The Oldest Building in Every US State - <AUTHOR> https://www.archdaily.com/898839/the-oldest-building-in-every-us-state <comment><USER2> At what point is the Delaware Block House[1] still the original building[2]? You can see the roof was replaced recently, and presumably the rendering[3]..

[1]: Delaware, the Block House [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_House](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_House)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)

[3]: In the episode "Heroes and Villains" (Only Fools and Horses UK Sitcom), Trigger wins an award for having owned the same broom for 20 years. He reveals that it has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles, but insists it is still the same broom.

<comment><USER3> OMG, am I still I while all my molecules constantly replace?

(Yes yes, persistent neural structure... but, persistent broom structure?)

<comment><USER4> broom?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://foolsandhorses.weebly.com/triggers- broom.html](http://foolsandhorses.weebly.com/triggers-broom.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Georgia's is incorrect. The oldest in Georgia is the "Pirates House" in Savannah: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_buildings_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_buildings_in_Georgia_\(U.S._state\))

<comment><USER6> The article says it traces the "oldest intact building in each US state". Wikipedia says that only a "portion of the structure [the Pirates' House] was built in 1734". It sounds like the latter doesn't match their definition.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure what their criteria is, as the part of the Alamo in their image was started in 1744 and never actually completed. (Depending on your definition of "completed," I suppose.)

<comment><USER8> The article isn't consistent, either - some of these are mentioned as having been jacked up and moved several times, whereas other claim to be the oldest building in the state on the same foundation, some are heavily reconstructed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's no way the Alamo is the oldest building in Texas. A cursory googlin' turns up this, for example":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_San_Juan_Capistrano_(T...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_San_Juan_Capistrano_\(Texas\))

<comment><USER9> Which says 1731, a few years after 1724.

<comment><USER7> I mean, the building they use for the picture of the Alamo was built in 1744. So the whole thing's a confusing mess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Neat post, but I was disappointed to see cartoons instead of photos of the buildings.

<comment><USER11> You can't even copy and paste the building's name to do a google search

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why are like Cliff Dwellings not used for all states that apply?

A cursory search gives me Montezuma Castle in Arizona.

<comment> jay-anderson I was thinking the same thing. It's an odd list. It may make sense to exclude cliff dwellings if the list should be the oldest buildings still being used. Still, old, well-made buildings are very neat even if not technically the oldest.

<comment><USER12> Well what's weird is that they have Mesa Verde for Colorado. So they're not excluded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Didn't the natives have houses or did they just not survive the colonisation?

<comment><USER14> Two indigenous structures are listed; Colorado and New Mexico both have old pueblo settlements.

Many of the indigenous villages in the mid-Atlantic area were burned by the English for one reason or another. I suspect many permanent settlements elsewhere suffered similar fates.

<comment><USER15> So does Utah- Hovenweep National Monument is just inside southeastern Utah, dating from 1200-1300. I'm not sure why it wasn't listed.

<comment><USER14> The listing is "oldest intact buildings" and Hovenweep is a ruin. Though, I'd agree that the listing, as published, is a bit strange, given the Molalla Log House is also a ruin (collapsed roof).

<comment><USER15> Fair enough - but then we could also discuss the restored kiva at Edge of the Cedars. It isn't a replica, it is a restoration from the original structure. Would that count?

I guess the point being simply that it seems more thought could have been put into the states where Native American structures have survived.

<comment><USER14> I agree. It's a Euro-centric list, no queston.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't know how a Personal Loans website is responsible for old building illustrations, but it worked, you made me look.

<comment><USER17> That personal loan website is where it was originally posted. The original was posted on July 3rd compared to the ArchDaily article which was posted on July 24th.

There is even a note about it at the bottom of the ArchDaily post.

 _This article was originally published by NetCredit and has been republished with permission._

Original: [https://www.netcredit.com/blog/oldest-building-in-every- us-s...](https://www.netcredit.com/blog/oldest-building-in-every-us-state/)

<comment><USER16> Thanks. I missed that note.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Really cool illustrations!

<comment><USER19> Sure, but no one wants illustrations of houses. They want photos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Would be interesting to see a similar list for every country in the world.

<comment><USER21> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_buildings#By_ag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_buildings#By_age)

Europe's building are just a little older.

<comment><USER5> The oldest 'man-made structures' in America are much older: [http://articles.latimes.com/1997/sep/19/news/mn-34091](http://articles.latimes.com/1997/sep/19/news/mn-34091)

<comment><USER9> _North_ America. The other Americas have ones that still have the title of oldest, such as Sechin Bajo.

<comment><USER5> :-) You are absolutely correct. I also like the 'tongue-in-cheek' phrase 'the other Americas'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was hoping there would be Google Maps links for some of these, so I could look them up in Street View.

Unfortunately, typing the names of some of these buildings into Google Maps doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER23> In Washington State, Bellingham's "Pickett house" is "the oldest documented wooden structure on its original site in Washington.". [http://www.historylink.org/File/20594](http://www.historylink.org/File/20594)

(The Fort Nisqually/Hudson's Bay granary was moved to Tacoma in 1934 and later 'restored'.)

</comment><comment><USER24> In many of these states there are still buildings that were made by native Americans far before the ones listed.

<comment><USER18> Like what? There are two native American dwellings listed, but what are more examples?

<comment><USER25> On the very first state I checked, Arizona lists something from the late 1700s rather than [https://www.nps.gov/moca/index.htm](https://www.nps.gov/moca/index.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> New Jersey log cabin, for sale for $2,900,000:

[https://www.weichert.com/73240434/](https://www.weichert.com/73240434/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Hawaii seems wrong: there are fort like structures still standing that are obviously hundreds of years old.

</comment><comment><USER28> Oldest building 1637. Sorry, but as a european I have to say: "Nice try" ;).

<comment><USER29> As the saying goes, Americans think 100 years is a long time, and Europeans think 100 miles/kilometers is a long way.

<comment><USER30> Never heard that before, but it rings true.

Our house (Americans) is from 1909 and we think its crazy how old it is.

Our friends from the Netherlands came to visit and informed us that the next day they would visit DC (2-3 hours drive) and then swing by the upper peninsula of Michigan the day after (20+ hours).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> These buildings all look pristine in the photos, almost too pristine.

</comment><comment><USER32> What about native pueblos? Mound builder structures? Grottos? Historians say 'oldest building' but mean 'oldest western building'

<comment><USER32> Taos Pueblo for instance - built around 1000AD, still occupied. Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe - 1610. Cliff dwellings of the American Southwest - 750AD, should be top of the list in 4 states.

<comment><USER33> If you read the article, you'll see that the pueblos are mentioned.

<comment><USER32> Ah! I didn't scroll all the way down. Just took other comments about '1600s' and concluded, most of American History ignored again. It happens a lot.

Look at any New England building claiming to be 'oldest this or that'. Yet New Mexico, Arizona, California have buildings predating them by centuries. Even boring ol Iowa has mounds (thousands originally) constructed in the 1400s.

