That's just not how they're using drones. They have specialised drone units, as well as drone operators that are attached to ordinary infantry units. If every guy in your unit is operating a drone, you're ridiculously vulnerable to people advancing on your position, if only because a drone, while being accurate, has a stupidly low "rate of fire". See my other comment on suppressing an enemy.
If a couple dozen soldiers with or without armoured vehicles are advancing on your position, you need a certain rate of fire to keep them pinned down to prevent them from advancing. One drone hitting that group every 30 seconds does far less of a job in that regard than a single MG sending out bursts every two seconds. Of course, once you've pinned down the advancing enemy, drones are great, but you can't get away from small arms being essential in combat situations where distances are < 400 m, which is a lot of them.
Even in WWII, most soldiers didn't usually see the enemy they were firing at with small arms. Even if your sentiment that small arms combat is a negligible part of modern warfare was correct (which it isn't), this comment would still be wrong.
Yes, most casualties are not caused by small arms but by artillery. That doesn't means small arms are useless, they just fill a completely different role.
When fighting with small arms, the major goal is fire superiority, which essentially means firing more bullets in the general direction of your enemy than what they fire back. You will generally be firing at either known enemy locations ("A guy is in that building, let's shoot at the building.") or suspected enemy locations ("There might be a guy behind that bush"). This prevents the enemy from popping out and shooting at you so you can manoeuvre on them and use grenades or call in artillery or mortar fire. Sometimes you will hit people as well, because you are shooting at places it's likely that they are (the guy in the building eventually gets hit if enough people shoot enough shots at the building). Very rarely will you see an exposed person that you shoot and observably hit.
Ok, I've done some double checking: The Bantu expansion is approximately what I thought it was. I believe the language group I was thinking about that survived the Bantu expansion was the Khoisan.
My (very coarse) knowledge of this comes from a mixture of reading Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel) and from following it up with some Wikipedia. In short: The genetic makeup in a lot of the world is relatively dominated by the groups that were the first to adopt agriculture in their respective regions. Before the Bantu expansion, phenotypes south of Sahara were more varied, just like the phenotypes in the Americas were more varied before the corresponding "European expansion", or the equivalent expansion that happened in South-East Asia (I don't remember which society stood behind that one).
According to Diamond, we can trace a lot of (most?) surviving human phenotypes and languages back to relatively few societies, which after adopting agriculture, more or less wiped out / displaced neighbouring cultures due to increased resistance to a lot of infectious diseases and massively increased food production / need for land. This mostly happened less than 10 000 years ago, i.e. far too recently for natural selection to have a major impact on things like skin colour, hair type, height, facial features, etc. afterwards.
So: While major trends in phenotypes are of course a result of natural selection / evolutionary pressure in specific regions (resistance to skin cancer / sunburn vs. vitamin D production, or cooling down more efficiently with a wider nose vs. retaining heat with a slimmer one, or having an eye-shape that lets in more light vs. provides more shade), a lot of what we see today is simply a result of what phenotype the first group a given region that adopted agriculture had. This means that looking at the dominant phenotype in a region today will not necessarily give a good impression of what phenotype that is "optimally designed" to survive in the conditions of that region.
I seem to remember that the majority traits south of Sahara (black/very dark skin, and curly hair) can be traced back to something called the "great Bantu expansion", which was essentially the result of a group of people with these traits developing agriculture and wiping out most other peoples south of Sahara, much like the Europeans did to the Americas.
Some cultures south of Sahara did survive, which can be seen both genetically, and in some languages that are completely from other languages in the area (I believe the family of languages with "clicking" sounds is an example).
I'm on my phone now, but I'll have a double check and come back.
I knew it was just a matter of time before we would see something like this, with pretty much everyone having though something along the lines of "why don't they get a drone with a net to take out other drones?". But HOLY SHIT we're actually seeing air-to-air combat between drones now! I can only wonder how long it will be before we start seeing bomber / recon drones with escorting fighter drones being attacked by enemy fighter drones equipped specifically for that task.
Wow, you really must be an actual idiot. I'm honestly kind of impressed.
The whitespace doesn't bother me at all, but holy hell! Any time I'm trying to understand a Python program/library that's anything above a couple thousand lines of code, I instantly feel a burning hate for dynamic typing.
I love Python for scripting- in large part because of dynamic typing. IMO it's just not a language made for building large infrastructures.
