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Comment You can use C++ one way or another (Score 2) 14

The good thing about C++ is that it does not force a single "paradigm" on you, as so many programming languages do. You can do bit-banging, pointer arithmetic and self-modifying code, but you don't have to - if you are afraid of shooting yourself in the foot, just stick with some standard library structures and never touch a pointer. I am not inclined to glorify one or the other approach, both have their time and place.

The only complaint I have with C++ is that its developer was so eager to be backward-compatible with C in its early days, that the syntax readability suffered somewhat. But the long-term evolution of C++ is also a plus, those not just programming for fun can really benefit from a mature language that remains available through the decades.

Whether Rust will earn such merits is still open.

Comment Re:Drugs (Score 1) 180

One of the things to notice is that playtime / the level of sport in many schools in many societies has reduced vastly since even the early 2000s, let alone, e.g. the 1950s. Playingfields and sports in UK schools have been cut vastly. Add that to kids using smart phones during breaks instead of running around. It's quite likely that a whole bunch of children who could sit still for 1 hour are now being asked to sit still for 4 hours.

Comment Re: Now all England needs (Score 1) 158

Naaaah, Liverpool (also known as Scouseland) is alright. I lived there for 2 years and all the people I met were really friendly and fun, just in their own down-to-earth, direct way; blue collar workers and drug kingpins alike. London on the other hand...

Definitely. Scousers are great. However the Sun newspaper is a particular grudge with them (and you don't want to get on the wrong side of the Scouse). The newspaper lied like hell about the victims of the Hillsborough disaster that the police killed. There is a fully justified and unforgiven hatred of the newspaper in Liverpool.

Comment Re:Offer the option. (Score 1) 158

Don't mandate it, all you do then is put the price of homes just that bit more further out of the reach of normal people who actually work and buy things and aren't given them by tax payer money.

Making it an option increases costs by requiring the planning, design and infrastructure to be in place anyway and then only using them in a proportion of cases. Mandating makes it cheaper per home. There are also various schemes in the UK where companies buy the long term output of solar panels. If the problem is up front cost rather than long term, you could have these companies pay the price differential and then take the benefit of the solar panels themselves. Obviously that means the home owner doesn't get as much money long term as if they got the solar panels themselves, but they still have more money (through a cheaper house) than if no solar panels were installed at all.

Comment Interesting calling it terrible without knowledge. (Score 1) 158

First declare that I haven't done the calculations myself yet, so I don't know 100% if this is a great idea overall or not. However, if I'm looking at this discussion, all through there are a bunch of made up objections coming up which don't have any basis in the actual scheme. In fact, in this case the opposite. Current rooftop solar installs void warranties because they are done after the original build. This idea solves the main problems with rooftop solar by firstly making it much cheaper and secondly ensuring that it's included within the housing warranty. That's the whole point. The same goes with the battery problem. That's orthogonal - as long as the solar power can be limited by dynamic pricing and switching off in the case of negative prices then you can decide later if you want to install more batteries or not.

I think the way people are invoking problems unrelated to this scheme real sign that the opposition is not based on logic but things like emotions and fear or anti-solar propaganda.

Comment Re:Now all England needs (Score 1) 158

Quite a bit of the UK (North / Scotland more so, but everywhere to some extent) often gets sunny weather in winter. It's alternation between overcast, windy, even stormy and then a blocking high pressure which gives you some days of cold but sunny weather. It's much much nicer than August / September when you can get continual rain.

Comment Re:Now all England needs (Score 1) 158

Currently, people I know in the UK with new solar installs get hourly dynamic pricing. I think some even get five minutes pricing which can go negative. At that point they can (and do) simply switch off their panels which may be cheaper and more effective than installing batteries. If the price of installing alternative renewable energy sources that can match with gaps in UK solar is less than the price of installing batteries then simply switching off is a great solution.

Comment Re:This is terrible policy (Score 1) 158

Are you saying there is no more wind to be build or there is already enough wind? What does this statement mean?

The UK is beginning to get to the stage where it produces more wind power than it's own needs. Wind is more or less limited by the transmission network. Wind also tends not to match as well as solar with air conditioning loads that are becoming more important in the UK as global warming increase temperatures, so you need to build more, more widely distributed wind to support that reliably.

Of course you have to build out the transmission network because demand is not always based on whether or not the sun is shining.

The transmission network is difficult to extend because you have to do it over land, which is expensive in the UK, because overhead pylons are ugly and politically unpopular whilst underground cables are expensive and international links that give you good load balancing require international agreement which is problematic for a country which has done silly things like Brexit and so is considered an unreliable partner.

This is of course happening also, but some more solar power in the mix makes sense.

Comment Re:Dangerous (Score 1) 521

TDS / derp derp / NPCs

You sound like a badly programmed bot that just regurgitates random words from comments off 4chan. If I thought you were a human I'd have to think of a more exciting syndrome to attribute to you than just a "derangement". Maybe psychosis?

Oh, and given the way he gives away tarrif reductions to people who just happen to have recently bought large amounts of Trump coins, I'd never accuse trump of failing to "sell policy actions for political donations". That would just be silly.

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