<comment><USER34> Whoever did the map really did the list a disservice by putting the South Dakota site on the top. It makes you assume it was the oldest on the list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's always amusing to find out what Americans think is old. Most of the buildings around here are mid to late Victorian with the odd Elizabethan dwelling sitting about two feet lower than anywhere else. The church is 900 years old with the present building dating from 1483.

I chuckle when I realise we have public conveniences here in the UK that are older than Canada.

<comment><USER36> So question. I always see statements like this online. And I sometimes wonder what is the point. Like it's a colony. The oldest structure are from societies that are all but dead. What's the value of statements like that?

<comment><USER37> People can't seem to help it. Much the same as when people go abroad and compare everything unfavorably to their home country. Seems like it's reflexive.</comment></comment></comment>


Legacy of Australia's National Broadband Network: How Not to Run Infra Projects - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-05/nbn-legacy-how-not-to-run-infrastructure-project-telstra/11382398 <comment><USER2> God, as an Australian it irritates me so much to continually see Australia screw itself over for short-term gain, rather than long term vision, time and time again. This mentality shows that Australia is not ready to be leaders, or competitive in many of tomorrow's industries.

A real shame.

I moved to Germany many years ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> Over the years, the proposed build for my area went from fibre to wifi to satellite. Moved to New Zealand. At my new property, being offered a gigabit connection. AFAIK there's nowhere on the NBN that supports that.</comment>


Russian nuclear scientists arrested for 'Bitcoin mining plot' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43003740 <comment><USER2> Interested in how much they potentially got out of this!

<comment> Tech-Noir I don't know how accurate any of this is, or how supercomputers or Bitcoin have changed in the past half decade, or how seriously such comparisons can or should be taken, but:

        The suspects had tried to use one of Russia's
        most powerful supercomputers to mine Bitcoins

4-5 years ago:

        the entire bitcoin network is roughly 256 times
        faster than all the top 500 supercomputers around
        the globe combined.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2013/11/28/global-b...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2013/11/28/global- bitcoin-computing-power-now-256-times-faster-than-top-500-supercomputers- combined/)</comment></comment>


FBI takes down over 400 .onion sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/more-than-400-.onion-addresses-including-dozens-of-dark-market-sites-targeted-as-part-of-global-enforcement-action-on-tor-network <comment><USER2> Was anyone charged with a crime? It disturbs me that the FBI has free rein to seize people's property without even giving them their day in court.

The Fourth Amendment says "nor shall any person [...] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". I don't see any process of law here. The FBI is law enforcement, not judicial.

<comment><USER3> That interpretation of "due process" seems to neither make sense nor be just.

Are police officers or FBI agents who are being shot at prohibited from shooting back at their attacker, because that would deprive life without due process of law?

Can suspects not be arrested until a court case has exhausted all its appeals, because that would deprive liberty without due process of law?

The FBI (presumably) had a warrant here, after gathering evidence, and the cooperation of various other agencies including a few district attorneys. The US (hopefully) is a land in which the process of acquiring a warrant before actually seizing anything or arresting anyone is so commonplace that it isn't even mentioned. There was a process of law, it involved the courts, you didn't see it because it didn't need to be mentioned, and it didn't involve the completion of a criminal case.

(There are separate safeguards, against police officers killing people without reason, arrests happening without a warrant, or liberty or property being deprived for unreasonably long while a court case is artificially stalled. Some of those safeguards are not as effective as a free people would hope. But I don't think that's what you were referencing, and I don't think you can make a case that any of those happened here.)

<comment><USER4> > The US (hopefully) is a land in which the process of acquiring a warrant > before actually seizing anything or arresting anyone is so commonplace that > it isn't even mentioned.

That is not true any more. There was a discussion [1] two months ago about the changes in the law regarding property seizure post 9/11\. They call it "asset forfeiture".

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8280889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8280889)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The SR2 guy 'defcon' was also selling his services as a .onion developer/ops so likely all these other sites he set up for vendors and they were seized when he was caught and cooperated. From the FBI complaint he was completely careless like all other recently busted darknet admins and mods so wouldn't be surprised if they were all hosted at the same host too.

<comment><USER6> Every time something like this happens, lots of people shout that the sky is falling and Tor is "dead."

Thank you for putting forward a reasonable hypothesis amid the FUD.

That being said, I doubt he was a developer for 399 other sites, thats quite a few. I think a "watering hole" style attack is likely here, but I think there must be a part of the story that hasn't been revealed; perhaps there was a federation of .onion marketplaces that Benthall was a part of.

<comment><USER7> I work in the security industry, and normally I'm the first one to argue against the FUD, but this time I'm not so sure. Clearly, out of these ~400 a decent portion were probably on the same server or in the same datacenter, and many of their operators were obviously quite careless in terms of personal, infrastructure, and application security (as has always been the case and will likely forever remain the case).

But it's still a pretty high number. I would not completely rule out some sort of trick or analysis being employed by global law enforcement to identify the ISP or datacenter being used to host hidden services. It may just be a matter of them plotting the volume of Tor traffic around the world and narrowing it down from there; it's likely not that difficult to distinguish Tor traffic from a popular hidden service and Tor traffic from a relay, exit node, or client.

Note the bottom of the FBI's press release:

>The law enforcement authorities of Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, whose actions have been coordinated through Eurojust and Europol's EC3, provided substantial assistance.

That's a lot of countries. Many unscrupulous hosting providers are located in those countries. It's possible that the FBI narrowed their search down to individual foreign ISPs, then had foreign law enforcement work with ISPs, NOCs, and hosting companies to place selective taps and narrow things down even further, centered purely around analysis of Tor traffic volume.

Or they may have found a general purpose vulnerability. Or perhaps a combination of the two.

These tweets by a (not currently arrested) popular hidden service operator are also very interesting:

[https://twitter.com/loldoxbin/status/530764492326838272](https://twitter.com/loldoxbin/status/530764492326838272)

[https://twitter.com/loldoxbin/status/530766985794420736](https://twitter.com/loldoxbin/status/530766985794420736)

[https://twitter.com/loldoxbin/status/530768176007884800](https://twitter.com/loldoxbin/status/530768176007884800)

[https://twitter.com/loldoxbin/status/530768358355251200](https://twitter.com/loldoxbin/status/530768358355251200)

[https://twitter.com/loldoxbin/status/530891182612955136](https://twitter.com/loldoxbin/status/530891182612955136)

Tor is not dead, but anyone running an illicit hidden service should probably be concerned, at least until further details are released or discovered. It's entirely possible that they took down all of these services purely through typical cybercrime investigative techniques, but I think it's unwise to rule out something a bit more powerful this early on.

<comment><USER6> I seem to stand corrected.

I guess we'll have to watch this story very carefully.

I'm also "in" the security industry (I'm applying to my first jobs, but that is my chosen career path), and I do not believe Tor is sufficient to protect one's identity; but it irks me when people dismiss it outright because it has flaws.

