Hacker News: 716dpl

New comment by 716dpl in "Alaska's oil revival sparks a new energy rush Into the Arctic"

716dpl — Mon, 25 May 2026 20:38:28 +0000

All non-transportation fuel uses account for a total of only 33% of crude oil consumption. Of the other 2/3rd, gasoline accounts for 43%. So yes, switching to EVs would have a massive impact, and probably put unconventional sources of oil (eg. Venezuela and Alberta) out of business. As for diesel, EV truck sales are starting to take off too.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc... https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025/trends-in...

New comment by 716dpl in "Alaska's oil revival sparks a new energy rush Into the Arctic"

716dpl — Mon, 25 May 2026 20:22:20 +0000

It's not a widely known fact that sales of new combustion engine cars peaked in 2017 and has been on a downward trend since then, while global EV sales have ~10x in the same time period.

So it seems like these new investments are in a race. Will they pay off before they become stranded assets? The Saudis and other middle east countries have the lowest production costs, so unless Alaska can somehow keep costs to ~$20/barrel, I would not bet on it.

New comment by 716dpl in "Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants"

716dpl — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:55:57 +0000

While this is true, we don't have a good solution for long term energy storage. Even with plummeting costs and new technologies like sodium ion, batteries still only get you maybe ~12 hours of discharge. Pumped hydro give you longer storage, but there are limited places where you can build it. Unless geothermal becomes competitive, nuclear is still the best solution for carbon-free baseload.

New comment by 716dpl in "Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants"

716dpl — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 13:13:44 +0000

The EU also released a plan in the past week to accelerate the deployment of both nuclear and renewable energy. This oil shock is going to have lasting impacts.

https://energy.ec.europa.eu/publications/accelerateeu-energy...

New comment by 716dpl in "Rank the 50 best Apple products"

716dpl — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 16:07:27 +0000

I feel that anything that was a brand new thing in its time should rank highly: Hypercard, Apple I, original Macintosh, OS X, PowerBook 100, original iPhone.

New comment by 716dpl in "Rank the 50 best Apple products"

716dpl — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 16:01:49 +0000

Watch your mouth, kid!

New comment by 716dpl in "VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS"

716dpl — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 14:36:06 +0000

I find it soothing. There is ornamentation in its design, but it's precise and minimal, but also friendly. The icons, in particular, look so good.

New comment by 716dpl in "RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard"

716dpl — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:32:36 +0000

A simpler solution may be to use an en dash, even though they are not interchangeable and em dashes are the proper punctuation for parenthetical phrases. As a typography pedant, I’m annoyed that LLMs have forced us to talk about this.

New comment by 716dpl in "MacBook Neo"

716dpl — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 13:21:30 +0000

Apple Computer had a strong focus on the education market back in the day. I wonder if this is a play to re-enter that market.

New comment by 716dpl in "Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid"

716dpl — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 18:52:04 +0000

Limited water resource. In recent drought years, gas-fired power plants in California had to make up for reduced hydro generation.

New comment by 716dpl in "New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes"

716dpl — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 16:17:04 +0000

As a typography nerd, I’m upset that my pedantism may get me labelled as a bot. (Yes, I just used a typographic apostrophe instead of a straight single quote.)

New comment by 716dpl in "Ultrasound is ushering a new era of surgery-free cancer treatment"

716dpl — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 15:55:56 +0000

There was a game in the early '80s called Microsurgeon where you piloted a robot probe into a body to cure it of diseases. It was armed with an array of tools, one of which was ultrasound that you could use to destroy cancer. I wonder how long this idea has been around for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsurgeon_(video_game)