Year: 2018

Floatovoltaics

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Blah, blah, blah!

The title is a term for floating solar panels on water, and while the initial costs are larger there are some significant advantages:

A total of 1.1 gigawatts (GW) of solar have been installed around the world as of September, according to a new report by the World Bank (PDF). That’s similar to the amount of traditional solar panel capacity that had been installed around the world in the year 2000, the report says. The World Bank expects that, like traditional solar 18 years ago, we’re likely to see an explosion of floating solar over the next two decades.

That’s because floating solar is not simply “solar panels on water.” Solar panels prevent algae growth in dammed areas, and they inhibit evaporation from occurring in hotter climates. (According to Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, major lakes in the southwestern US like Lake Mead and Lake Powell can lose more than 800,000 acre-feet of water to evaporation per year, and the adorably-described “floatovoltaics” could prevent up to 90 percent of that evaporation.”) Additionally, floating solar avoids taking up space on land that is priced at a premium. In Northern California, for example, a floating solar installation was added to a nearby reservoir because the land around it was better used for growing grapes.

Another benefit of floating solar is that ground doesn’t have to be leveled before the plant is installed. Usually, fixed-tilt panels are attached to a floating platform that’s moored to the bottom of the reservoir. Most systems send electricity through floating inverters, although in some smaller installations the inverters are situated on land.

The downside is, of course, cost. Floating platforms and water-resistant wiring are more expensive for water-dwelling panels than for their land-based counterparts. As solar PV panel prices have been falling, however, the extra cost to make a floating system might save it from being considered too expensive.

………

Floating solar and hydroelectric dams actually work in a pretty nice symbiosis. In some areas, hydroelectric dams produce energy in an extremely predictable manner. In these cases, the electricity can be used to augment the more variable solar energy coming from the panels. In other cases, hydroelectric energy wanes in times of drought, and solar energy can be used to augment hydroelectric power when water levels are low. “Floating solar may therefore be of particular interest where grids are weak, such as in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of developing Asia,” the World Bank writes.

………

The market for floating photovoltaics has been growing. Until this year, no floating solar systems had more than a 100 megawatt peak capacity, but as of 2018, several 100 MW floating solar systems have been connected to the grid, the largest being a 150 MW floating plant. “Flooded mining sites in China support most of the largest installations,” the World Bank writes.

Large reservoirs are large areas that are not available for other development, and their placement on things like the 3 Gorges Dam, where algae blooms have occurred,  might ameliorate the some of the impacts of that particular clusterf%$#.

Good News, Sort Of

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The Supreme Court has denied cert for the appeals court ruling supporting the Obama Administration’s net neutrality rules, which means that the precedent stands, though the regulation has been emasculated by Ajit Pai and Evil Minions™:

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from the justices’ private conference on Friday. The justices did not add any new cases to their docket for the term – they did that on Friday afternoon – nor did they call for the views of the U.S. solicitor general in any cases. But one order today in particular was significant: The justices declined to review a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upholding the Obama administration’s “net neutrality” rules, which (generally speaking) required internet service providers to treat all traffic on the internet equally.

The rules, which were issued in 2015, have since been replaced by a 2018 order by the Federal Communications Commission eliminating net neutrality, so the justices were not expected to weigh in on the merits of these cases. Instead, the real question was the fate of the D.C. Circuit’s decision upholding the rules: Would the Supreme Court allow it to stand – which would mean that it could serve as precedent for future cases – or would the justices instead invalidate the D.C. Circuit’s decision and send it back with directions to dismiss the cases as moot (a doctrine known as Munsingwear vacatur), because the net neutrality rules are no longer in effect?

Roberts and Kavanaugh both recused, which is probably why the precedent was allowed to stand.

A Good Start

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In response to repeated instances of racist law enforcement against Ethiopian Jews, the Israeli President and Justice Minister are looking to purge Ethiopian Jews’ records for minor crimes.