The flaws are serious and should be better known, but nothing will ever excuse you from maintaining proper OPSEC and employing defense in depth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some here may know me as a critic of overreaching and aggressive cyber enforcement (and related surveillance).

First, I'm quite happy that this activity does not appear to be the result of wide scale infrastructure sabotage.

And I am quite happy that the FBI is doing its job to combat crime that is facilitated using (abusing) the technologies that are bastions for free speech, privacy and whistleblowing.

Of course the flipside is that this means that there are capabilities in place to disrupt anonymizing technologies - the technologies make investigation more expensive but ultimately are merely an inconvenience to the powers that be. So when it comes down to it, anonymizing services and Tor can't be trusted to secure you if you have something to say where your life is in danger.

The FBI (/others) wants the court system to replace technology as the gatekeeper to investigation. The court system, however, is brittle. It takes time, it fails, and it responds to external pressure - there are repeated studies that show that the length of time persons in US court systems are convicted to serve is highly correlated with how long it has been since the precising judge has eaten his last meal. There are also extralegal rights that law enforcement are given by legislature and evolving interpretations of what both these legal and extralegal rights entail.

But law enforcement also is justified from their perspective. They don't want there to be criminals that get away with crimes simply because criminals load up some software that obfuscate their identities, locations and accounts. If you look at this published list there _are_ criminal organizations that you and I as taxpayers do want taken down. (I recognize that the sale and consumption of drugs is a greyer area of morality as drug use is sometimes victimless).

I think that for the most part law enforcement is capable of taking down these services and organizations other ways - ordering assault rifles and monitoring the drops - and that this provides opportunities for the government to enforce the law without sabotaging communications infrastructure. Taking down some .onion addresses doesn't do too much besides annoy the services for a time anyway unless the services operationally are not capable of standing up a new address and communicating with customers anonymously.

All in all it's a blurry line but I feel safer with places that are anonymous and secure than I do by trusting a court system and legal process that can only see, process, and be accountable for so much.

<comment><USER9> On the bright side it leaves us in the same position as man has always been- rather charted territory.

I've been skeptical of Tor et-al from day one. I didn't have provable reasons why, but the court has always served as the gatekeeper to investigation, and the Tors of the world seemed like the sort of hubris we techies are so prone to- _" Age-old social justice problems man has struggled with for thousands of years can be trivially fixed with my technology!"_

It is my opinion that we (techies) overestimate ourselves. Tor is useful, but it would have to be perfect (which no technology can be) to protect you from the flawed judicial system. Which is why I think we are destined for heartbreak, and the longer we forestall that realization the worse off we will be, for we will ignore the judicial system and allow it to become ever more broken.

As a sidenote I find it bitter satire; people who cannot accept the will of others seeking tools to forcefully impose their _own_ morality on the world instead

<comment><USER10> > As a sidenote I find it bitter satire; people who cannot accept the will of > others seeking tools to forcefully impose their own morality on the world > instead

By this do you mean those that can't accept the will of others comprise the judicial system or those not prepared to submit to it and pursuing alternate avenues? Your comment works either way, but if you're talking about those attempting to place themselves outside the judicial system that's less them imposing their own morality on the world and simply not allowing the world to impose its morality on them.

<comment><USER9> Mostly the former. Some think they are the latter, but a lot of outright criminals will explain to you how they are actually justified using their own carefully-crafted moral code that always _conveniently_ allows for their behavior. That's what I mean by forcing their own morality on the world.

<comment><USER10> Interesting point. Nobody thinks they're the bad guy, but some people are only considered the bad guy by the state, rather than almost everybody. That's the latter group to which I referred.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As little as 50 years ago, selling these drugs wasn't illegal in the US. Look how far we've come.

<comment><USER12> In response to negativity around the drug war, I'd say that for the first time in a long time we should be very optimistic about the future of legalization in the United States. Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Colorado, and D.C. now have full legalization in legislation. Florida got nearly 58% on medical marijuana vote that unfortunately needed 60%. 23 states have legalized medical marijuana. (Up to date map: [https://localtvwtvr.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/marijuana- ma...](https://localtvwtvr.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/marijuana-ma..). ) More importantly, criminalization is moving towards citations across the nation. We are getting rid of draconian mandatory sentencing for drug crimes. This is all very good news, and while it's slow, remember that the government moves slow, but as long as it keeps moving in the right direction, we can look forward to a time in which full legalization of all scheduled drugs may eventually become a reality. So instead of being defeatist or spouting sarcasm, step up and support the people making this happen. It's not just public opinion changing, it's SSDP, MPP, NORML putting money, time, and effort into lobbying for these changes. That's against stiff competition from lobbying being done by prescription drug manufacturers ([http://www.thenation.com/article/180493/anti-pot-lobbys- big-...](http://www.thenation.com/article/180493/anti-pot-lobbys-big-...)) Now is a time of pendulum swing in the right direction, and we should be keeping the momentum going behind it.

<comment><USER13> I think the term "legalization" needs to be qualified. The situation is moving towards extremely limited government-controlled privatization. Citizens can buy recreational pot in an approved store but it's still illegal to grow a single plant in your own back yard.

I'm almost positive someone will be absolutely indignant at my temerity for suggesting the above, but it's worth thinking about what real legalization would look like.

<comment><USER14> It'll never be like growing tomatoes. It'll probably end up like alcohol. You can't distill at home either. Well, you can, but it's illegal.

<comment><USER15> It's actually legal to brew alcohol for personal use. No selling, however.

<comment><USER16> The parent specifically referred to distilling (making spirits) at home, which is in fact illegal in the US without a license. Laws vary in other countries, though this seems pretty common (with the exception of NZ, apparently).

[http://www.ttb.gov/spirits/faq.shtml](http://www.ttb.gov/spirits/faq.shtml)

This is different from brewing beer, cider and winemaking, which are quite differently regulated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Would a FOIA request need to be made to get the fill list?

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish the FBI would spend its time going after actual crimes- like the ones where people's money are stolen-- rather than political crimes.

But that they aren't is proof positive to me that the government does not operate for the benefit of the people, but for the benefit of itself.</comment>


US oil prices crash below $0 a barrel - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/19/tech/global-stocks/index.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22923025](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22923025)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is not the real price of oil. It's just a long squeeze -- an unfortunate side effect of the USO ETF as its rolling its holdings into the next futures contract.

See: [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-20/there-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-20/there- s-nowhere-to-put-the-oil)

<comment><USER4> Absolutely a great newsletter to subscribe to. Really well written articles.

The current situation is really well explained. Basically contracts which make you owner of oil end tomorrow. you have to store it somewhere then. or sell the contract quickly for -37$ before the market closes. Article for more details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe we can start running the wells in reverse and start putting it back.