Sorry, but I honestly don't get it. I I were to point out the crown jewel of open source, it's gcc. gcc is the backbone and survival condition for so much modern industry that it's not even remotely funny.
Take away gcc, and the world will likely burn for a substantial amount of time until people start making in-house or proprietary alternatives.
Being a phd. myself, I would say it seems likely that the person in question wasn't aware of the research/sweeps that had been done, and was searching through literature with the express purpose of finding out what kind of work had been done on the subject, when they came across this data.
The way I usually find out about a research campaign is by reading articles from said campaign. It's very rare that I'll need to reach out to the authors to ask for more data than what is available in their publications.
If there's any American reading this: Please vote. The world needs you and all your friends to vote. I'm begging you, please get out and vote.
Ok, so you just don't understand how language works. I'll let that be your problem to deal with.
I didn't say that. I'm pointing out that we spent shitloads of money that could have gone to out own schools and healthcare, and a dozens of young soldiers lives (I'm not American), and we were clearly told by both the local population and a bunch of other countries to fuck off.
So yes. I'll say it. Fuck em. We don't owe them shit. We came down there, suppressed the Taliban, built s schools and hospitals, and secured elections, and when we left, the Afghan army, which we had trained and supplied, folded immediately.
We can't be held responsible for them not revolting against a suppressive regime. We gave them all the tools to keep the taliban out, but they chose to fold. That's on them.
It's tragic, but that's how it is. If they're not willing to fight for their own rights, they won't get to enjoy them.
"I am not referring to myself in the third person"
Vs.
"I isn't referring to myself in the third person",
Vs.
"<pronoun> isn't referring to *self in the third person".
You are very clearly referring to yourself in the third person, based on how you're conjugating your verbs.
There are two, gender neutral ways of referring to yourself when using the English language: "I" and "Me", depending on where in the sentence they appear. You're "preferred pronouns" have nothing to do with referring to yourself in the third person, which just comes off as stupid trolling.
Exactly this: The word "Drag" is being used to refer to a third-person in these sentences, I had to double check that it was actually the troll themselves posting this.
I've heard this explanation before as well, that essentially nobody felt any loyalty to the national government. You could kind of tell why when the whole government just evacuated the country when the west left.
Are you suggesting that a new coalition goes back to Afghanistan to throw out the Taliban again? Remember how popular that was last time?
It just doesn't stop baffling me how quickly the Afghan army folded to these people and accepted this as their future... just tragic all around
When I see this kind of videos I honestly have a kind of hard time imagining how they're not just punching through Russian lines left and right.. I mean, I just can't imagine anything withstanding that kind of assault short of heavy air and/or artillery support coming in. Here's to hoping Russias artillery and air advantage deteriorate to a point where these kind of assaults can be exploited and turned in to major breaches some time soon.
Suddenly I started receiving a bunch of scam mails (phishing). I suspect some bot or bot-net is involved, because I've received maybe a couple hundred e-mails at the time of writing, all from different (likely auto-generated) senders. With anything from 2-10 emails per day.
The scam is essentially just some phishing, all related to the same topic. I've mostly been able to mitigate it by filtering out mails containing certain keywords or phrases that show up in the scam mails. However, the mails change relatively often (about once a day) so every now and then something gets through, and I'll update my filter.
My question is really if there's any way I can figure out
- Where this is coming from,
- How they got hold of my email
So that I can try to go after the root cause / prevent other scammers from getting hold of it.
I have a friend thats setting up linux (ubuntu) on his machine. He has a windows installation. I personally use mac as my primary OS, but I've had a linux partition on my machine as well, and I'm having a slightly hard time giving him good advice as to what solution he should choose when setting up linux (I don't even know how I would partition a disk on a windows machine to prep it for dual booting).
My question is quite simple: What are the pros/cons of WSL vs. Dual Booting vs. Virtualbox, both with regards to setup and with regards to usage?
I don't really know if this fits in this community, if not just take it down. The map is from the BlackBird group.
Regarding the recent strikes on the Seim river crossings, I've been speculating what Ukraines plans are. Not too long ago, the Ukranian advance around Korenevo slowed a bit. Then they started systematically hitting the Seim river crossings, of which ISW assesses there is only one left.
If the goal was to encircle and trap Russian units, I would assume that Ukraine would make a hard push through Korenevo to the river. As it looks now, it seems like they are leaving a small corridor open. Whether that is due to Russian resistance or Ukrainian planning I have no idea.
