Great for them, I guess. I live thousands of miles away from Java. You? The point isn’t “there are 1500 active volcanoes on the planet”, the point is is “there are many places not in the proximity of one of 1500 active volcanoes”.
I live in Martinique, in the Caribbean and there is a somewhat inactive [0] volcano.
To generate electricity, we are importing oil/biogaz from Europe.
Solar is ramping up but it makes sense to use volcano heat if:
- the associated risks are low (earthquakes, just got a 4.8 30 minutes ago [1])
- tropical climate does not make maintenance too costly
Even if it's not the cheapest option, if it can provide some backup, that could be an option. Because solar panel and hurricanes are not best friends.
I'm currently in the Caribbean with our sailboat. We spent almost a month on Martinique (St. Anne, Anse Mitan, St. Pierre), and were wondering a bit about the low amount of renewables being used.
Theory was that both wind and solar are too risky due to the frequent hurricanes. But maybe there's more local nuance? Too cheap diesel?
The 28th regime will provide interesting insights on whether or not EU members are willing to move on fiscal harmonization.
I live in Martinique, a French outermost region and although we are in the Caribbean, we are also in the EU.
This creates some friction as the standard CE norm is usually not available in neighbouring countries, therefore :
1. goods mostly come from EU (specifically France)
2. because goods have to travel across the ocean, prices are higher
3. because prices are higher, specific tax laws are maintained and new ones are introduced with the aim to make prices lower
4. specific tax law introduces another barrier and limit competition
5. because competition is low, prices are high(er)
Harmonization vs the use of specific tax law/rules is a never ending discussion in Martinique.
In the US mad king context, I'm looking forward to it.
My sister was a chef. I cook okay but the very difference with her is 1. the skills, 2. the tools and 3. the ability to do things in parallel. All that means she's a lot faster than me.
1. To chop an onion or a shallot real fast, you need to do it a lot. In restaurant, you can probably chop 100x what you can do at home. Grated carrot with julienne knive ? It seems absurd to me at the time, but in the end that's a training.
2. To not lose time, you need the proper tools (and know how to use them). Sharped knive, flour stifler, ... . For example, my knives are not sharpened often enough, which means I cannot chop vegetables that well.
3. Cooking several things in parrallel will go wrong if you do not know what to look at before things get burned. If you are too "prudent", you will lower the fires and degrade your scalability.
It looks similar to politics.
A new candidate have to bring something on the table: new ideas, new faces, new horizon whereas if an in-place politician is interested in being re-elected, he probably wants to show how great he was and keep its base happy enough to have high retention.
Maybe you seek rent when you have non negligible costs to maintain past (think maintenance and tech debt)
That doesn't help offshore call centers dialing to you over VOIP. Different jurisdiction and difficult trace means almost no accountability. That's the problem in the US, plus our congress is of course, the best one money can buy.
It was amazing to hear that they chose the weakest path, argument injection and were able to found a vector in two weeks twice (fedora + opensuse).