<comment><USER6> If that were possible the price wouldn't be negative. Leaving it in the ground is in fact the cheapest storage option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's counter intuitive to have negative prices, but I think this sums it up nicely: _" If you have a thing that lots of people want, but that no one wants right now, it is hard to put a normal price on it."_[0]

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-20/there-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-20/there- s-nowhere-to-put-the-oil)

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this something localised, because Brent is still at 28 dollars.

<comment><USER9> May 2020 futures contracts for WTI (that expire tomorrow)

I'm oversimplifying it... there is so much more supply than demand that groups that can't take physical delivery of a contract (no space) and are paying to have it taken off their hands.

Better discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924321](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924321)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hey, I'll take some money to store a couple of barrels

</comment><comment><USER11> -$37.63. Welcome to Thunderdome.</comment>


MIT: Drones to cooperatively explore under thick forest canopies for lost hikers - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2018/fleets-drones-help-searches-lost-hikers-1102 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18360627](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18360627)

</comment><comment><USER3> s/lost hikers/guerilla troops/</comment>


U.S. students score below international averages in math, reading and science - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_24640781/u-s-students-score-below-international-averages-math

<comment><AUTHOR> Reporting on the same study findings by the _Washington Post:_

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/us-students- la...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/us-students-lag-around- average-on-international-science-math-and-reading- test/2013/12/02/2e510f26-5b92-11e3-a49b-90a0e156254b_story.html)</comment>


Google says it will run entirely on renewable energy in 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/technology/google-says-it-will-run-entirely-on-renewable-energy-in-2017.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> This is pretty awesome, Google is definitely leading the industry here.

One of the more interesting things I learned while working for Google was the intricate way in which the "grid" is managed by a separate but co-operating set of entities. Google disrupted that happy bunch by creating a wholly owned subsidiary that was a licensed power company[1]. That gave it standing to buy from and sell energy to the grid and it completely short circuited a lot of crazy negotiations that were going on between Google and various regional power companies. Now instead of having the substation outside the data center owned by the local power company it could be owned by "Google Energy Inc." And Google Energy could buy energy from any vendor connected to that grid.

Most people are familiar with the 'last mile' problem where the connection to the Internet from your house has to go through the local monopoly utility. The same is true when buying power, and this move on Google's part completely side stepped it.

[1] [https://www.cnet.com/news/google-energy-subsidiary- considers...](https://www.cnet.com/news/google-energy-subsidiary-considers- clean-power/)

<comment><USER3> > Google is definitely leading the industry here.

It's fantastic that Google plans to switch to renewables since they are one of the biggest players. Definitely an exaggeration to say that they are leading the charge. Apple was among the first to make renewables an issue and achieved 100% in data centers back in 2013, with little fanfare.

[http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/design- buil...](http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/design-build/apple- reaches-100-renewable-energy-across-all-data-centers/74708.fullarticle)

And creating a subsidiary that's a power company is table stakes:

[https://9to5mac.com/2016/06/09/apple-energy- company/](https://9to5mac.com/2016/06/09/apple-energy-company/)

<comment><USER4> Just to be clear, 7% of Apple's _global_ power is still dirty and they have not made any public commitment to bring that down any further.

Google is a much much larger energy consumer, has been carbon neutral since 2007, and is going to use 100% renewables globally within the next year.

Also, Google made its energy company play back in 2010. Apple made theirs in 2016.

<comment><USER3> Apple has pressured Foxconn to build out renewable capacity for certain steps of iPhone manufacturing by 2018. There is a lot of work to be done in manufacturing (much harder problem) but they have definitely made a public commitment to reduce the impact:

[https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/10/22Apple-Launches- Ne...](https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/10/22Apple-Launches-New-Clean- Energy-Programs-in-China-To-Promote-Low-Carbon-Manufacturing-and-Green- Growth.html)

<comment><USER5> Let's just agree that both Apple and Google are doing fantastic jobs in this sector, and other big tech companies need to step it up.

<comment><USER6> Indeed. Let's not drive a wedge where none is needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "In my mind it's a P.R. gimmick," said Chris Warren, vice president of > communications at the Institute for Energy Research, a think tank in > Washington supported largely by donations from individuals and companies in > the fossil fuel industry. "If they think they can actually support > themselves with wind and solar panels, they should connect them directly to > their data centers."

I love how the author throws in a disclaimed quotation from a big oil Luddite to help reinforce the message of the article. It's a two-fold sales tactic.

1\. Discredit the opposition.

2\. Tell the buyer what the opposition will say, after already convincing them of the benefits, so they're prepared to defend what they're buying thereby reinforcing their beliefs.

I'm not implying that the article is wrong, but it's something we should be aware of.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, there is indeed a lot of truth to the statement that it is a PR gimmick.

The problem with wind and solar is that they are intermittent. Therefore, Google's consumption _at any particular moment in time_ cannot be supplied solely by these intermittent sources because their energy output never matches current demand (at least until some big honking batteries are built to level this out, for which the tech currently does not exist AFAIK -- no, Tesla's battery tech isn't even close to operating at this scale, though its a small step in that direction).

Therefore, Google _must_ take power from the grid from non-intermittent sources that _can_ ramp up and down based on demand, such as coal, gas, and nuclear. And this fact will remain true, even if Google had purchased wind and solar contracts for total energy many times greater than their total energy use.

So even though they may be purchasing contracts for wind/solar energy that exceed their own total energy use, they still cannot even _approach_ viable operation without access to non-wind and solar sources, so its definitely misleading by Google to suggest they are running entirely on wind/solar.

Furthermore, the excess energy produced that Google purchased, but did not use because of the intermittency issue, actually reduces the efficiency of fossil and nuclear sources. Because the wind/solar energy is loaded onto the grid intermittently, it forces fossil and nuclear to cycle up and down to compensate. Just like city vs. highway driving, this is vastly less efficient.

<comment><USER9> Paying to have more renewable energy generated is not a gimmick, it's progress.

It's true that there's a storage problem to be solved. That doesn't mean that every single renewables project needs to solve it or become a gimmick.

<comment><USER10> The problem is that Google's claim is deceptive. What they are doing is great.

<comment><USER9> Paragraphs 3, 4, and 5 of the NYT article look accurate to me. I have a hard time seeing how anyone who read the article would be deceived.

<comment><USER11> More than half of the people in this thread think google is running on 100% renewable energy. They have been deceived.

Google is still using dirty energy, they are just offsetting it by returning extra to the grid when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining.

<comment><USER9> "using" is a complicated word. If you don't like the usual way "using renewable energy" is used for electricity, by all means campaign against it, but there's nothing special about Google or this press release for this usage... and the New York Times article this discussion is about is quite clear.

<comment><USER11> That's not the "usual way" it's used. If I want to use solar power for my home, I don't contribute to a fund building solar panels on a different continent and claim I'm "using renewable energy". However, that's exactly what google is doing here.