This makes me wonder whether they are intentionally leaving a small opening (See: Sun Tzu) to try to make Russian forces low on resources funnel through the opening where they can inflict heavy casualties, or whether they are trying to force the Russians to expend resources trying to prevent being cut off before they close the net.
In any case, I can see Ukraine wanting to secure another major road towards Korenevo that they can use to supply the offensive.
Of course, I don't want anyone to reveal anything that could violate OPSEC, everything I read is based on OSINT. I'm just interested and would like to hear other peoples speculations.
I'm looking to set up a server of some kind that I can use to store more or less arbitrary files on demand.
While I have quite a bit of programming experience, I have little-to-no experience in the server-space, so I don't really know where I should be getting started/what kind of pitfalls I should be looking out for/what kind of design choices I should be making early on.
In short: I want some system that allows me to take more or less arbitrary files, send them from either my laptop or phone, and have them stored on a drive that I can have lying around somewhere hooked up to some setup. I don't need any automatic backing up, sending files manually is sufficient. The individual files I'll be sending probably won't be exceeding the MB range of sizes. Remotely downloading files from the storage is not an immediate requirement, if I need to retrieve them I can plug directly into the disk. What I want to protect myself against is the "freak accident" type of thing where all the devices I currently have copies of a file on are lost in a fire, while travelling, or something like that.
Does anyone here have any tips for where I should be looking to get started?
I lys av sakene i Sverige og Danmark har dette blitt dagsaktuelt i Norge også. Jeg vil høre hva folk tenker. Stikkord er:
- Ytringsfrihet / misbruk av ytringsfrihet
- Respekt for folks religion / følelser
- Grensesetting mellom beskyttede og ubeskyttede religioner / følelser
- Sikring av Norge og nordmenn mot vold og sanksjoner.
Kun to av ti nordmenn ønsker vindkraft på land. NHO-sjef Ole Erik Almlid mener resten må tenke seg om.
Her er jeg helt klart i statistisk mindretall, så jeg håper noen kan fortelle meg hva de tenker. Jeg mener vi helt klart må bygge vindkraft på land hvis vi ønsker å nå noen som helst "klimamål" (altså unngå at verden brenner/drukner). Jeg får alt for ofte inntrykk av at "alle" er enige i at vi må bygge mer fornybar energi, mens de samtidig kjemper med nebb og klør mot de tiltakene som er realistiske, gjennomførbare, og kan fungere.
Jeg vil gjerne at noen som er imot vindkraft på land opplyser meg litt: Hva mener du vi bør gjøre i stedet? Hvorfor ikke gjøre det i tillegg? Tror du andre tiltak alene er nok? Er det ikke en realitet at det hjelper lite å beskytte lokalmiljøet mot vindkraftutbygging nå, hvis det uansett blir ødelagt av flom, tørke, forsuring av vannet, fremmedarter pga. temperaturendring, jordskred (mer ekstrem nedbør), osv. om 30-50 år?
Linket artikkel:
Flere ordførere har lukket døren for vindkraft på land. – Ta debatten på nytt, sier NHO-sjefen.
Kun to av ti nordmenn ønsker vindkraft på land. NHO-sjef Ole Erik Almlid mener resten må tenke seg om.
Norge kan ha for lite kraft allerede i 2027.
Skal vi unngå det, bør det bygges 5–10 terawattimer (TWh) med vindkraft på land. Det slo Energikommisjonen fast i februar.
Men selv om åtte av ti er enig i at Norge må bygge ut mer fornybar energi, mener kun to av ti nordmenn at det bør gjøres med vindkraft. Det viser en ny undersøkelse fra Næringslivets Hovedorganisasjon (NHO) (se graf nederst i saken).
Administrerende direktør i NHO, Ole Erik Almlid, mener vi må ta vindkraft-debatten på nytt.
– Det store løftet som skal gjøres, klarer vi ikke uten vindkraft på land, sier han.
Vil akseptere vindkraft
I flere år har motstanden mot vindkraft på land vært sterk. En kartlegging gjort av Nettavisen viste at kun to av 79 ordførere ville si ja til vindkraft i sin kommune. Tall fra Cicero viser at motstanden er fallende, men fremdeles er 35 prosent helt imot vindkraft på land.