Implied, but not directly stated is that these crimes were basically racist cops busting kids because they were black.  The vernacular term is, “Contempt of Cop,” and this is a well-deserved f%$# you racist law enforcement:

President Reuven Rivlin and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked called on members of the Ethiopian community who have criminal records for disturbing public order to submit requests to have them purged, in honor of the holiday of Sigd.

“Out of a desire to complete a process of healing the rifts, and to increase Ethiopian immigrants’ trust in the law enforcement and judicial authorities, the president and the justice minister call on Ethiopian minors and young people who have been tried in the past for disturbing public order and who were not given jail terms to submit requests to purge their criminal record,” the statement said.

………

Two years ago, the Committee for Eradicating Racism Against Ethiopian Immigrants published a report stating that the Israeli authorities discriminated against Ethiopian immigrants in various areas, including law enforcement. 

The report, which was adopted by the government, noted that the number of criminal cases and indictments against Ethiopian Israelis was significantly higher than their proportion of the population.  

………

“The power of the institution of pardons is the ability to discuss Israeli issues that demand going beyond the letter of the law to serve the public interest,” said Rivlin. “Ethiopian immigrants have experienced discrimination from the establishment and Israeli society; they suffer from stigmas and negative stereotypes and are exposed to exclusion and prejudice, and even from physical and verbal violence.” 

“It is our duty as a society to do everything to deal with the racism within us and uproot it, and all the authorities are obligated to combat the phenomenon of labeling, exclusion and discrimination of any kind,” Rivlin continued. “Our call is another step in the war against labeling and exclusion, another step toward healing the rift that has been created between Ethiopian immigrants and the establishment and society.”

Retraining the police, and firing the racist ones would be a good next step. 

Needless to say, not even this weak of this could possibly happen in the United States, because it would be followed by a sh%$ storm from the racist right, including hand wringing from the right wing talking heads, and death threats from their followers.

Maximum Geek

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Is that a circular slide rule?


Yep, that’s a circular slide rule


Also known as an E6B flight computer

I came across the 2nd image online, and thought, “Is that Mr. Spock using a circular slide rule in the 23rd century?”

Why yes, yes it is.

Given Gene Roddenberry’s background, he flew aircraft in WWII and was an airline pilot for TWA after the war, I’m thinking that at least one of these probably came from him.

Spock and slide rules:  This is like a total geek-gasm.

Linkage

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Recent tests of a parachute for use on Mars, 37 km high and Mach 1.8:

Mom, the Ukraine is Being the Ukraine Again!!!!

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BREAKING: Major law enforcement agency in #Ukraine caught out spying on main synagogue in #Kiev with bugging devices. Chief Rabbi of Kiev appeals to int’l community for help https://t.co/Hk5HtqrgVZ
This is just bizarre. Why would they be bugging a synagogue??

— Defending History (@DefendingHistor) November 2, 2018

Yes, these folks are our allies in the Ukraine.

How lovely.

Google translate of the page here.

And Now Advertisers are Aiding Terrorists

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Yes, our friends who want to use cell phone tracking to sell us shoes have been selling their services to anti abortion operatives:

Last year, an enterprising advertising executive based in Boston, Massachusetts, had an idea: Instead of using his sophisticated mobile surveillance techniques to figure out which consumers might be interested in buying shoes, cars, or any of the other products typically advertised online, what if he used the same technology to figure out which women were potentially contemplating abortion, and send them ads on behalf of anti-choice organizations?

The executive—John Flynn, CEO of Copley Advertising—set to work. He put together PowerPoint presentations touting his capabilities, and sent them to groups he thought would be interested in reaching “abortion-minded women,” to use anti-choice parlance.

Before long, he’d been hired by RealOptions, a network of crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) in Northern California, as well as by the evangelical adoption agency Bethany Christian Services.

Flynn’s endeavors quickly won him attention in the anti-choice world. He was invited to speak at the Family Research Council’s ProLifeCon Digital Action Summit in January this year, and he got a few write-ups in anti-choice press.