<comment><USER9> Some people put solar panels on their home, other people pay someone else to install solar panels elsewhere. It's extremely common for businesses to choose the second, even if homeowners mostly choose the first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> they're doing this financially, not through infrastructure building. the plan is to purchase equivalent dollar value of credits from renewable electricity suppliers. this highlights a significant issue: grid power is fungible and power sources are indistinct from the end-user's point of view.

is there some kind of auditing authority that can actually guarantee that the money spent is actually going towards electrical generation and isn't just slush-fund cash that financial holding companies play around with while nominally saying "green energy"?

<comment><USER13> The technical term for this is "additionality", making sure they pay to add renewable capability, not just use up a share of the renewable energy that was already being produced and Google accounts for it when planning their purchases.

They give some details on this here:

[https://blog.google/topics/environment/google-green-blog- wha...](https://blog.google/topics/environment/google-green-blog-what-it- means-to-be_8/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article is far more accurate and helpful: [https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/google-will- ach...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/google-will- achieve-100-percent-renewable-energy-in-2017)

</comment><comment><USER15> _Unlike carbon-based power, Mr. Kava said, wind supply prices do not fluctuate, enabling Google to plan better._

Can someone explain this? It seems like wind energy prices should fluctuate based on weather patterns (more wind == lower prices).

<comment><USER16> Theyre writing long term contracts for power production which provide a fixed price for the resource developers and by consequence provide them with a fixed cost.

Typically, these types of contracts, providing price certainty, are required to build develop new renewable assets.

<comment><USER17> This. Price doesn't fluctuate for the purposes of this article because they've bought a minimum amount of electricity for a fixed price over time. (not because price of wind power never fluctuates)

Similar pegged pricing can be achieved if you trade futures to hedge your price but typically this is only achievable year to year and difficult to do with electricity as it can come from so many different sources and hedging against them all may be difficult. Perhaps there's a megawatt future out there?

EDIT: Yup - regionally-based electricity price hedge. Cool! [http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/energy/#electricity](http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/energy/#electricity)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Google is ahead of the game here. Other tech companies also are moving to renewables but they're not at 100% yet (IIRC). The key point is that as cloud computing becomes commoditized and people build tools to quickly transfer from one cloud provider to another, the profit margin will become smaller and smaller until energy costs dominate the cost to provide a service. It is already the case that a machine will use more in energy costs than its capital cost over its lifetime.

So, whoever has the cheapest power will be able to provide cheapest services, or charge more for capacity located in more energy-expensive regions (for latency).

<comment><USER19> Apple (smaller server park, but does that matter?) claims 93% over 2015, so they can't be far behind. [http://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_...](http://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Responsibility_Report_2016.pdf):

 _" For starters, as of January 2016, we're sourcing or generating enough renewable energy to cover 93 percent of the electricity we use at our facilities worldwide. In fact, Apple is now 100 percent renewable in 23 countries, including China, Germany, Singapore, and the United States. We're also 100 percent renewable at every one of our data centers. So whenever you send an iMessage, download a song from iTunes, or ask Siri a question, the energy Apple uses doesn't contribute to climate change.

In the past five years, we have reduced the carbon footprint of Apple facilities by 64 percent thanks to our clean energy use, avoiding over 1 million metric tons of carbon emissions. We're working hard to reach 100 percent renewable energy for all of our facilities worldwide, and help our suppliers in China and everywhere around the world make the same transition to clean energy as we have."_

<comment><USER20> Check out the graph here: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-05/waging- am...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-05/waging-america-s- wars-using-renewable-energy)

Yeah, they rank on the list, but they're pretty far behind.

<comment><USER19> As I said: "smaller server park, but does that matter?"

I don't think the thing to judge by is who consumes the most renewable energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was simply shocked to read that Google as a whole consumes as much as a whole metropolis. The fact that they're going green, is awesome on their part..!

<comment><USER22> "I was simply shocked to read that Google as a whole consumes as much as a whole metropolis."

Considering that they employ ~70k people, plus the hardware to run their business, that sounds about right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> You know my whole thing is about sustainability and looking to technology in the near future to shatter the conventional wisdom and assumptions of capitalism (and other systems) from the last several decades?

It's not as simple as saying you support companies doing this voluntarily. I also support that, very much so. But the governments have put up legal hurdles because in the past they "protected capitalism" and now just stand in the way.

State courts are used by telcos to sue cities to prevent Google Fiber from coming into the city, to protect the profits of the "private" interstate corporation from the "public" city.

Drug discovery and many other things are hampered by patents to protect the "intellectual property" of pharma corporations from the "freerider" researchers and public funding that would discover new cures.

And so forth and so on. The legal departments and regulations of the old capitalist system (set in place to protect innovation at a different time) is in the way of open source and open innovation of the 21st century.

And the biggest lie of course is jobs, that demand for human labor will never go down and that enough money will always trickle down to the plebes via wages.

</comment><comment><USER24> For Google to say that it will run entirely on renewable energy is not accurate. Thank goodness only the headline of the article says that, but the article explains that Google gets electricity from the grid--which is not 100% renewable.

<comment><USER25> It may not be "accurate" in a naive technical sense but it's not disingenuous. KWh are fungible and electrons don't care who uses their voltage potential for work as long as it goes somewhere. Every KWh that Google produces with solar is a KWh the fossil fuel power plants don't produce CO2 for, which is the entire point: a net zero impact on CO2 emissions for one of the largest pieces of computer infrastructure in the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder to what extent Google can shift calculations around in time to take advantage of fluctuations in power generation. Serving cat videos might be something you do all the time but indexing the web and training Go AIs doesn't have to be a continuous process.

<comment><USER27> I'm pretty sure they can't turn the tap off when it comes to web indexing. And I also doubt the major cost for google is electric power for the machines doing the indexing - the power bill is probably negligible in the big picture of Googles business (if not I'll stort their stock)

<comment><USER26> It doesn't matter how the power bills compare to their overall bills, what mattes is how much power costs compare to hardware costs in terms of whether it makes sense to shift those things that don't have to be done in realtime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The title is misleading. They will not run entirely on renewable energy. Instead, they are buying at least as much renewable energy as they are consuming in total. So Google might pay for 1 megawatt of solar power going into the grid, but actually pull 1 megawatt of fossil fuel power.

This is more than a nitpicking point. The reason why renewable energy isn't a totally viable energy source is because of problems with reliability, predictability, geographic concentration of production, etc. It is highly misleading to give people the impression that an operation like Google can actually operate directly off exclusively renewable energy.

What Google is doing will eventually hit a cap and become zero sum. You still need fossil fuels (or nuclear) to support a reliable and dispersed grid, and can therefore only have a a certain percent of the grid powered by renewables. So if you want your company to "run entirely on renewable energy", you'll end up in a bidding war with other companies that want the same thing, to be the technical purchaser (not consumer!) of the renewable energy going into the grid.

<comment><USER13> They also buy in the general location of their datacenters. It doesn't always match up exactly, but they are aiming for slightly better than just a purely numerical correspondence.

