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lizby
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Joined: 17/05/2016
Location: United States
Posts: 3732

Posted: 08:37pm 27 Jan 2026

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The case of the 6 major corn ethanol states is interesting. These are Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Respectively, their wind production of electricity as a percentage of demand is IA 62%, NE 32%, KS 44%, IL 13%, IN 11%, OH 3%.

Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas pay about $.11-.12 per kWh for electricity; Illinois, Indiana and Ohio $.14-.17. So the states with more wind generation pay considerably less for electricity than the states with less wind.

A half of a percent of Nebraska farmland in solar and about 2% more for wind (with 98.5% of that still available for farming) would bring Nebraska to 90% of electricity generation by wind and solar with a very good winter/summer balance. Financing would be easy--most would be private with Power Purchase Agreements, and the rest through Nebraska's all-public utilities could be financed at 4-5% compared to the 18% typical in states with privately owned utilities. Politics, however, has stalled wind development in the last few years, and prevented significant solar.

Indiana is very different with only 11% wind. Coal is protected and subsidized and households pay 40% more for electricity. The opposition to wind and solar is politicized and intense no matter how much money would be saved if the resources were exploited.

Of course, if corn ethanol acreage were replaced with wind and solar, far more electricity would be generated than could be used within 800 miles of the U.S. midwest core--Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa).

~
Edited 2026-01-28 06:42 by lizby

PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on FOTS

lizby
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Joined: 17/05/2016
Location: United States
Posts: 3732

Posted: 02:45pm 05 Feb 2026

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I feel like I have 3 full-time employees, Gemma, Claude, and Chad (being paid $20, $17, and $20 a month respectively), and an unpaid intern, Lex, and my job as the wetware intermediary is to keep them all as occupied as possible.

I'm just beginning to understand that job, and I'm not very good at it. Part of that is that I don't have so many amenable long-term tasks, and part may be that they're not yet good at long-term undirected tasks.

Coding with Gemini or Claude I can spend all my time (all day, every day) working very productively with them (6-8 times my peak productivity, but sustainable)--as long as I have a good understanding of the task.

Right now I'm using Chad (Chat) for ongoing correspondence with a regulatory agency, for some PCB development (it can produce KiCad netlists, but I've never used KiCad and haven't tried importing into EasyCAD), and for investigating some aspects of a "not-balcony" solar system (battery + panels + inverter able to inject 1200 watts (Utah standard) into an ordinary outlet 24 hours a day (today's task: elaborate on this: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/02/03/growatt-launches-5-kwh-ac-coupled-balcony-storage-system/ )).

Lex (perplexity) is for the random investigation that comes up. That quickly says I have exceeded my free usage and I should sign up to pay--but it doesn't stop answering questions.

So all this knowledge and, if I may say so, intelligence, and how do I get to use it best?

PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on FOTS

lizby
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Joined: 17/05/2016
Location: United States
Posts: 3732

Posted: 04:51pm 13 Feb 2026

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This is worth reading:

https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening

An AI avalanche: most of even most involved are "building on top of foundations we didn't lay".

"The experience that tech workers have had over the past year, of watching AI go from "helpful tool" to "does my job better than I do", is the experience everyone else is about to have. Law, finance, medicine, accounting, consulting, writing, design, analysis, customer service."

~
Edited 2026-02-14 02:54 by lizby

PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on FOTS

Mixtel90

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Joined: 05/10/2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8738

Posted: 05:19pm 13 Feb 2026

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AI isn't far off being the man in the shack in HHGTTG. If you aren't worried then you should be. :)

Quote “No, listen to me,” said Zarniwoop, “people come to you do they? In ships …”

“I think so,” said the man. He handed the bottle to Trillian.

“And they ask you,” said Zarniwoop, “to take decisions for them? About people’s lives, about worlds, about economies, about wars, about everything going on out there in the Universe?” “Out there?” said the man, “out where?”

“Out there!” said Zarniwoop pointing at the door.

“How can you tell there’s anything out there,” said the man politely, “the door’s closed.”

The rain continued to pound the roof. Inside the shack it was warm.

“But you know there’s a whole Universe out there!” cried Zarniwoop. “You can’t dodge your responsibilities by saying they don’t exist!”

The ruler of the Universe thought for a long while whilst Zarniwoop quivered with anger.

“You’re very sure of your facts,” he said at last, “I couldn’t trust the thinking of a man who takes the Universe – if there is one – for granted.”

Zarniwoop still quivered, but was silent.

“I only decide about my Universe,” continued the man quietly. “My Universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay.”

“But don’t you believe in anything?”

The man shrugged and picked up his cat.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” he said.

“You don’t understand that what you decide in this shack of yours affects the lives and fates of millions of people? This is all monstrously wrong!”

“I don’t know. I’ve never met all these people you speak of. And neither, I suspect, have you. They only exist in words we hear. It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their own eyes and ears.”

Trillian said:

“I think I’m just popping outside for a moment.”

She left and walked into the rain.

“Do you believe other people exist?” insisted Zarniwoop.

“I have no opinion. How can I say?”

Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs

lizby
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Joined: 17/05/2016
Location: United States
Posts: 3732

Posted: 12:38am 07 Apr 2026

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My prompt to Claude:

Quote Some years back Nova Scotia Power installed "smart meters" which recorded hour by hour usage (maybe even more fine-grained, but hourly was what they provided to customers who asked). I frequently looked at these--even day by day at times, but only saved a few charts--the images, not the underlying html which would have had the details. Then NSP had a massive data breach, and they no longer provide the data. By chance, I have three charts which cover an entire year: 230803-231004, 231005-240604, and 240604-240805.

Can you extract the daily totals from these charts, and the temperature? There is one bar per day--obviously at different scales since one chart covers 8 months and the others 2. The kWh scale is on the left with one cyan bar per day with a space between days. The temperature scale is on the right, and the temperature is a black line--analog, I'm afraid, not a per-day average.

The charts:

Claude:

Quote This is a great image analysis task. Let me work through each chart carefully.
...
The kWh data is solid for energy analysis. The temperature data is useful for trend/seasonal analysis but I'd treat individual winter-day values with some skepticism — the analog nature of that line plus JPEG compression of very fine chart features made it the limiting factor here.

Graph looked good by the numbers (I know the temperature was smoothed to an approximate daily average). One additional pass to tweak 3 appearance issues, and:

I now have actual daily kWh usage for a year's time in a csv file. Good work, Claude.

PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on FOTS

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