The practical middle is a cooperative. Lemmer-Webber is on social.coop, one of several instances where members contribute money and take part in decisions, and that money pays for technical maintenance that would otherwise require volunteers. Bonfire is a member of Co-op Cloud – a community first and a set of deployment tools and recipes second. Its other members include hosting cooperatives such as CoQuest, which hosts jacobin.social and helps maintain the recipe that enables straightforward Bonfire deployment. A community that needs managed hosting gets infrastructure people and software developers in the same conversation when something breaks. Bonfire’s phrasing is “do it together” rather than “do it yourself.”

Lemmer-Webber’s answer to what remains unsolved starts with an admission. “ActivityPub was not supposed to be as instance-centric as it is.” She originally envisioned a distributed social network where identity was decoupled from domain name, so moving between instances would be ordinary. But the ecosystem adopted ActivityPub in a client-server shape and then settled into it.

What does exist today is account migration. De Borniol names it first when asked what organizations must have before opening a community space: Members need to be able to export their data, move their account, and bring their follower networks with them. This keeps communities protected during shutdowns and sets the stage for portable identity and content.

A bit of a question mark here for whether this is solar punk technology or not, Boston has never been able to fully escape its Puritan and conservative past, you can see it in the way the city continually self sabotages its progressive potential. You can also feel the cold edge of Boston as a stark departure from cities born of criminals and outcasts from the Puritan colonies such as Providence, RI.

“So, is this the thing,” he asked, “or are we going to end up in another quagmire of an unproven technology?”

Case in point, this is precisely what conservative old money in Boston likes to happen to these bold visions of progressive mass transit systems so they can say "Look see THIS is why we [excluding them of course] can't have nice things!".

It's can't be that hard to generate — it's a linear character sequence just like text — and there's gigabytes of public domain training data literally floating around us

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11481668

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The European Commission will not extend its November 1 deadline for phasing out Chinese-made power inverters from EU-funded energy projects, despite calls from investors and the renewable energy industry for more time.

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From November 1, projects connected or due to be connected to the EU electricity grid will have to exclude high-risk suppliers or progressively switch to inverters from suppliers not deemed high-risk.

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Earlier this year, the EU executive adopted interim policy guidance restricting the use of EU funding for clean energy projects, namely solar, wind and storage, that rely on inverters from high-risk suppliers, meaning Chinese companies such as Huawei.

The move was driven by cybersecurity concerns, particularly the risk that manufacturers could remotely access and manipulate inverters, potentially destabilising electricity grids and triggering blackouts.

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Following a business roundtable in June convened specifically to address these concerns, industry and investor stakeholders had hoped for derogations to the 1 November deadline.

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The Commission, for its part, says that a viable alternative supply of non-Chinese inverters already exists, and that the price of guaranteeing the security of Europe's energy infrastructure is a modest one to pay.

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removepaywall.com

In Madre de Dios, in the Peruvian Amazon, thousands of people depend on gold mining, while the spread of mercury and deforestation are transforming the country’s most biodiverse tropical forest. In La Pampa, one of the region’s main gold mining hubs, a formalized artisanal mining operation is trying to prove that another way of mining is possible. While facing roadblocks, violence, informal economies, and government neglect, it seeks to produce “clean gold” using mercury-free technologies. Through the daily lives of workers, merchants, and small-scale miners, the film explores the tensions between survival, pollution, and legitimacy in one of the Amazon’s most complex extractive economies.

Interview with CEO, interesting tho

This study demonstrated that, under commercial strawberry cultivation with a relatively low heating demand (setpoint air temperature of 7 °C), the ZEG-type greenhouse achieved substantial reductions in both primary energy consumption and CO2 emissions during the monitoring period (approximately 58% and 68%, respectively) compared with the reference greenhouse operated under the same environmental control strategy. Furthermore, additional reductions in primary energy consumption and CO2 emissions were obtained through on-site PV generation by offsetting grid electricity consumption, as illustrated in Fig. 7. These results provide fieldbased evidence of the decarbonisation potential of the ZEG concept, integrating low-carbon technologies such as groundwater-source heat pumps, double thermal curtains, and on-site PV generation into fossil fuel–dependent greenhouses commonly used in Japan.

Commercial use began at installation. Akrocean and its partner Biotope ran the first campaign, qualifying a DeTect avian radar and a Spoor video-based bird identification system for environmental monitoring around offshore wind projects.

Ok this is confusing, I have been sharing cargo ships with rotational cylinder sails for supplementary efficiency gains on normal cargo ships but this.. double checks timemachine settings yeah this is the other thing entirely, these are honest to goodness tall ships made to transport tea.