<comment><USER28> Good point. And I don't mean to suggest that their actions aren't admirable, they are! I'm just a little frustrated at the misinformation, and resulting misconceptions, floating around concerning renewable energy. These misconceptions have political and economic consequences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> >"It's good for the economy, good for business and _good for our shareholders_ ".

Let's be honest...it is not good for their shareholders. They are buying power at a significant premium and costing their shareholders money. It is a direct hit to the bottom line. This _might_ be good for the environment - at the very least they are helping renewable energy companies get bank financing through purchase guarantees, which will advance the technologies being used and perhaps one day make them economically viable. But to say it's good for shareholders is disingenuous.

>" _In some places_ , like Chile, Google said, renewables have _at times_ become cheaper than fossil fuels."

I love all of the hedging that comes with any article that tries to paint renewables as economical. This sentence has holes a truck could drive through. It could literally mean that at one point, years ago, Chile had extremely high gas prices for a week and Google was amazed that their bill for that week was lower than it would have been with conventional power sources.

<comment><USER30> Unsubsidized wind power is driving nuclear power and coal out of business. Unsubsidized! Solar is still a bit more expensive, but will continue to decline in price each year.

Investing in solar on your roof, in most markets, in a better investment than the S&P500 (EDIT: Utility solar has costs approaching 2 cents/kwh and still declining). Google is doing their shareholders a service by hedging their energy costs, no different than when Delta (the airline) bought a refinery.

<comment><USER29> Google doesn't own these wind farms etc. They aren't investing in anything, and their shareholders aren't getting anything in return. They are paying a premium and hoping that the companies use the Google-provided profits/financing flexibility to advance the technology to the point where it will hopefully one day become economically viable. That day of course is not today, which is why I take issue with some of the statements in this article.

Ultimately, Google is doing a service for the world if in fact these companies use Google's support as intended. There are probably more effective, direct routes for a company of Google's size though - they could easily just roll out their own renewable energy research division, and then shareholders would own the resulting technologies. The approach that they are using doesn't seem logical to me, and then trying to spin it as if they are doing shareholders a favor by overpaying for power seems like they are making a bad mistake even worse.

<comment><USER30> > Google doesn't own these wind farms etc.

Of course not. That'd be a pain in the ass. That's why they sign PPAs (power purchase agreements) that entitle them to the power from those generators (usually on 20-25 year contract terms). Think reserved instances at AWS. You're paying to commit to a resource usage. What does AWS do with that money? Buy hardware and provide the service to you. You simply make a payment.

> They aren't investing in anything, and their shareholders aren't getting > anything in return.

I disagree with you, as do the facts.

<comment><USER29> _I disagree with you, as do the facts._

Show me what they can put on a balance sheet in the end.

<comment><USER31> There is value to signing a long term PPA that guarantees a set price of electricity for 10-20 years. For example, if Google powers a data center using wind power PPAs, they know exactly how much the electricity for the data center will cost over the life of those PPAs. If they power the data center with natural gas and coal-generated electricity bought through normal electricity markets, their electricity prices will change if the price of natural gas or coal change. Having more certainty into future operational costs is valuable because it allows you to make better informed decisions/investments. Plus, many wind power PPAs are being sold for less than the wholesale cost of electricity now, so they save that way too (recent PPAs signed in Texas are a great example).

<comment><USER29> There's negative value to them if those PPA's are overpriced relative to conventional power. This article seems to reluctantly admit that they are indeed overpaying in most markets most of the time. "We saved money that one time in Chile" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of the economics of renewables at the present time.

<comment><USER30> Wind power is very cheap, even in the US. Several utilities in Texas offer free power during nighttime hours because of it.

I assure you, these PPAs are not overpriced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Another energy feather in Google's (and Dell's) cap was evangelizing on server room temperature. Recommending allowing air temps to climb up to 95F cuts a lot of the air cooling energy use. It also makes it more comfortable for those of use doomed to work in a chilled server room.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is anyone discussing _reliability_? as in Google/Apple/etc are making this move not just "to be green" but to ensure that they do have power without being subjected to the whims & issues of providers when they're just one of many customers? When you have literally hundreds of millions (billions?) of customers, you want to ensure your own resources are absolutely reliable (within your, not someone else's, requirements).

It's like me wanting to put solar panels on my roof: I'm not so much interested in cost savings, but want to ensure a massive grid failure doesn't take my household with it.

<comment><USER34> You do realize in the event of a grid failure your solar panels don't work? You can either be grid tied or off grid.

<comment><USER35> Doesn't a battery give you some leeway to swap freely between buying/selling electricity off the grid and running-off-grid-from-battery?

<comment><USER34> Yes it acts as a sort of firewall between the two systems. But at that cost you may as well just have 2 systems. One off grid and one grid-tied given you have the space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands I'm actually surprised that Google hasn't been more involved in micro-grid technology. One company here in town basically runs on its own grid with a combination of renewable energies and electricity they generate on their own:

[http://www.oati.com/about/microgrid-technology- center](http://www.oati.com/about/microgrid-technology-center)

 _The main difference between the OATI Microgrid Technology Center and other commercial office buildings is that OATI will generate its own electricity as the primary source of power. The building is powered by:_

 _\- Natural Gas turbines: 600kW Capstone C600 natural gas burning microturbine. Paired with absorption chiller and heat exchanger for CCHP_

 _\- Solar: 150kw rooftop solar array, with additional expansion array planned_

 _\- Wind: 24kW of vertical axis wind turbines_

 _\- Electricity storage: 231kWh, at 125kW Ensync battery rated power and energy_

 _\- Generator: 1500kW of diesel backup generator_

 _\- Utility connection: Connected to local utility Xcel Energy_

</comment><comment><USER36> Several years ago, I was very perplexed by Google investing in renewable energy. It was only later that I realized they use so much energy that this would have to be the wave of the future for tech companies like them. If they don't use renewables, they'll be subjects to the whims of energy markets similar to airlines. (Yes you can hedge, but even that is a bet)

Very forward looking of them!

</comment><comment><USER37> It's certainly a good thing they're doing, but really all they're doing is bidding higher than other companies on renewable energy, and since we don't have unlimited renewable energy (only as much as we have wind turbines and solar panel arrays &c), all they're really doing is shifting renewable energy usage from smaller companies to themselves. It's not like they're creating renewable energy or anything, they're just changing where it goes.

But at least they're going to create a greater demand to hopefully create a greater supply sometime soon, plus they're paying into the renewable energy economic machine.

<comment><USER38> No, Google has been signing power purchase agreements with renewable energy developers. The signed agreements are what developers need to build new solar and wind projects. It's new renewable demand driving new supply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is great progress and congratulations to Google. But Google and every other tech company is effectively still running on non-renewable energy by virtue of importing most of their hardware from places where manufacturing is done mostly with fossil fuels. All of us are outsourcing our pollution and CO2 production.

<comment><USER40> The hardware for green energy production included, like solar panels... Since they don't last for ever and need lots of energy to be produced, I wonder how long it takes to just get even.

