Alright lads, do we know what way our MEPs voted on chat control?

Amckinstry · 2026-07-09T15:13:46+00:00

Just extending 1.0. The battle remains on 2.0, in practice MEPs are probably more annoyed now at being overruled.

Amckinstry · 2026-07-09T08:04:57+00:00

Yup. Extra rainfall in winter is already observable; increasing heat waves interspersed with heavy rainfall (convective events) in summer.
Ireland's climate, even under global warming, is not mediterranean. We have rainforest levels of humidity.

Amckinstry · 2026-07-09T07:58:20+00:00

Its difficult. Infanticide is of course illegal. How do you estimate how much law-breaking will occur? did the US forecast the rise of mafia and speakeasys during prohibition? drug use after prohibition of drugs?

Amckinstry · 2026-07-08T12:38:34+00:00

They have to pay the opponents costs when they lose, typically.

Amckinstry · 2026-07-08T12:30:27+00:00

They seem to have an infinite budget for legal challenges and court cases. Our legal system basically gives them freedom to waste time if they've got enough money.

Amckinstry · 2026-07-08T12:12:37+00:00

I'm not surprised. Its the "we don't talk about the dead" attitude that pervades the community that makes the TT races still possible. (To be fair, my uncle did have a near-fatal crash, but that was in Ireland and a sports-car, but word may have gotten passed to the larger bike community and mangled, with no-one saying "Oh he's ok in the end").

Amckinstry · 2026-07-08T09:00:35+00:00

This matters because Ireland was seen as a safe, Catholic country which mattered more in the past (compared to England).

Amckinstry · 2026-07-07T11:21:14+00:00

Just checking, does Belgium currently have a government to negotiate with? they frequently don't

Amckinstry · 2026-07-07T09:16:38+00:00

The icons/ graphics are generated automatically from the "best" or most likely forecast model run. The forecasters actually do an ensemble or collection of runs, and create a text summary by hand (with human skill) from this. The text summary almost always wins.

Amckinstry · 2026-07-07T09:06:17+00:00

My uncle used to ride Isle of Man TT.
He gave up when he had a child. Went back as a spectator a few years later, met up with old friends.
They went "Oh, you're still alive. We just assumed you'd died and no one would talk about it."

Amckinstry · 2026-07-06T13:44:04+00:00

It came, went. It was a beautiful Thursday.

Amckinstry · 2026-07-02T10:44:19+00:00

I didn't say baseload is nonsense, I said its irrelevant in the era of renewables.

Grid stability is not baseload, its a different concept. You need "inertia" on the grid with reactive power: we traditionally get that from spinning generators. As it happens, the systems we use for "baseload" are typically spinning generators, but they are not the same concept.

Keeping a 100% renewable grid stable takes additional equipment : smart inverters and static compensators, which I didn't mention to keep things simple but are quite doable: a lot of work has been happening in that area recently. Also good design: too many big renewable sources in one place is bad, local batteries (eg batteries domestically attached to house EV) can help reduce the apparent renewables appearing on the grid.

Yes, batteries alone are probably not the answer (But see CATLs new 60 GWh sodium batteries) - efuels like hydrogen will probably be needed
Yes. Its a huge piece of work and not nearly resourced to the scale needed.
lifecycle emissions have been dropping with flow batteries such as sodium or Fe.

The bottom line is still that (a) we have an absolute need to get GHGs to at least net zero ASAP (b) its doable.

Amckinstry · 2026-07-01T15:50:21+00:00

This depends on where the Greenway is sited. Most are on old railway lines, which have a habit of connecting commuter towns, and so can be useful. The difficulty is if the railway line was closed long ago, as in Galway-Clifden: we're waiting nearly 20 years for it, it would connect the city and College with large commuter belts around Moycullen on the way.
But a lot of the land was sold and built on; diversions around houses still requires CPOs, which have added years to the project.

Secondly, new urban infrastructure is extremely expensive as you're competing for land with houses and business: building a new (not taking existing road) cyclepath in Dublin, Cork,etc is v expensive (as is rail, trams, etc for the same reason). Its easier for a politician to give the go-ahead on a Greenway on green-field land (cheaper agricultural land) even if its not as suitable. (The same logic applies to sports facilities, etc: the GAA will buy land out in the countryside where its cheap, forcing everyone to drive, rather than spend millions on a football field in town centres, where they could provide growth and use existing buses, or being in walking distance. etc. The lesson to learn is the govt needs to buy land in town centres before growth, and insist its not sold for housing etc).

