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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • What many posters in this thread fail to realize is that there is a very good reason why steam hasn’t been hit by the enshittification that otherwise permeates human existence in 2024.

    Of course, Gaben as their CEO has the last say in it. And he’s just a good guy. But wait, aren’t there other companies that have good guys as their CEO and yet the enshittification persists?

    The profound reason is that Valve is not a publicly traded company. They have no obligation to any investors to make number go up. They are a private company, they can do whatever the fuck they want. If they stay flat and keep paying their employees, that’s totally fine, and there is 0 pressure on them to change anything. THAT‘s why Valve seems like such a different company compared to everything else that’s out there.

    Of course it’s still a choice to go public or not, and they have made the right call (for us consumers).



  • Of course it is complex. A few points:

    If you ban a party in Germany, it’s automatically bans all „clones“ of that party, and all of its members in high functions can’t participate in these clones. Failure to comply would lead to an immediate ban of the clone. While I agree that eventually, a new far right with other people will probably form, it would take years for them to reorganize and they would have to be extremely careful. I believe that a ban would probably yield at least 10 years of far-right free politics.

    Appeasement of the far right has failed every time in history, they will cannibalize every attempt to include them in any sort of „rational“ discourse. Banning parties is a lever that exists precisely because of Germany‘s history. IMHO it sends a strong message to all the non-far-right people (of which there are approx. 60-70%) that bullshit will not be tolerated.

    In contrast, doing nothing signals that what the AfD is doing is fine and will move the discourse farther and farther right.

    Stopping funding and preventing them from entering the Parliament is precisely what a ban would do, so I am not sure why the difference is between that and what you are suggesting.



  • Good Post overall, no need to attack my sanity though :-)

    I agree with most of this in principle. Having 100% base load with renewables is an aspirational goal - for now - but nevertheless achievable, I believe. You will find that the sun does, in fact, always shine (somewhere on the planet), and that wind almost always blows (somewhere on the planet). Admittedly, wind is more prevalent throughout the day than sun, but still.

    There have been recent discoveries of superconductors that might help transport the electricity where it is needed. But again, this is all in the medium to long term future.

    But of course, short to medium term, and long term too, energy storage will play a huge role. I expect massive development in this area, as this is being iterated on anyway, eg. for EVs.


  • HaiZhung@feddit.detoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldGood neighborship
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    1 year ago

    Any sources on any of that? That’s a lot of „you just know that“ information, and I do consider myself well informed. I am not from France though.

    Anyway:

    1. neither of those points addresses the costs of energy production I quoted above. Those are, to the best of my knowledge, approximately correct. It may very well have been that nuclear was competitive in the past, it isn’t anymore.

    2. getting scammed by some middle man seems to be a fate that all modern democracies share, though who the middle man is varies country by country :-)

    3. I consider the marginal cost thing to be one of the best acts from the EU. Maybe not in France, but overall it rewards the most efficient energy producer massively, which currently is solar. Those companies can use the excess money to reinvest.




  • HaiZhung@feddit.detoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldGood neighborship
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    1 year ago

    Im quoting 2022 because this was last year. As in, the most recent year.

    I don’t disagree that we should have phased out coal instead of nuclear first. But what has happened has happened. I do disagree that we need a „nuclear renessaince“ now, because neither the economics nor the timelines work out at this point in time. Solar and wind is cheaper, faster to build, and more flexible as you can iterate on their designs MUCH more quickly than nuclear plants. That’s the main reason why solar panel efficiency is going through the roof.

    Why cannibalize the investments in what obviously works?


  • HaiZhung@feddit.detoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldGood neighborship
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    1 year ago

    What do you mean by cheapest energy? Nuclear is more expensive than renewables, if you factor in construction and maintenance cost. It only works because it has been massively subdisidized.

    Or do you have some source that this energy is „cheaper“? Please be aware that France caps their electricity prices internally and subsidizes them with taxes (which is fine, but makes the prices incomparable to other countries).

    „The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189.“

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSKBN1W909J



  • HaiZhung@feddit.detoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldGood neighborship
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    1 year ago

    France has been importing more electricity than exporting in 2022 because their nuclear reactors can’t perform in the heat resulting from climate change. And this is more likely to happen again as each year becomes hotter.

    I’m not sure where this fetishism for France‘s nuclear energy is coming from.