NHOs undersøkelse viser derimot at langt flere er villig til å akseptere det, hvis politikere og næringsliv sukrer pillen (se graf under).
Vindkraft i industriområder
NHO spurte nordmenn hva som skal til for å akseptere vindkraft på land. 33 prosent vil si ja hvis vindturbinene blir bygget på områder som allerede er regulert til industri.
Det er i tråd med Energikommisjonens forslag om å bygge nærvindmøller.
I tillegg vil nordmenn at vindkraften skal sikre mer inntekter til kommunen og flere arbeidsplasser.
– Jeg er veldig glad for å se at vindkraft på land har så stor støtte, under gitte forutsetninger. Det viser at bildet kanskje er mer sammensatt enn vi har trodd, sier Almlid.
Ifølge ham åpner dette et rom for å diskutere vindkraft på lokalbefolkningens premisser, fremfor å avvise det blankt.
18 prosent vil ikke gå med på det under noen omstendigheter.
I Møre og Romsdal og Vestland er henholdsvis 28 og 24 prosent av befolkningen helt imot vindkraft. Fem av de 13 områdene NVE har pekt ut for vindkraft ligger helt eller delvis i disse fylkene.
Ordfører-duell om vindkraft
Almlid oppfordrer landets mange ordførere og ordførerkandidater til å løfte debatten i årets lokalvalgkamp.
– Ta diskusjonen om det er mulig å ha vindkraft i deres kommune. De som har sagt nei, ta en ny diskusjon. Men gjør det på en ordentlig måte, og gjør det i dialog med befolkningen.
Almlid tror flere kommuner kan ombestemme seg fordi situasjonen er annerledes nå. Med kraftunderskudd vil strømprisene bli høyere, og allerede nå er det bedrifter som ikke blir etablert fordi de ikke har tilgang til kraften de har behov for.
Han mener tror flere vil kunne si ja til vindkraft hvis de får mer igjen for det.
– Jeg har veldig tro på gulrot.
Positive sider
NHO representerer bedrifter innen kraftkrevende industri, kraftprodusenter og offshorenæringer som skal elektrifisere. Likevel mener Almlid det er langt flere enn hans medlemsbedrifter som vil nytte godt av vindkraften.
Han mener politikere og næringslivsledere må bli bedre til å fremheve hvordan vindkraft kan gi noe tilbake til samfunnet. Et eksempel er at utbyggingen kan skape arbeidsplasser og levende lokalsamfunn.
– Den type utbygging som vindkraft på land innebærer, må gjøres i godt samarbeid med lokalbefolkningen. Og det må gjøres på en måte som sikrer inntekter til kommunen og verner sårbare områder.
Skjære gjennom
Men det haster å ta en avgjørelse. Det er fire år til Norge kan gå med kraftunderskudd, og utbygging av vindparker kan ta lang tid.
Debatt er bra, men til slutt må noen skjære gjennom. Såpass er Almlid tydelig på.
Han bruker motstanden mot vannkraftutbygging på 1970- og ’80-tallet som eksempel.
– I dag er alle glade for at vi har vannkraften. Om mange år vil også mange være glade for at vi har både vindkraft, vannkraft og solkraft.
Vindkraftdebatten krever at næringsliv og politikere tar tydelig lederskap, mener Almlid.
– Vi må lære av det vi gjorde på åttitallet, da vi synliggjorde hvorfor vannkraften var viktig. Men det viser også at det å skjære gjennom, er viktig for å få til de langsiktige målene man satt, sikre arbeidsplasser og rimelige strømpriser.
Almlid understreker at det å si nei til vindkraft, også får konsekvenser.
– Sier vi ja, så har det en kostnad, og da må vi bøte på det best mulig. Men hvis vi sier nei, så har det en kostnad også.
Nei til atomkraft
Undersøkelsen viser også stor støtte til utbygging av atomkraft. Almlid har derimot ikke tro på at Norge skal bli en stor atomkraft-nasjon.
– For å nå 2030-målene, så er ikke atomkraft svaret på kort sikt. Det er for langt frem og kommer til å være kostbart.
Han vil heller ha mer av alt annet.
– Svaret på utfordringen som Energikommisjonen har løftet frem, er både og – ikke enten eller. Det er vind på land, vind til havs, mer vannkraft, mer solkraft og mer energieffektivisering.