In an interview with Live Action News—the website for Live Action, the group run by anti-choice activist Lila Rose that is responsible for bogus attack videos against Planned Parenthood—Flynn gave some details about his strategy. He sends advertisements for his clients to women’s smartphones while they are sitting in Planned Parenthood clinics, using a technology known as “mobile geo-fencing.” He also planned to ping women at methadone clinics and other abortion facilities. His program for Bethany covered five cities: Columbus, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Richmond, Virginia; St. Louis, Missouri; and New York City.

“We are very excited to bring our mobile marketing capabilities to the pro-life community,” Flynn told Live Action News.

This is why the self-described “disrupters” in the tech industry need to be kept under a tight regulatory leash.

If you don’t find this completely terrifying, you have not been paying attention.

Carrier of the Future, My Ass

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The USS Gerald R. Ford, the US Navy’s $13. Billion carrier of the future, does not have functioning bomb lifts, another “ground breaking” technology that they still have not gotten to work:

The $13 billion Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the U.S. Navy’s costliest warship, was delivered last year without elevators needed to lift bombs from below deck magazines for loading on fighter jets.

Previously undisclosed problems with the 11 elevators for the ship built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. add to long-standing reliability and technical problems with two other core systems — the electromagnetic system to launch planes and the arresting gear to catch them when they land.

The Advanced Weapons Elevators, which are moved by magnets rather than cables, were supposed to be installed by the vessel’s original delivery date in May 2017. Instead, final installation was delayed by problems including four instances of unsafe “uncommanded movements” since 2015, according to the Navy.

While progress was being made on the carrier’s other flawed systems, the elevator is “our Achilles heel,” Navy Secretary Richard Spencer told reporters in August without providing details.

The elevator system is “just another example of the Navy pushing technology risk into design and construction — without fully demonstrating it,” said Shelby Oakley, a director with the U.S. Government Accountability Office who monitors Navy shipbuilding.

Gee, you think?

Every attempt at making a technological leap on the Ford class carrier has been problematic, whether it’s the catapults, arrestor gear, and now, the munitions lifts.

We’ve seen similar things with the LCS and the Zumwalt class destroyer, and it’s all driven by an almost pathological need to minimize crewing.

It’s a complete cluster-f%$#.

Fascinating

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Some professors at Harvard are suggesting that the ‘Oumuamua interstellar object might be some form of space craft:

On October 19th, 2017, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System-1 (Pan-STARRS-1) in Hawaii announced the first-ever detection of an interstellar asteroid, named 1I/2017 U1 (AKA ‘Oumuamua).

In the months that followed, multiple follow-up observations were conducted that allowed astronomers to get a better idea of its size and shape, while also revealing that it had the characteristics of both a comet and an asteroid.

Interestingly enough, there has also been some speculation that based on its shape, ‘Oumuamua might actually be an interstellar spacecraft (Breakthrough Listen even monitored it for signs of radio signals!).

A new study by a pair of astronomers from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has taken it a step further, suggesting that ‘Oumuamua may actually be a light sail of extra-terrestrial origin.

The study – “Could Solar Radiation Pressure Explain ‘Oumuamua’s Peculiar Acceleration?”, which recently appeared online – was conducted by Shmuel Bialy and Prof. Abraham Loeb. Whereas Bialy is a postdoctoral researcher at the CfA’s Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC), Prof. Loeb is the director of the ITC, the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, and the head chair of the Breakthrough Starshot Advisory Committee.

The object has been accelerating away from the sun, which might be caused by out-gassing, but there was no out-gassing on the way in, and the object’s rotation has not changed, which would normally happen with out-gassing.

Unfortunately, we will never know for sure.

F%$# Zuck

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Yet again, the rocks are turned over at Facebook, and so now we know that gave advertisers specific access to white supremacists:

Apparently fueled by anti-Semitism and the bogus narrative that outside forces are scheming to exterminate the white race, Robert Bowers murdered 11 Jewish congregants as they gathered inside their Pittsburgh synagogue, federal prosecutors allege. But despite long-running international efforts to debunk the idea of a “white genocide,” Facebook was still selling advertisers the ability to market to those with an interest in that myth just days after the bloodshed.