<comment><USER41> For Solar it obviously depends on a lot of factors (where you put them, which technology, where it is produced), but it's in the range of 0-4 years, depending on which study you look at. Common lifetime is ~20-30 years.

See e.g. [https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/de/downloads/pdf- files/aktuell...](https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/de/downloads/pdf- files/aktuelles/photovoltaics-report-in-englischer-sprache.pdf) [http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf](http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf) [http://www.volker-quaschning.de/datserv/kev/index.php](http://www.volker- quaschning.de/datserv/kev/index.php)

<comment><USER42> Feels like I've been quoted a 20-30 years lifetime for solar panels for 10 years straight now. They degrade, but they don't break.

Do we have more data now? Because I think solar panels will easily do 50 years with >50% of original output.

<comment><USER38> There's a mixture of degradation mechanisms at work. Some of them, like light induced degradation to the actual cells, can reduce output but can't really destroy the system. Other mechanisms really do "break" the module, e.g. backsheet delamination, accidental or malicious breaking of cover glass, or extended partial shading that leads to thermal runaway that can melt solder and/or put holes in the backsheet. As soldered connections age, weaken, and fail they can lead to thermal runaways that destroy neighboring cells too.

I believe that there are already some panels in the field that can last 50 years, and that it will become more common in the future, but 20-30 years is the safe, evidence-backed estimate for now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I don't have to feel guilty when using google services anymore!

</comment><comment><USER44> So if they increase the energy supply by investing/purchasing in renewable energy that would increase supply which would bring their energy costs down hypothetically?

<comment><USER14> Note Google in some cases does sell electricity generated from their wind/solar investments to the locals and new FERC order allows anyone who has DG to sell into wholesale markets. Sometimes their investment is near a data center so it hits the same local feeder, othertimes they say 'we can't do DG near the data center, so lets do it somewhere else that offsets the data center demand'. This is where the renewable energy credits come in and make the long term strategy worthwhile

<comment><USER14> the headline is quite misleading when you consider most google data centers still getting power from dirty sources - the 40% reduction in data center cost is impressive though (whoo AI!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Wondering if any residential provider in the world is offering a service where you can say "sell me only renewables". There'd probably be a cost associated with this, but I think I'd have to consider it if it were available locally.

<comment><USER46> In Houston, the "Oil and Gas Capital of the World", I buy 100% wind power from Green Mountain. They're not the only game in town for 100% renewables, either. Green Mountain themselves do have mixed plans, but mine's 100% wind. It's not the cheapest power in town (some retail electric providers go below $0.04 per kWh for the first year of your contract or such if you don't care) but with Texas by law having a competitive retail electricity market there's a lot of choice.

<comment><USER10> I have a hard time believing this. What does Green Mountain use when the wind dies? Do they have a grid storage solution?

<comment><USER45> They probably just trade it. Increase their supply so they can sell enough excess back to the grid to make up the cost later. You effectively get 100% wind, but in reality you might have got 80% wind, 20% gas and sold some wind back to the grid. It's a good interrim solution at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> "means other companies of a similar scale will feel pressure to move" \- Not sure if that pressure is real, especially with a new president not really committed to renewable and sustainable energy adoption.

</comment><comment><USER48> > Next year, it said, all of that energy will come from wind farms and solar > panels.

When I read 'Renewable' on the title, I thought they would use hydroelectric energy too. Nice to know I was wrong.

<comment><USER49> They might be using some form of pumped hydro -- it's a common storage technique for wind and solar farms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Is this Google U.S or Google worldwide that will run entirely on renewable energy? Google has offices and data computing centers worldwide so I am reading this as everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER51> Are there public-facing data on the _total_ energy footprint of an Amazon/Google/etc datacenter, including the lifecycle of the hardware hosted there?

<comment><USER52> Greenpeace has some basics but not that level of detail. [http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/click- clean/](http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/click-clean/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Part of me hopes this will help drive a nuclear renaissance too: we can power an aircraft carrier, why not a submarine?

<comment><USER54> They definitely do have nuclear power submarines :).

The issue is not submarines, it's computers, lights, cars for the rest of us.

Google has a side-show project I think related to nuclear, but it's an extremely regulated thing so it's hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Google is definitely leading the way! Now if only we can get our municipal fiber and self driving cars sooner..

</comment><comment><USER55> So if they are still getting their power from the grid, who uses the renewable energy that they purchase?

<comment><USER56> The grid itself. So in the end it pretty much means that they're actually running on renewables. If everyone does what Google does, the utilities could just stop producing fossil fuel electricity entirely and the world would actually consume zero electricity from fossil fuel. You don't have to be a monk to master mindfulness and meditation.

<comment><USER55> Thanks. Does this mean that Google is essentially subsidizing the cost of producing renewable energy, and if so, does that then mean that the consumers of the renewable energy end up paying less because of said subsidy? I'm just trying to follow where that money is actually going and how it's actually shifting overall usage from fossil fuels to renewable.

<comment><USER38> Renewable project developers want long term power purchase agreements (PPAs) so they have predictable revenue for projects they plan to develop. These are agreements that go something like "for the next 15 years, we agree to buy up to X megawatt hours per year from your project for Y dollars per megawatt hour." There are other ways to sell output from renewables (like bidding output directly into the electricity spot market) but developers overwhelmingly prefer PPAs. Google has signed a bunch of PPAs: [https://cleantechnica.com/2016/01/29/google-signs-225-mw- win...](https://cleantechnica.com/2016/01/29/google-signs-225-mw-wind-power- purchase-agreement-invenergy/)

Once the developer has signed PPAs they can finance the up-front construction cost. PPAs enable the construction and operation of new renewable energy projects. Of course the output of large scale renewable facilities is mixed with other sources of electricity in a transmission system; it doesn't directly replace coal. (But this is true of any electricity project in a competitive market: when a company builds a new natural gas plant, they don't detach the transmission wires from a competitor's older coal plant and attach them to the new gas turbine.)

Instead it's pricing effects that indirectly decrease use of dirtier fossils when a grid adds renewable capacity. Solar and wind plants have very low variable costs; they'll supply every MWh they can to the grid, and get paid for every one of them via the previously signed PPAs. But fossil generators have significant variable costs for fuel and for labor[1], so when renewables are producing high output there may not be enough demand to cover the marginal costs of production. Fossil plants reduce or stop production when that happens, so they burn less fuel and produce less emissions. Fossil plants with high enough marginal costs may shut down for extended periods, like some plants that are only used for e.g. meeting peak demand during the winter heating season. Costs rise over time as aging equipment needs additional maintenance or full replacement. Fossil plants with high enough costs eventually can't turn a profit even serving the peak-demand-season niche and are completely retired and scrapped. Even if an old coal plant is replaced by a new coal plant, it's still an environmental win to get the old ones shut down, because (even under the new president) a coal plant that starts construction in 2017 won't get the weaker grandfathered pollution standards of one constructed in 1957, and the newer plant will produce more electricity per ton of fuel due to technical advances.