Back in the day, on other forums than this one, there were tags to differentiate between porn (nsfw) and gore (nsfl). This was nice for people browsing new that had no problem seeing tits, but wanted to avoid degloved hands.
Throughout the years, the NSFL tag went out of use. What happened?
I remember back in the day when people would "Jailbreak" iPhones, but never really picked up on what they were doing other than that it let them do stuff that those of us with "non-jailbroken" iPhones couldn't do.
Are they just booting another OS, e.g. android? Also: why haven't I heard of it in a while? Is it not possible on newer iPhones?
Det har kommet frem noe jeg ikke var klar over i forbindelse med aksjehandelsaken til Ola Borten Moe: En stortingsrepresentant har (per grunnloven) ikke lov til å trekke seg, men er nødt til å bli sittende ut perioden. Det er (slik jeg forstår det) heller ikke lov å skrive ut nyvalg/oppløse stortinget i løpet av en stortingsperiode, slik som man kan i mange andre land.
Jeg ser at det er gode argumenter både for og mot dette, og er interessert i å høre hva folk synes om det. Bør en politiker kunne trekke seg / utvises fra stortinget hvis de misbruker folkets tillit? Bør det kunne skrives ut nyvalg hvis stortinget går i vranglås og ingen klarer å samle flertall for noe?
Nedenfor er det Aftenpostens leder har å si om saken:
Å sitte på Stortinget er ingen straff
Ola Borten Moe må nok jobbe med motivasjonen. Men han ba om tillit fra velgerne. Da må han stå løpet ut.
Det kom et lite hjertesukk fra Ola Borten Moe fredag. Han varslet at han går av som statsråd, trekker seg som nestleder i Senterpartiet og ikke stiller ved stortingsvalget i 2025. Men han slipper ikke ut av Stortinget før denne perioden er over.
Moe virket ikke spesielt motivert for en slags åpen soning på Løvebakken. Det er mulig å forstå. Men hverken hans eget parti eller andre bør lytte til oppfordringen han kom med om å se på dette regelverket på nytt.
Moe peker på at andre land gir folk mulighet til å trekke seg fra nasjonalforsamlingen.
Ulike demokratier har forskjellige løsninger både når det gjelder dette og andre ting. Norge skiller seg fra mange andre, også ved at det ikke er mulig å oppløse parlamentet og skrive ut nyvalg. Det er en styrke for det norske demokratiet. Partiene tvinges til å finne løsninger sammen når velgerne har sagt sitt. Det har bidratt til en kultur med brede forlik om viktige saker som blant annet pensjon.
Plikten til å stå løpet ut for den som velges til Stortinget, er grunnlovsfestet. Unntak er blitt gitt for representanter som får internasjonale toppverv, som da Jens Stoltenberg (Ap) ble generalsekretær i Nato i 2014.
En generell mulighet til å trekke seg ville ha flere uheldige sider. For velgerne ville det blir mindre forutsigbart hvem de egentlig stemmer på hvis en toppkandidat plutselig kan trekke seg etter valget og noen andre rykker opp. Partier kan fristes til å toppe listen med kjendiser som etterpå finner ut at de har morsommere ting å gjøre enn å sitte i komitémøter og votere til langt på natt, mens andre nyter lyse sommerkvelder i juni.
En risiko er også at velgernes avgjørelse undergraves. Det kan oppstå press i offentligheten for å få en representant til å trekke seg. Hvis det lages en nødutgang fra Stortinget, kan også partiene få enda mer makt ved at brysomme representanter kan skvises ut.
Moe sa på pressekonferansen at han er innstilt på å gjøre en jobb de neste to årene for velgerne i Sør-Trøndelag som ga ham tillit i 2021. Det er fullt forståelig om motivasjonen hans akkurat nå ikke er på topp. Men han vil trolig – og forhåpentlig – klare å mobilisere sine sterke sider som politiker igjen.
Den som har sagt ja til å stille til Stortinget, og som får velgernes tillit, må stå løpet ut. I gode og vonde dager.
I'm getting into trad climbing, after quite a few years of indoor and outdoor sport and bouldering. I'm very aware that trad climbing involves more risk, especially if you climb above your ability and/or are bad/inexperienced at placing runners. Does anyone here have tips on how best to practice protecting a route to the point where you feel safe enough to climb a difficult crux with only trad protection below you?
Inspired by the linked XKCD. Using 60% instead of 50% because that's an easy filter to apply on rottentomatoes.
