantly, many panels will be sited on buildings, solar isn't the only renewable, and solar farms aren't ecological deserts - you can graze animals below them.
I'm not saying that that magnitude of solar generation isn't a good thing. I'm saying that the solar farms of 2050 don't necessarily need to be arrays of panels on top of clear-cut land.
Grazing land is often essentially an ecological desert when compared to previous uses. Farms in general, honestly. Actually, this is a good forward example as agricultural expansion goes hand-in-hand with the Anthropocene die-off, but late advances in land use efficiency via fertilizer and other technologies means that even though these lands are super dead we also require less of them per person. What I'm proposing is analogous to even further development, where you're still somehow able to produce the same volume of food while reintroducing ecological diversity to the same land; moving away from traditional monoculture farms to ultra-efficient food forests. I don't know how you'd do it in farming, but it energy generation, it would probably involve engineering equipment to some level of symbiosis with the preexisting environment. Could we someday build literal forests of photovoltaics that support energy generation as well as a diverse natural ecosystem? Maybe. I'm sure we'll try. And that's why, ultimately, my point is that the idea that solar is an economic dead end is incorrect. This is just one potential branch on a tech tree (heh) that isn't anywhere near done growing.
>Traditionally, deserts have been seen as harsh, lifeless landscapes
This is incorrect, depending on the geographic location. Many "deserts" are actually ecologically vibrant, and "greening" them (especially for farming) threatens to destroy a measure of natural diversity.
That said, I think you and the other poster placed emphasis on the wrong part of my post, as my point was less about solar land area coverage as some sort of singular evil, and more about the *opportunity* present in continuing to develop solar technologies so that they impact the environments they're placed in less and less over time. This would mean that efficiency is not the be-all-end-all of development, and that further improvements are possible even after reaching a satisfactory level of efficient generation. The energy economy would not fall off a cliff, as some predict. It would simply shift to solving other problems.
You can see an example of this in computer engineering, with Moore's Law's fall-off and the rise of GPU-based innovation.
I trillion is going to dispersal in the AI black hole in the next couple years (in the US), I wish the same money were invested in the clean energy instead.
I would expect a large provider like Hetzner to refresh hardware continuously - every year a fraction of old hardware is retired and replaced by new. Given price shock they could stop doing this but older hardware is less energy efficient and has limited life anyway.
Generation of boomers accumulated lots of wealth, mostly thanks to house prices skyrocketing during their lifetime. Not all but many old people can afford private healthcare. Younger people need NHS more.
The irony is that in our experience, if you're old or a child, you're far more likely to be treated quickly on the NHS.
Perhaps that isn't the whole story, maybe old people tend to have more life threatening conditions, so triage puts them first. But from my perspective, private health insurance is now mandatory in the UK if you're not old or a child, and I am even going to put my children on private health insurance. So now I'm paying a fortune in taxes for a health system I can no rely on, so must pay for private too.
The problem with this is that private health insurance is very cheap because there is an NHS that takes care of emergencies and does more than 50% of the rest. So your taxes keep your health insurance premia low.
Otherwise a comprehensive health insurance wouldn’t cost 200£ a month per person (I just requested a quote from AXA, as a 45 year old with no health problems, adding all packages, unlimited specialist visits and no excess)
Yeah, there's a reason why it's a standard perk for tech employees - they're dirt cheap to insure.
I'm a bit older than you, and the taxable value of my PHI is £140/month. I've not looked into what that covers, or what the excess etc is, and have never even considered making use of it.
And why would I? When I needed treatment in a hurry, I was blue lighted to Barts and spent two weeks in their ITU getting world-class care free of charge, with not a single thought given to cost or having to call my insurer to ask permission for particular treatments or whatever. Thank fuck for the NHS!
I'm Portuguese, so read this as a view from outside. Brexit traded rigid limits on national action for soft limits. It is bonkers, because the soft limits are much harsher!
Take, for example, trade policy. Facing trade tariffs from the US, Europe can call the bluff, the UK is way too small to have any cards on the negotiating table. It is much better to be in a huge economic block than to face the bully alone. On paper you have more formal power alone, in practice you have no power whatsoever on your own.
The absence of formal action limits can be deceitful. Limits are not only there anyhow, they are worse for you outside the economic block.
So, no, you won't be better in 20 years. In fact, given the direction the world is going, you'll be worse than even today.