[1] At least coal plants have significant labor costs. Modern CCGT natural gas plants are quite labor-thrifty too.

<comment><USER57> You are missing one point though, that the cost of non-renewable energy goes up _when there is no renewable energy in the grid_ often very significantly.

Effectively renewables have an externality cost of their own: they make "reliable" sources of power much more expensive.

Imagine that wind/solar power supplies 25% of the grid's needs - this means 75% of the time you need a gas power station to fill in the lulls in production. Fine.

Then imagine you triple the amount of renewable energy on the grid to 75%. The gas plant is now only operational 25% of the time, but still requires capital cost of construction and maintenance to be ready to go. Ok, it doesn't need as much fuel but apart from that you have tripled the cost of the plant.

So the problem is that it becomes uneconomic to build the electricity generation that stabilises the grid and makes it possible to have any renewables in the first place.

We're now seeing huge premiums being paid to companies by the various electricity grid operators to cover this problem. This then goes on ratepayers bills to cover "distribution" or "grid reliability". And it then turns out your $0.03/kWh wind is not actually that at all and gets more distorted as more wind gets generated.

We need better energy storage options before renewables really will fulfill their promise.

<comment><USER38> I didn't mention effects of 75% grid supply from wind + solar because no major grid is operating at that level. Most grids are significantly below 25%. The US as a whole is currently at 5-6% of all electricity consumption from wind + solar. (I know there's not a single unified grid across the US, but still.) I expect that storage is going to be significantly more mature by the time the US reaches even 25%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> After energy they might focus on more landfills because of electronic waste.

</comment><comment><USER59> Is it Google US only or all offices

</comment><comment><USER60> Green Earth, Our Earth :)

</comment><comment><USER61> umm, so do I! I only buy green power from PG&E!

</comment><comment><USER62> So it's going to spend money to make it look like renewables make economic sense? My reading of it is that this is a PR move more than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER63> There's a considerable amount of embodied energy and embodied pollution in Solar Panel and Wind Turbine construction.

I think this is lost on most people in Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER64> Got a better alternative?

<comment><USER34> They have billions but aren't sponsoring scholarships for graduate physics degrees like Boeing or any "corporate" company does.

If they want to see their 10xs breakthroughs (which they sure talk a lot about) they should be throwing money at condensed matter physics research and just support in general for physics. Its easy to get a 10x in software but energy is a whole different game.

That way the smartest people won't have to decide between taking a high paying engineering/programming job or going into physics.

It all comes down to probabilities and the amount of people in the field is really the best approach towards making a breakthrough.

<comment><USER63> high paying code writing or going into physics/engineering.

Engineering is much different than software architecture.

One requires hard sciences competency, whereas one you can go into for years with none, and be successful.

<comment><USER65> I think you will find that doing what google does at scale does require some "hard science" :-)

<comment><USER63> Exceptional case. Most don't.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


LibreOffice 5.4.4 has been released - <AUTHOR> https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2017/12/20/libreoffice-5-4-4-available-download/ <comment><USER2> I have been using LibreOffice for three years on my Mac (retina MacBook Pro 13", ssd and all) and it usually takes more than 20 seconds to start. It has been happening ever since the change to the new GUI. Is it just me?

I've since installed and reinstalled macOS X from scratch at least two times, and it always takes lots of time to start.

<comment><USER3> It takes about 2 seconds on my 8 year old desktop (2.5GHz Phenom II, SSD) running Debian unstable. 20 seconds seems excessively slow for your hardware. I wonder how long it would take to load in a Linux VM? That could eliminate the possibility of the hardware being a problem.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for your suggestion. So I've tested on a Xubuntu 16.04 installation on VirtualBox, and it takes 3-4 seconds to boot LibreOffice Writer. It has something to do with macOS X...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good work chaps.

I mostly use macOS software (Pages, Numbers) which I have been pleasantly surprised by how they worked and Google Docs.

Are there plans to update the interface? I feel like a good UI is really important.

<comment><USER5> They updated the UI not too long ago (couple years, maybe?). I feel like format compatibility with proprietary software is more of a priority than being pretty, being a FOSS project and everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wonderful alternative to Office and (Pages/Numbers)</comment>


Ask HN: As a Startup, how do you break into big corp? - <AUTHOR> We are creating a product targeted at streamlining the procurement processes at government organizations and big corp. However, most of these companies refuse to do business with startups that do not have years of experience or a strong balance sheet. <comment><USER2> You definitely need to get a foot in the door - personal relationships are key. Find out what open to the public network events your target market is going to, and start showing up. You may also consider doing a joint-venture with a more established firm to help get your first few clients. Enterprise products are indeed a different world, as this Dropbox Product Manager talks about in this vid: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl5HVPe9P7w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl5HVPe9P7w)

</comment><comment><USER3> \- Learn Golf.

\- Hire an industry insider.

\- Find a single launching partner and co-develop.

\- Find a champion at a lower level of the corporate ladder.

\- Learn all about patience. Enterprise sales is a long slog.

</comment><comment><USER4> Consider acting as a complement to another already established vendor in the target market. Do they have a weakness in their offering that you can help patch? Are there features you can offer that will enhance their offering's value?

</comment><comment><USER5> Write an app or something that extends capabilities of big platform and make it visually appealing.

PR the hell out of it.

Platform vendor + all platform customers will be on your side.

</comment><comment><USER6> Leverage networks, find partnerships, build relationships, provide some form of guarantee, do demos and POCs.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been in business for a while. Let me see a demo. Contact me via my profile info.</comment>


Facebook now lets you erase the data it collects on your web browsing - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2020/01/facebook-clear-history-button-data-web-browsing.html <comment><USER2> If you do not have a Facebook account, or you quit / deactivated your account 4 years ago, how would one go about erasing the history without reactivating/creating an account?</comment>


We need a place to anonymously share site stats - <AUTHOR>

When I'm looking at stats like homepage exit rate, average amount of time / pageviews per visit, etc, more often than not, I don't know whether my numbers are good or not because I don't have anything to compare them to.
Of course "good" is different depending on the goals of the site, but nonetheless, I wish there was a place where hackers could anonymously post certain usage statistics.  Not so much number of unique visitors or other pure measures of absolute size, but the relative statistics, things that any startup could use to get a baseline of how other sites are doing.
Anything like this exist?  Anyone want to set something up? <comment><USER2> Google Analytics has Benchmarking

<comment><USER3> Yeah, you can allow Google to share your stats, and then you get to see other's stats anonymously based on what Google determines is for sites just like yours. I'm not sure, but it might be aggregated, which makes it somewhat less useful.</comment></comment>


Why we need to spy on the Germans - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/09/why-we-need-to-spy-on-the-germans.html

<comment><USER2> This article is an incredible string of bullshit.

While there are aspects that are interesting and would have deserved some deeper treatment than just a throwaway sentence or two, most of the "arguments" are not even tenuous, but very transparent distractions.</comment>