I'll go first: I think "Sherlock Holmes: A game of Shadows" was awesome, from the plot to the characters ,and especially how they used screen-play to highlight how Sherlocks head works in these absurd ways.
Taking nickel from rainforests destroys 30 times more life than getting it from the depths
I'm immediately sceptical to the idea of ruining even more areas of nature than we already are, but at the same time I recognise that if we want to build feasible green energy and storage, we need rare-earth metals and heavy metals. This might be a good alternative to massive deforestation.
Since the article is paywalled:
Pushed by the threat of climate change, rich countries are embarking on a grand electrification project. Britain, France and Norway, among others, plan to ban the sale of new internal-combustion cars. Even where bans are not on the statute books, electric-car sales are growing rapidly. Power grids are changing too, as wind turbines and solar panels displace fossil-fuelled power plants. The International Energy Agency (iea) reckons the world will add as much renewable power in the coming five years as it did in the past 20.
All that means batteries, and lots of them—both to propel the cars and to store energy from intermittent renewable power stations. Demand for the minerals from which those batteries are made is soaring. Nickel in particular is in short supply. The element is used in the cathodes of high-quality electric-car batteries to boost capacity and cut weight. The iea calculates that, if it is to meet its decarbonisation goals, the world will need to be producing 6.3m tonnes of nickel a year by 2040, roughly double what it managed in 2022. That adds up to some 80m tonnes of nickel in total between now and then.
Over the past five years most of the growth in demand has been met by Indonesia, which has been bulldozing rainforests to get at the ore beneath. In 2017 the country produced just 17% of the world’s nickel, according to cru, a metals research firm. Today it is responsible for around half, or 1.6m tonnes a year, and that number is rising. cru thinks Indonesia will account for 85% of production growth between now and 2027. Even so, that is unlikely to be enough to meet rising demand. And as Indonesian nickel production increases, it is expected to replace palm-oil production as the primary cause of deforestation in the country.
But there is an alternative. A patch of Pacific Ocean seabed called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (ccz) is dotted with trillions of potato-sized lumps of nickel, cobalt, manganese and copper, all of which are of interest to battery-makers (see map). Collectively the nodules hold an estimated 340m tonnes of nickel alone—more than three times the United States Geological Survey’s estimate of the world’s land-based reserves. Companies have been keen to mine them for several years. With the coming expiry, on July 9th, of an international bureaucratic deadline, that prospect looks more likely than ever.
It’s better down where it’s wetter That date marks two years since the island nation of Nauru, on behalf of a mining company it sponsors called The Metals Company (tmc), told the International Seabed Authority (isa), an appendage of the United Nations, that it wanted to mine a part of the ccz to which it has been granted access. That triggered a requirement for the isa to complete rules on commercial use of the deposits. If those regulations are not ready by July 9th—and it seems they will not be—then the isa is required to “consider and provisionally approve” tmc’s application. (The firm itself says it hopes to wait until rules can be agreed.)
tmc’s plan is about as straightforward as underwater mining can be. Its first target is a patch of the ccz called nori-d, which covers about 2.5m hectares of ocean floor (an area about 20% bigger than Wales). Gerard Barron, tmc’s boss, estimates there are about 3.8m tonnes of nickel in the area. Since the nodules are simply sitting on the bottom of the ocean, the firm plans to send a large robot to the seabed to hoover them up. The gathered nodules will then be sucked up to a support ship on the surface through a high-tech pipe, similar to ones used in the oil-and-gas industry. Mr Barron says that his firm can break even on nodule collection at nickel prices as low as $6,000 per tonne; nickel currently sells for about $22,000 per tonne.
The support ship will wash off any sediment, then offload the nodules to a second ship which will ferry them back to shore for processing. The surplus sediment, meanwhile, will be released back into the sea at a depth of around 1,500 metres, far below most ocean life. And tmc is not the only firm interested. A Belgian firm called Global Sea Mineral Resources—a subsidiary of Deme, a dredging giant—is also keen, and has tested a sea-floor robot and riser system similar to tmc’s. Three Chinese firms—Beijing Pioneer, China Merchants and China Minmetals—are circling too, though they are reckoned to be further behind technologically.
As with mining on land, taking nickel from the sea will damage the surrounding ecosystem. Although the ccz is deep, dark and cold, it is not lifeless. tmc’s robot will destroy many organisms it drives across, as well as any that live on the nodules it collects. It will also kick up plumes of sediment, some of which will drift onto nearby organisms and kill them (though research suggests the plumes tend not to rise more than two metres above the seabed).