Earlier this week, The Intercept was able to select “white genocide conspiracy theory” as a pre-defined “detailed targeting” criterion on the social network to promote two articles to an interest group that Facebook pegged at 168,000 users large and defined as “people who have expressed an interest or like pages related to White genocide conspiracy theory.” The paid promotion was approved by Facebook’s advertising wing. After we contacted the company for comment, Facebook promptly deleted the targeting category, apologized, and said it should have never existed in the first place.

Our reporting technique was the same as one used by the investigative news outlet ProPublica to report, just over one year ago, that in addition to soccer dads and Ariana Grande fans, “the world’s largest social network enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of ‘Jew hater,’ ‘How to burn jews,’ or, ‘History of “why jews ruin the world.”’” The report exposed how little Facebook was doing to vet marketers, who pay the company to leverage personal information and inclinations in order to gain users’ attention — and who provide the foundation for its entire business model. At the time, ProPublica noted that Facebook “said it would explore ways to fix the problem, such as limiting the number of categories available or scrutinizing them before they are displayed to buyers.” Rob Leathern, a Facebook product manager, assured the public, “We know we have more work to do, so we’re also building new guardrails in our product and review processes to prevent other issues like this from happening in the future.”

Leathern’s “new guardrails” don’t seem to have prevented Facebook from manually approving our ad buy the same day it was submitted, despite its explicit labeling as “White Supremacy – Test.”

Facebook is really a seriously evil organization, and it has been baked into it from the very beginning.

Break it up into tiny little pieces.

Not What I Expected in Lakewood

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For those of you who don’t know, Lakewood, New Jersey has a large Orthodox Jewish community and dozens of religious schools.

This is not a community that I would generally considered to be “woke” on the issue of vaccinations, but the shuls and yeshivas in the area are refusing to admit people without vaccinations:

The measles outbreak continues to grow, thanks to the anti-vaxxers, and now some Shuls are sending a strong message to them.

According to TLS, a few Shuls in Lakewood have sent out letters to their Mispallelim that they should not bring anyone who was not vaccinated into the building.

A number of Lakewood schools have also taken a stance, and have informed their parent body that children who are not vaccinated are not permitted into school.

………

The Viznitz Monsey Girls School announced that any child who is not immunized, can’t return to school for 21 days. No “religious exemption” is accepted. A religious exemption does not work when there is a measles outbreak.

Rockland County’s Commissioner of Health, Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert, announced Wednesday that all schools in the Village of New Square are now required to keep students who are un-vaccinated or under-vaccinated against the disease home until 21 days have passed since the last case of measles is confirmed in the county.

So far, the county has given more two thousand doses of the measles vaccine, referred to as MMR. Ruppert is urging parents to make sure their whole families vaccination history.

They should have done this months ago.

Well, Her Husband Routinely Wears Nazi Regalia

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Katharine Gorka, wife of the infamous Sebastian Gorka, remains on the White House Payroll, was instrumental in cutting funding to counter white supremacists violence:

A group working to deradicalize white supremacists had been set to receive funding from the Department of Homeland Security until Trump aide Katharine Gorka worked to eliminate its grant.

This is what happens when you employ actual Nazi sympathizers on your staff.

A Good Start

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No, I am not talking about the joke asking what one calls, “500 lawyers lying on the bottom of the ocean,” but rather the proposal by proposal by Senator Ron Wyden to throw tech execs in jail for violating our privacy.

Fines are just a cost of doing business, but if Zuckerberg or Page, or Brin or Pichai spend 24 (or 240) months behind bars, there will be a deterrent effect:

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden has introduced a comprehensive new privacy bill he claims will finally address the lack of meaningful privacy protections for American consumers.
Wyden says his Consumer Data Protection Act is a direct response to the ocean of privacy scandals that have plagued the internet for the better part of the last decade.

The Senator’s proposal would dramatically beef up Federal Trade Commission authority and funding to crack down on privacy violations, let consumers opt out of having their sensitive personal data collected and sold, and impose harsh new penalties on a massive data monetization industry that has for years claimed that self-regulation is all that’s necessary to protect consumer privacy.