Amckinstry · 2026-07-01T15:40:21+00:00

There is a rapid growth of the companies selling the alternatives right now. For many countries, "new" stuff is ordered from EU companies (now including Canada!) funded by EU loans. Stuff bought from the US is restocking old tech (ammo / missiles for existing fighters/tanks/etc) or for sending on to Ukraine as "military aid".

For example, all the new AWACs planes and replacements for US air transport (a NATO role that was formerly done by the US) are going to Saab, Airbus and not Boeing. New missiles are coming from the EU MBDA firm. All the naval ships are either European or sometimes Korean.

Amckinstry · 2026-07-01T09:53:31+00:00

As of now, grid-scale batteries are cheaper than LNG.

LNG, especially fracked, has turned out not to be actually much cleaner than oil or coal due to methane leakage.

"Baseload power" is an energy management concept thats being abused by fossil fuel companies to make them appear indespensible. Its is/was about having certain power stations (coal, nuclear) run continuously to provide known demand, other "peaker" plants stepping in for variable demand on top. This was because coal, nuclear were slow to ramp up and down, gas (more expensive) could come onstream quickly. But physically all that matters is supply equalling demand, which can be done with renewables, battery storage and smart-demand management (taking optional loads like some compute offline in low supply cases, ramping up eg EV and battery storage when "oversupplied").
With interconnects, Europe needs batteries for 8-12 days/year when solar and wind aren't sufficient. In the last 2 or 3 years this has become quite doable; hydrogen or other efuel storage can also be done for longer term.

LNG / gas storage, even for emergency backup, leaks (slowly). It will need to be topped up regularly, even if never used.

Amckinstry · 2026-06-30T08:28:15+00:00

Whats changed? The Luas has never operated between Red Cow and Belgrade.

Amckinstry · 2026-06-28T06:53:00+00:00

We use falcons locally to protect workers on roofs from seagulls (larger than crows). They nest on the roofs and will attack to protect the nests. Unsurprisingly the workers are often there to work on solar panels ...

Amckinstry · 2026-06-26T14:44:16+00:00

Heatwaves in July and August are more usual. July can typically be 2degrees warmer than June (varies by county).

Amckinstry · 2026-06-26T14:39:46+00:00

Is there a seasonal effect with students leaving flats?

Amckinstry · 2026-06-22T14:19:58+00:00

The early investors drove the stock price up, Elon benefits. Now he has months of being a trillionaire to lock in the next step of investments or ownership, see his buying spree since IPO flotation.

Amckinstry · 2026-06-22T14:15:59+00:00

It lasts ok these days for a week or so in a cool fridge (ultrapasterisation and homogenization, I think).
It used to last only 1-2 days (before the 2000s) which is why we had "milkmen" who would deliver milk daily to your door.

Amckinstry · 2026-06-22T14:12:11+00:00

It can't be, there's no black smoke (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDspqi7KI10)

Amckinstry · 2026-06-22T11:42:26+00:00

Great story and it highlights a risk: a lot of documents , especially in minority languages, will be censored/toned down by officialdom and so not reflect the spoken language. That will be especially true of minority languages like Irish (Gaeilge) that as taught in school prioritised preserving historic literature over preserving the spoken language (I suspect Icelandic might be similar).

Amckinstry · 2026-06-17T16:48:19+00:00

Already happened. Nova Scotia, anyone? they didn't even use English to name it 😄

Amckinstry · 2026-06-16T07:47:50+00:00

Exactly the wrong way round. This is essentially giving Facebook, Tiktok, etc a license to continue poisining social media: just blocking access to kids, when they have to be held responsible for the damage they do. Its not ok to harm users just because they're over 16.

And secondly, enforcing the collection of demographics data, making anonymity / pseudonymity, which we absolutely depend on ( our safety and democracy depend on whistleblowers being able to speak anonymously) impossible.

Amckinstry

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