Adrian Glover, a marine biologist at the Natural History Museum in London, points out that, because life evolved first in the oceans and only later moved to the land, the majority of the genetic diversity on the planet is still found underwater. Although the deep-ocean floor is dark and nutrient-poor, it nevertheless supports thousands of unique species. Most are microbes, but there are also worms, sponges and other invertebrates. The diversity of life is “very high”, says Dr Glover.
Yet in several respects, mining the seabed has a smaller environmental footprint than mining in Indonesia. The harsh deep-sea environment means that, although its inhabitants may be highly diverse, they are not very abundant. A paper published in Nature in 2016 found that a given square metre of ccz supports between one and two living organisms, weighing a couple of grams at most. A square metre of Indonesian rainforest, by contrast, contains about 30,000 grams of plant biomass alone, and plenty more if you weigh up primates, birds, reptiles and insects too.
But it is not enough to simply weigh the biomass in each ecosystem. The amount of nickel that can be produced per hectare is also relevant. The 2.5m hectares of seabed that tmc hopes to exploit is expected to yield about 3.8m tonnes of nickel, or about 1.5 tonnes per hectare.
Getting hard numbers for land-based mining is tricky, for the firms that do it are less transparent than those hoping to mine the seabed. But investigative reporting from the Pulitzer Centre, a non-profit media outlet, suggests each hectare of rainforest on Sulawesi, the Indonesian island at the centre of the country’s nickel industry, will produce around 675 tonnes of nickel. (One reason land deposits produce so much more nickel, despite the lower quality of the ore, is because the ore extends far beneath the surface, whereas nodules exist only on the seabed.)
All that makes a very rough comparison possible. Around 13 kilograms of biomass would be lost for every tonne of ccz nickel mined. Each tonne mined on Sulawesi would destroy around 450kg of plants alone—plus an unknown amount of animal biomass, too.
Pick your poison There are other environmental arguments in favour of mining the seabed. The nodules contain much higher concentrations of metal than deposits on land, which means less energy is required to process them. Peter Tom Jones, the director of the ku Leuven Institute for Sustainable Metals and Materials, in Belgium, reckons that processing the nodules will produce about 40% less greenhouse-gas emissions than those from terrestrial ore.
And because the nodules must be taken away for processing anyway, companies like tmc can be encouraged to choose places where energy comes with low emissions. Indonesian nickel ore, in contrast, is uneconomic unless it is processed near where it was mined. That almost always means using electricity from coal plants or diesel generators. Alex Laugharne, an analyst at cru, reckons Indonesian nickel production emits about 60 tonnes of carbon dioxide for each tonne of nickel. An audit of tmc’s plans carried out by Benchmark Minerals Intelligence, a firm based in London, found that each tonne of nickel harvested from the seabed would produce about six tonnes of co2.
In any case, metal collected from the seabed is unlikely to entirely replace that mined from the rainforest. Battery production is growing so fast that nickel will probably be dug up from wherever it can be found. But if the ocean nodules can be brought to market affordably, the sheer volume of metal available may start to ease the pressure on Indonesian forests. The arguments are unlikely to stay theoretical for long. Mr Barron of tmc aims to start producing nickel and other metals from the seabed by the end of next year.
Correction (July 6th 2023): An earlier version of this piece said global nickel production would need to reach 48m tonnes per year by 2040, and would total 320m tonnes by 2040. The correct figures are 6.3m tonnes and 80m tonnes. Apologies for the error.
I remember reading somewhere that mathematical symbols make up an "incomplete" written language (or something like that). I commonly formulate problems, or complete sentences using only mathematical symbols. From a linguistic perspective, what separates mathematical symbols from "complete" writing systems?
What is it, what are its consequences, how does it work, why is it there, why do we care about it?
I mean, I've heard that you can typically only survive about three days without water, but what exactly causes your body to fail when you dehydrate too much?
I guess one point is lack of salts (if you sweat a lot) but I'm specifically wondering about lack of water (although a closer explanation about how lack of salts will kill you is also appreciated)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/441437
> He would be the perfect person to AMA as he’s already associated with Reddit revolts, and it would result in tremendous media coverage and mark fediverse as a viable alternative to Reddit. What do you think?