Also see https://www.bairdmaritime.com/shipping/dry-cargo/vessel-review-anemos-artemis-french-transport-company-introduces-sailing-cargo-ships-on-transatlantic-routes

Ok the fact that this tech is being used to shovel piles of new cars around is not that solarpunk, but the technology itself certainly is.

It is still cheaper to build and operate a fleet of diesel-fuelled harbour tugs to manoeuvre and dock ships than to invest in battery-electric vessels, despite prices of energy storage systems (ESS’s) falling and owners benefitting from long-term lower operational expenditure and maintenance.

It is also difficult to move electric tugs between ports due to the lack of charging infrastructure.

So, the balance seems to be tipping away from green tugs in favour of the polluting diesel variety.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/70367082

Two 911 missions saw flight-trained paramedic Quinn Reece pilot a Pivotal eVTOL directly to patients, with one aircraft arriving about 20 minutes before the responding ground ambulance. Reece, the sole advanced life support (ALS) provider aboard, carried a cardiac monitor, airway equipment, and a response bag, allowing assessment and treatment to begin at the scene

A new category of societally beneficial work has opened up for adrenaline junkies who don't find EMS or flying an Aircraft enough of a thrill alone, this is for people who want to hurtle themselves through the sky so they can get to someone in desperate need of help 20 minutes before an ambulance can and make use of that precious time to increase the chance someone will live. This is some Batman level shit except if Batman was more focused on actually saving lives. Badass!

High-power permanent magnet motors paired with variable speed drives address the challenge created by variable conditions by adjusting speed and torque directly to match real-time demand. Rather than operating at fixed output and managing variations through mechanical controls or accepting efficiency losses at off-design conditions, variable speed PM configurations allow propulsion motors to run closer to their optimal operating point across all conditions.

The efficiency gains are substantial. The latest generation of high-power PM motors now delivers premium efficiency of up to 98%, with energy losses reduced by up to 50% compared with equivalent induction motors. In the marine context, this translates directly to lower fuel burn in hybrid configurations, extended battery range in electric modes, and reduced generator sizing requirements.

Based on a comparison between a 1,500 kW permanent magnet motor and an equivalent induction motor — assuming electricity costs of $0.1/kWh and 8,000 operating hours per year — annual energy savings of approximately $38,000 are achievable, representing a payback period of less than 18 months on the motor investment. This also avoids some 80,000 kg of CO2 emissions annually. With equipment lifecycles spanning 25 years, these gains compound significantly over time.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11079345

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Serbia is pursuing two intertwined energy agendas: reducing its long-standing dependence on Russian gas and building renewable generation capacity capable of eventually replacing coal.

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The rise of Chinese investment in Serbia's renewable energy sector has revived debate over a new form of energy dependency, this time technological and financial. Chinese companies operate in Serbia in several capacities at once: as majority shareholders in project companies, as general contractors under EPC arrangements — engineering, procurement and construction — and as suppliers of wind turbines or solar inverters.

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Several of Serbia's largest wind projects follow a similar pattern. A Western developer — Nordic, Dutch-Belgian or British — advances a project to a mature stage, once permits are secured, land rights obtained and sometimes a state-aid quota won through public auctions, before selling a majority stake, or nearly the entire project, to a Chinese investor or group of investors.

This mechanism has applied to several of the country's largest wind farms. In one of the most documented cases, the project was initially 100% owned by private Serbian investors before being sold to Chinese state-linked entities.

An emblematic case of divestment and political proximity

One of the sellers in that transaction, Mr. Nikola Petrović, had a long-standing personal relationship with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, in office since 2017. Several analysts describe this proximity as a governance issue rather than a mere biographical detail, in a sector where the awarding of projects and public quotas remains sensitive. The account of this transaction must name this link explicitly to grasp its significance.

Mr. Petrović headed Elektromreža Srbije (EMS), Serbia's electricity transmission grid operator, from September 2012 to late 2016. He remained a 50% shareholder in the project company Crni Vrh Power until 2023, before divesting his stake. This trajectory illustrates the overlap observed between past public office, personal networks and stakes in energy project companies in Serbia.

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The technological dimension of the risk [lies in] the nature of the equipment installed. Mr. Stefan Vladisavljev, an analyst at the BFPE foundation (Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence), and Mr. Caspar Hobhouse, an analyst at the EU Institute for Security Studies, point specifically to wind turbines that are remotely connected and controllable, as well as solar inverters — equipment whose operation and maintenance underpin a fast-growing global market, as highlighted by a recent study on the global solar operations and maintenance market. Mr. Zhang Chuanwei, president of Chinese turbine manufacturer Mingyang Smart Energy, leads one of the industrial groups whose equipment is installed in several Serbian wind farms.

Several Western countries have already restricted the use of Chinese equipment in their energy infrastructure on security grounds, a precedent that fuels questions over the path Belgrade is following.

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