Wyden’s bill proposes that companies whose revenue exceeds $1 billion per year—or warehouse data on more than 50 million consumers or consumer devices—submit “annual data protection reports” to the government detailing all steps taken to protect the security and privacy of consumers’ personal information.

The proposed legislation would also levy penalties up to 20 years in prison and $5 million in fines for executives who knowingly mislead the FTC in these reports. The FTC’s authority over such matters is currently limited—one of the reasons telecom giants have been eager to move oversight of their industry from the Federal Communications Commission to the FTC.

It does not have a snow-ball’s chance in hell of passing, but putting prison on the table is the only way to reign these guys in.

Snark of the Day

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How do you say “dead woman walking” in German? Today, the answer to that question is “Angela Merkel” after the German leader announced that she would be seeking neither re-election as chancellor in 2021, nor re-election as head of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party this December.

—Marshall Auerback

In truth it’s more serious than this witticism posits, as Merkel, taking the baton from Gerhard Schröder, did some very bad things:

But there’s another side to this story. However highly regarded, Chancellor Merkel has repeatedly led governments, coalition or otherwise, that championed the neoliberal dismantling of the country’s “social market economy,” especially in services. Her government also pushed and prodded the rest of the European Union in a comparable direction.

In Germany specifically, the end result has been the growth of a two-tiered economy, which has heightened economic insecurity, created declining living standards for much of the population, and exacerbated inequality. In other words, too little “social,” too much “market.”

The combined beggar thy neighbor/beggar thy citizenry policies have been a disaster, but they are integral to the neoliberal project.

Kamov Advanced Helo

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Looks a lot like the S-79


Sikorsky S-79

Kamov, which has been the leading producer of coaxial rotor helicopters for decades, is proposing an advanced helicopter that bears a strong similarity to the Sikorski advancing blade helicopter.

What is notable is that the two rotors are further apart than those of the S-79, it has wings, (and canards) and the propulsor is a turbofan rather than a propeller.

First, it’s pretty clear from this that the rotors are probably not as stiff,  and that the controls are less sophisticated, requiring more space between the two rotor disks to avoid the blades striking each other.

The wings, and the turbofan propulsion, imply that it is designed for a much higher speed, probably at the expense of range, noise, and low speed accelleration

That being said, I am profoundly dubious of their claim of a top speed of 700 km/h (440 mph/370 kts) for any rotorcraft:

Pictures of a Kamov design for an advanced attack helicopter have appeared on a Russian website.

The images appear to have been leaked amid competition between the Kamov and Mil Moscow Helicopter design bureaus within Russian Helicopters to develop the country’s future high-speed combat helicopter, called SBV.

Russian Helicopters announced at the Army 2017 forum in Moscow last September that it had signed a two-year contract with the Russian defense ministry to refine concepts for a high-speed attack helicopter, with both Kamov and Mil working on designs.

………

The leaked photographs show Kamov General Designer Sergei Mikheyev presenting the bureau’s concept, a winged coaxial-rotor, twin-turbofan compound helicopter reportedly capable of up to 700 kph (380 kt.) This compares with a speed of more than 400 kph claimed for Mil’s single-main-rotor design.

………

Propulsion is provided by what appear to be a pair of turbofans mounted in the aft fuselage and driving the rotor gearbox via a pair of shafts that project forward from the engines—an arrangement reminiscent of the shaft-driven lift fan in the Lockheed Martin F-35B.

The engines likely direct most of their power forward to shaft-drive the rotors for takeoff, hover and low-speed maneuvers, then shift more of the power to thrust as forward speed increases. The rotor system has a pair of contra-rotating three-blade rotors with swept tips.

Wicked Bad Day at the Office

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Look to the left


The moment it goes pear shaped

We now have video of the Soyuz failure, and it was booster separation that caused the mishap:

On Thursday, Russian space officials held a news conference to lay out their findings into an October 11 accident that involved the launch of a Soyuz FG rocket and its spacecraft. The crew of NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin escaped safely, but the rocket was destroyed.

