The issue I have with this that basically, now users need to “pay” (with compute time) to speak their mind. This would be similar than if you had to pay to vote in political elections. It favors the rich. A poor user might not be able to afford 20$ additional electricity bill a month, but a large agency (such as state sponsored, corporate agendas) might have a 1000000$.

I don’t think that would work well, because I knew no one when I came here.

Yeah, after all, we post on the internet for it to be visible by everyone, and that includes bots. If we didn’t want bots to find our content, then other humans couldn’t find them either; that’s my stance on this.

just like me!

related: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/16150311

I’ll give you a short introduction to the power grid (btw. it’s called “stromnetz” (electricity network) in german). The power grid has many “levels”, where each level represents a network of cables that transport current at a given, specific voltage. For example, you might have one 220kV level, and then a 5kV level, and a 230V end-consumer level.

Between these levels, there have to be translations. These are “transformers” today, transforming high-level AC into lower-level AC or the other way around. For AC networks, they are basically a ring of iron and a few coils. However, for DC networks, other transformers exists, such as Buck/Boost converter.

My question basically is: is there anyone who can give me experimental data on how well DC networks would work in practice? Personal experience is enough, it doesn’t have to be super-detailed reports.

All that aside yes in the future there’s probably going to be a high voltage DC network in Europe. Less so for private consumers, at least not in the foreseeable future, but to connect up large DC consumers, that is, industry, with DC power sources. If you’re smelting aluminium with solar power going via AC is just pure conversion loss.

Thank you, that was exactly what I was looking for. I know about aluminum production processes, and that it requires large amounts of DC power.

do you have a source for that?

I know about the buck/boost DC-to-DC converters, but they don’t really use AC internally.

agree

Okay, these are short term problems. “power lines as thick as your wrist” depend on the voltage. If voltage conversion works well enough, that issue disappears.

But, take note of how many DC voltages you use in your house. Devices in mine range from 3v to 25v and some weird one like 19v for a laptop.

Yeah, that’s why we need some kind of standard for these things.

well, a large part why I asked the question is because I hope that somebody knows more about what buck/boost-converters can do today. I know they work well enough on small scales, but I have no experimental data for them on larger scales.

I assume they would work well, but I’d like that somebody links me to the right datasheet or something.

Edit: you have a very important point there. " Seems like the […] voltage converter should be the prime determinant, rather than specific applications of generation/consumption." YES. So, let me rephrase my question: does anybody have experience with high-power DC voltage converters?

I’m thinking there would be a transition period, where some devices would accept AC, and the others DC.

There will be two different types of power socket outlets, and two converters to convert between AC/DC or DC/AC. (Rectifier and Inverter)

I don’t believe there’s misinformation because we fail to discern the truth though. Misinformation exists because people believe what they want to believe.

almost how a printing press made the production of books so much faster

… and we all know that lead to 30 years of bloody war, btw

Your comment somehow just made me realize something: When we see/read news, we have to trust the one who’s telling them to us. Since we weren’t there in person to see it with our own eyes. Therefore, it’s always about a “chain of trust”.

This is true no matter whether photos can be manipulated or not. People have been able to lie since humanity exists. Nothing has really changed. Photography, just like globalization, has only brought everything closer together, making it easier to have a more direct, straightforward relationship to other people and events. With the beginning of AI, this distance between you and an event is going to increase a bit, but the core mechanics are still similar.

I kind of wonder, how do we really know that something is true? Do atoms actually exist? What if we’re being lied to by our authorities. You say “of course not”. But what if? I mean, if we blindly trust authorities, we end up like the republicans, who believe everything that fox news tells them. How, then, do we discern truth?

How, then, do we discern truth? I guess we have to give “proof” for everything, in the sense of mathematical proof. Something that everybody can follow, using only their fundamental assumptions and deduction. I guess that is what science is all about.

yeah, every time you go to a party, and fun happens, somebody pulls out their smartphone and starts filming. it’s really bad. people can only relax when there’s privacy, and smartphones have stolen privacy from society for over 10 years now. we need to either ban filming in general (which is not doable) or discredit photographs - which we’re doing right now.

interesting thought. we haven’t had photos in history, and people didn’t need them. also, we’ve been able to produce text deepfakes all throughout history (and people actually did that - a lot) and somehow, humanity still survived and made progress. maybe we should question our assumptions whether we really need a medium to communicate absolute truth.

That’s a fair question.

I think there’s many different - and valid - answers to this, depending on how you look at the question.

I guess you could say that society had a stronger immune system back then to eliminate these bad cells. These days, they run way too freely. It’s bad, and i’m not sure whether we need a structural reform or whether we can wriggle through this one.

oh yeah, i’ve played this one before :D

pretty great, yeah, but definitely not a dating app