That's great, only like a generation of people having to suffer and struggle from say age 20 to 40 so that their masters can attempt to be a superpower.
Help me understand your thinking. I was very against Brexit (and still am). What is there to be gained, in your opinion?
In my view, you traded being one of the leading voices in what is increasingly shaping up to be one of the world's superpowers for being a somewhat isolated middle power, nostalgic for its former glory.
UK did not need the EU for trade agreements. Those can be set up separately. There were a number of examples where the UK kept losing control, and instead having the EU try to determine the direction.
This led to loss in sovereignty and freedom. Sadly though it doesn't seem like the UK politicians are taking advantage of this (regulatory, laws, borders, immigrations etc) just yet, but at least now it's possible.
My point is: How can you become a superpower again if your foot is chained to a sluggish red tape monster like the EU? Even Norway recently learned that the EEA is not fully respected by the EU (ferroalloy imports).
I think you - and seemingly most others, are focusing on the short term downsides and negative economic impact.
But that would have happened regardless. Now it's up to the UK to try to increase productivity again, and only then Brexit will make sense. As mentioned, this will take 15 years at minimum.
I dont disagree with you on the chain of thoughts, the only problem is your thesis assumes UK could go back to its glory and superpower. Remembered by many during and after the World War II. And innovate to stand on its own, without the support of EU.
All of that is theoretically possible. And a very admirable goal to have. The problem is modern Britain is no longer what it once was. From Strategy to execution it is increasingly rare to find a field where they lead, and more often then not talents that produces value are captured by the US.
The current climate, culture and geopolitical issues suggest it will take much longer than 15 years, likely a whole generation cycle roughly 30 years. And depending on how you count it we are at 6 - 10 years already.
> From Strategy to execution it is increasingly rare to find a field where they lead, and more often then not talents that produces value are captured by the US.
Of course you can now set up your own trade agreements, but so can Fiji, I suppose. The point is that you have a lot less negotiating power going it alone, instead of as part of an economic superbloc that you can influence as one of its biggest members.
The time of individual European "great powers" has long gone, but somehow, large fractions of the respective populations do not realize it. Band together, or be swept aside. That nationalistic reflex is not helping.
Never is a long time but doesn't look like it's happening in a hurry at any rate. The UKs rise was based on leading the industrial revolution but it's a bit lagging in the AI one. The few leading companies we produce like Deepmind and ARM get bought by the Americans.
The UK has less chance at becoming a superpower than Canada or Australia, neither of which are in the race. If the EU becomes more cohesive, it might, and then the UK will be the smaller country allying itself with a superpower for protection.
Institutions like the EU are hard to build. It's easy to leave or destroy an institution. Much harder to reform or improve it.
The idea that we should have free trade and movement within Europe is not bad. Even unified regulation, etc.
Otherwise, we'll never have to scale to be competitive in the world.
The regulation could be better, less red tape. But that's always the case, everywhere.
But at the end of the day there isn't going to be an alternative to the EU in Europe. So it's better to remain in, and try to improve (yes, this is hard and slow).
The alternative is nothing, maybe a few remote trading partners, but physical proximity matters if you want industrial integration/growth.
I think you need to expand on this into some kind of actual, tangible result, this is just feelings. And even for feelings, it's nonsense - before Brexit my kids could legally move and work anywhere in the EU, how are they more free now?
It's literally all downsides, which you (not you personally) agreed to because of ego, thinking you can go back to a time when 'the sun never sets', when in actuality you've hastened much longer nights.
Sgt did personally agree to it because of ego. They cite wanting the UK to be a superpower again as one of the benefits of Brexit. He doesn't seem to understand the position Britain is in now.
A large multinational corporation can go a long way by splitting they IT infra into multiple regions and doing maintenance in different regions at different time.
This idea sounds nice, but there's a high maintenance cost to this.
- How will you maintain multiple deployments across multiple regions in the world? Backups, security patches will start to take a toll.
- How granular is the right split? Not every country has a cloud provider. Then you need to start thinking about regions and office timings and then it starts to get all blurry.
> How will you maintain multiple deployments across multiple regions in the world? Backups, security patches will start to take a toll
The same way as always - by automating the crap out of it.
> How granular is the right split? Not every country has a cloud provider.
Doesn't have to be one deployment for one country, does it? Having like 3 or 4 deployments across the globe already gives you (at least) 3-4 hours of inactivity window, let's say 1 am - 4 am or something.
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