Vistra Corp is doing the right thing.
2021-06-15 Future Hydrogen in Europe and Australia
The rest of the world is planning on building hydrogen generation infrastructure for replacing fossil fuels. This is an interesting article about plans in Europe and Australia.
2021-06-14 Republicans Shrug Off Warnings Democracy In Peril
This seems outright diabolical.
https://news.yahoo.com/congress-republicans-shrug-warnings-democracy-122829139.html
Quote:
<< “Statutory changes in large key electoral battleground states are dangerously politicizing the process of electoral administration, with Republican-controlled legislatures giving themselves the power to override electoral outcomes on unproven allegations,” 188 scholars said in a statement expressing concern about the erosion of democracy. >>
What I see is that the legislative branch of government is trying to subvert government itself. The Republicans want to change the laws to give the state legislature the power to override an electoral outcome on unproven allegations, but this is only good for them if the Repub’s stay in power. If they lose power to the Dem’s, then the Dem’s could use the same underhanded tactics to override an electoral outcome. Don’t they see the folly in this? Life is always a two-way street; you can’t have it only one way: your way.
2021-06-14 Electric Vehicles Are In Stealth Mode
I have a PIR (passive infrared) motion sensing light on my porch for more than a year, and I’ve noticed that it can sense some of the cars that go by. If the car has been running, like coming home it will usually trigger the light. But when a neighbor starts the cold car and leaves, there is no PIR, and the light does not sense it leaving.
One neighbor has an Electric Vehicle, and EVs don’t generate a lot of heat like a gasoline powered vehicle. So the PIR sensor does not sense any motion. The EV is in stealth mode!
In order to sense these EVs the light would need a microwave doppler motion sensor. Or else a video camera that can sense motion. One drawback of these is that windblown leaves can trigger the motion sensing. Microwave sensors are very simple pieces of hardware and it would be more of a challenge to differentiate between windy leaves. In contrast, a video camera uses software on a computer to detect motion. It may be possible to develop software that can tell the difference between blowing leaves and a car or person.
When I was in the Army, before digital computers, the Radars had motion detecting hardware that was classified confidential information. The signal pulses were delayed and compared to the next signal pulses. If no changes then the signal was probably ground clutter close by. So software would have to know what is the difference between a single person and lots of ‘noise’ from windblown leaves.
2021-06-13 How Much Land To Power The World
This short TED video gives some interesting statistics about how much land it will take to power the world – which is 3 terawatts. They don’t give any info on who or where this information came from. I think some of it isn’t accurate.
The United States generates about 1.2 terawatts of power.
https://www.ted.com/talks/ted_ed_how_much_land_does_it_take_to_power_the_world
2021-06-13 How Shelby County V. Holder Broke America
I’m reading chapter 14 of ‘Doubt Is Their Product’ by David Michaels. They talk about the Shelby amendment that applies the freedom of information act to research data.
While searching for that I came across this article in The Atlantic. It’s about the Shelby County v. Holder decision by SCOTUS that requires congress to come up with a new preclearance to prevent the Jim Crow laws that were once banned. Now the state legislatures are trying again to make laws to allow racial discrimination even they don’t have outright racial language. Therefore every jurisdiction has to take the laws to court to get them struck down.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/how-shelby-county-broke-america/564707/
2021-06-13 Keep Speaking The Truth – Meme
PEOPLE WHO
ARE MAD AT YOU
FOR SPEAKING THE
TRUTH ARE THOSE
PEOPLE WHO ARE
LIVING A LIE.
KEEP SPEAKING
THE TRUTH
2021-06-12 Debby Downers Blame The Bureaucracy
From FB group Orange Talk
There are a bunch of cynical debby downers who comment about how bad the bureaucracy is.
Well, have you considered the other more likely possibilities?
The CoVID19 lockdown was in effect and there were not enough employees working – or not furloughed due to budgetary constraints to do the work.
The aforementioned budgetary constraints prevented the work, the supplies, etc.
Work for the city is often done by contractors who were also unable to do the work for the same reasons.
The city was too busy trying to deal with a crisis of enormous proportions caused by the pandemic. Many things had to be de-prioritized. Budgets cut to use the money for the emergency.
These whiners should stop complaining and do a little research before jumping to conclusions about how bad some things are. Or maybe they should get a jobe as a reporter for the local newspaper so they can blame more people and cause even more readers to believe the “fake news” theory.
2021-06-12 First Commercial Semiconductor Device
Q: What was the first commercially successful semiconductor device?
Hint: It wasn’t germanium.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Harrison_Chase_Dunwoody
2021-06-12 Switch Mode Power Supply Items To Check
From FB group electronics parts
Joshua E. Hrouda
There also is a high value resistor from the rectified and filtered DC to the base of the power transistor. This can change value.
After this resistor bootstraps the transistor into oscillation, there js a winding, a rectifier diode and filter capacitor that powers the base. Make sure they’re doing their jobs.
