bongobingo (u/bongobingo)

bongobingo commented on White House eyes subsidies for nuclear plants to help meet climate targets reuters.com/business/sust... · Posted by u/pseudolus

burkaman · 5 years ago

https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2020/03/large-scale-so...

New York State is 35 million acres. You don't think 0.2% of that, including rooftops of existing buildings, might be useable for solar/wind/battery storage? And again, NY already uses tons of out-of-state energy.

bongobingo · 5 years ago

No, I don’t. Even if it were possible to acquire that much land, and it isn’t, the land isn’t suitable for solar.

bongobingo commented on The Dogecoin Joke Is Turning Serious in Latest Crypto Binge bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/1cvmask

kozd · 5 years ago

You are incorrect. The supply of bitcoin is limited. Whether you express that limited supply as units of bitcoin or units of satoshi does not change that the supply will never exceed that amount.

Doing a unit conversion doesn't change anything. The limited supply argument is not implying that you won't be able to own fractional bitcoins, it's arguing that the amount of bitcoin you do own with always be a fixed proportion of the total possible supply (in reality it's proportion will grow as people lose access to their keys) so it won't get devalued by the total possible supply increasing. Remember, value is relative to the supply. Looking at your bitcoin in terms of satoshis doesn't change it's value.

bongobingo · 5 years ago

> You are incorrect.

No, I’m not.

The supply of Bitcoin is 21 quadrillion satoshi. You are making an arbitrary distinction that an entire Bitcoin is some meaningful thing. I’m not doing a conversation. A Bitcoin is 100,000,000 satoshi. That is just a literal fact.

People want the supply of Bitcoin to be limited because their economic models depend on that false reality. If there is 21 quadrillion of something, it is not scarce. Wanting something to be scarce doesn’t make it scarce.

bongobingo commented on Why I Work on Ads jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-o... · Posted by u/benjaminjosephw

bongobingo · 5 years ago

> Ads. You pay with your attention.

What? No. You pay with your data. You pay with your privacy.

And the ads additionally destroy legitimate paid services. Ads have destroyed the entire internet economy, and brought upon a surveillance state.

This blog post is more detached from reality than the Q board on 8kun.

bongobingo commented on White House eyes subsidies for nuclear plants to help meet climate targets reuters.com/business/sust... · Posted by u/pseudolus

burkaman · 5 years ago

First of all, did you look at a map? 300 miles from NYC gets you to upstate New York, or western Pennsylvania, or rural West Virginia. Second, NYISO, which covers New York State, already imports lots of power from Quebec, Ontario, New England, and PJM (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, and more).

We do need more transmission (another thing the White House is working on: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...), but power import/export over long distances is already commonplace.

Edit: And if you really want to look to the future, you could read the proposal for a North American Supergrid: http://northamericansupergrid.org/

bongobingo · 5 years ago

Have you looked at a map? I live in NY, and there is absolutely no place for such a massive solar farm.

The numbers I quoted were just for NYC, and they weren’t adjusted for the winter sunlight problem. To power the entire metro area would likely require 40,000 acres. To cover the entire region likely 60,000 acres. This land does not exist.

bongobingo commented on The Dogecoin Joke Is Turning Serious in Latest Crypto Binge bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/1cvmask

NotACop182 · 5 years ago

I’m talking about the whole as In 1 Bitcoin not the fractions Bitcoin can be broken up into.

bongobingo · 5 years ago

That’s an arbitrary, and pointless, distinction. 100,000,000 different people can own a single satoshi. What does it matter that each individual does not own the entire thing? The question is whether Bitcoin has enough supply, and there actually is no question because the supply is effectively infinite.

The scarcity argument is just factually wrong. Bitcoin is not scarce.

bongobingo commented on The Dogecoin Joke Is Turning Serious in Latest Crypto Binge bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/1cvmask

NotACop182 · 5 years ago

Bitcoin forks but the alternative forks have yet to compete. Bitcoin on the other-hand is limited to 21 million supply.

bongobingo · 5 years ago

Each Bitcoin is 100,000,000 satoshi. So the actual max supply is 2,100,000,000,000,000.

It’s effectively infinite supply.

bongobingo commented on U.S. approves solar project in California desert reuters.com/business/ener... · Posted by u/awb

tlb · 5 years ago

Payoff time calculations shouldn't include opportunity costs. Calculating opportunity cost would require knowing about every other possible project.

The right procedure is to calculate payoff periods for each project separately. Then, when deciding which projects to fund, you choose them starting with the shortest payoff times until your budget is used up.

bongobingo · 5 years ago

Opportunity cost is simple. It’s a calculation of what your money could have been doing if you put it to use doing something else. The easiest to estimate is the market opportunity cost.

If you spend $10,000 on a solar installation that is $10,000 you could have put in the market. After 15 years you saved $10,000 in electricity, and you’re supposedly profiting. However, that $10,000 investment would have grown to $24,000 at a modest 6%. So you’re actually still in the red, and you’ll likely never catch up and break even.

If you took out a loan it’s the opportunity cost on the payments. There is actually a theoretical break even here, but it’s not 15 years.

If you’re doing it for some altruistic reasons then it doesn’t matter. But if you’re making a payback calculation, you should do it properly. Opportunity cost is a real thing.

bongobingo commented on U.S. approves solar project in California desert reuters.com/business/ener... · Posted by u/awb

imtringued · 5 years ago

The opportunity cost for what? Half the reason why this particular project exists is that Biden has realized that the best way to bring money into the hands of people is by giving them a job that is useful to society.

As it is right now there is enough funding for every conceivable project, assuming the project is profitable (pays debts back) the only real limits are physical resources and unemployed workers and running out of unemployed workers is a policy goal. If we hit real limits, then interest rates will go up and lenders will demand greater returns, which may mean that a solar project like this may not get started and people start seeking out more productive ideas. However, the most important thing is that investments pay their debts back.

bongobingo · 5 years ago

The opportunity cost for the cash you had to put down to install a solar array. Or the opportunity cost of the interest payments you’re making on a loan.

bongobingo commented on White House eyes subsidies for nuclear plants to help meet climate targets reuters.com/business/sust... · Posted by u/pseudolus

dv_dt · 5 years ago

Nuclear makes little sense for climate targets. The construction is too expensive and too slow - allocating capital to nuclear ends up slower than allocating the same capital to renewables for hitting climate targets. If you look at reports of lifetime costs for utility scale energy, Nuclear is the most expensive and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. Solar and wind is already 3-4x cheaper than nuclear, and by the time the decade is out it will likely be 10x cheaper even with attendant storage.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2020

bongobingo · 5 years ago

I’ve yet to see any renewable plan that could cover big northern cities.

Where are we going to build a solar farm to cover NYC, DC, and Philadelphia? There is 9 hours of daylight in the dead of winter, and it’s not exactly known for being sunny in January.

NYC alone needs 11,000 megawatt hours per day. My back of the envelope fermi estimate is a solar farm covering approximately 16,000 acres. Forget the metro area, that’s just for NYC. Probably double if you include the entire metro area.

You aren’t going to find that kind of land within 300 miles of NYC.

bongobingo commented on Ex-Netflix VP found guilty of awarding tech contracts in exchange for bribes arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/codelion

LatteLazy · 5 years ago

In 10 years I've never seen this happen in finance. Quite the opposite in fact: gifts bigger than a cup of coffee must be reported.

bongobingo · 5 years ago

Probably because finance people know to not accept such obvious bribery.