The problem, the officials said, boiled down to a “bent” sensor on one of the rocket’s four boosters that failed to properly signal stage separation. This caused one of the booster stages to improperly separate from the rocket, which can be seen in the video released by the space agency. This booster then struck the core of the rocket, causing a significant jolt and triggering one of the Soyuz spacecraft’s automatic escape systems.

According to the officials, the sensor rod was bent by a little more than 6 degrees, and this happened during assembly of the rocket. The Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, has classified this as a handling error. To fix the process, Soyuz rockets already assembled for launch with their booster packs will be disassembled and reassembled to assure that similar mistakes have not occurred.

It should be noted that, by the standards of man-rated boosters, the Soyuz is quite safe, and the escape system functioned as it should have.

Still, a bummer for the astronauts/cosmonauts and ground crew, no doubt.

It’s Getting to be a Real Whine and Cheese Party, Isn’t It?

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Specifically, now we have Arizona Senate candidate Martha McSally complaining that her vote to end protections for people with existing conditions was a vote to end protections for people with existing conditions:

Soon after she assumed office to represent Arizona’s Tucson-based district in the House of Representatives, Martha McSally voted for a Republican-backed measure to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

 McSally’s “aye” vote for H.R. 596 was recorded on the evening of Feb. 3, 2015, and came as her party was intent on undoing, tweaking or rolling back the controversial 2010 health care law implemented by President Barack Obama and Democrats.

 A year later, McSally voted again to repeal the law.

………

 And in May 2017, McSally voted for the GOP’s American Health Care Act, which revived their hopes of repealing central portions of the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as “Obamacare.” That legislation, if passed, would have reduced the federal deficit but resulted in 23 million more uninsured Americans through 2026, a Congressional Budget Office analysis found, though McSally’s campaign says that estimate was based on “bad projections” about the Affordable Care Act that never materialized.

 McSally urged her colleagues, gathered on the day of that 2017 vote in a private meeting, that it was time to get this “f—ing thing” done, according to the Associated Press. 

………

McSally told The Arizona Republic on Saturday that she’s being “character assassinated” by her critics on health care.  

………

“Well, Sean, I did vote to repeal and replace Obamacare on that House bill — I’m getting my ass kicked for it right now because it’s being misconstrued by the Democrats,” she said. “They’re trying to, you know, invoke fear in people who have family members or loved ones with pre-existing conditions.”

 ………

Everywhere she goes, [McSally’s Democratic opponent Kyrsten] Sinema said, people “are concerned about Martha’s attempts to roll back protections for people with pre-existing health conditions, which she has done several times.”

(emphasis mine)

It’s a well deserved ass kicking, stop whining.

You deserve every bit of opprobrium that you have earned for trying to take people’s (still pretty dysfunctional) healthcare away.

Linkage

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Let’s have former volunteer fireman, and sometime TV producer, and writer, Rod Serling talk about bigotry: (start at about 13:15 if you do not want to listen to the whole 96 minutes)

This speech is no less on point today than it was 42 years ago.

Damn, that man could write.

Economists Discover the Obvious

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Economists are now (begrudgingly) announcing that Seattle’s $15/hour minimum wage did not cause an apocalypse, and that, in fact, it benefited the poorest workers in the city:

Earlier this year, a group of business school researchers from the University of Washington and NYU, as well as Amazon, published an influential paper claiming that the rising Seattle minimum wage had decreased take-home pay for workers by 6% due to cuts to work hours — the paper was trumpeted by right-wing ideologues as examples of how “liberal policies” hurt the workers they are meant to help.

But a new paper by the same authors (Sci-Hub mirror) shows that the rising minimum wage generated major increases for the workers who had the most hours, whose hours were only cut a little, but still came out ahead thanks to the wage increase; workers with fewer hours saw no financial harm from the rising minimum wage, working fewer hours and bringing home the same sum; and they found some harm to people who had the smallest number of hours) (which may actually reflect stronger demand for workers and fewer workers in this category of very-low-hour work).

Oopsie.