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There are multiple similar companies in many European countries, even though the government provides (often somewhat basic) tools to file taxes. A large percentage of citizens in the Germany and Austria use paid software because it's more comfortable, same in the UK and Poland. But yes, it would be better if that was not the case, like in Scandinavia.

Even just searching in Germany there are at least 4 companies making different designs. I guess they must be selling quite well. Most make non solar tiles of the same size and design for shaded parts of the roof.

The US is also currently rerunning this experiment with gambling/sports betting. Also does not seem to turn out so well...


But bacteria also become resistant against phages, you would still have to continuously develop new ones.


I have no idea if this is true, but I remember seeing in a Kurzgesagt video that developing phage resistance reduces antibiotic resistance, and vice versa. So you might corner bacteria by using both.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI3tsmFsrOg&t=5m18s


Improving phages is dramatically easier - you can just modify an existing one, either through direct engineering or by evolution, rather than having to find a brand new chemical that conveniently does what you want without serious negative drawbacks. 20 years ago the difficulty may have been comparable but the engineering tools for creating synthetic phages have advanced extremely rapidly.

And particularly if you are introducing a vulnerability instead of directly attacking the bacteria with the phage, there is no evolutionary pressure to become resistant until the phage has already done its job. You can even go further and have it insert genes that confer an advantage in addition to the susceptibility, so that even if some of the bacteria are by chance naturally resistant to the phage they get outcompeted prior to the deployment of the killing agent.


It's not really clear, the German part was going slower than the tunnel, but now that the tunnel is also delayed by at least 2 years, who knows maybe they are in sync again ;). The road link seems to be going much faster than the rail link on the German sinde, which won't be done before 2032.


I think they mean the algae is in sunlight during the day and growing, producing light only at night.


Could be. So over the mentioned four weeks, the algae is reproducing more cells in sunlight, and emitting light at night, while gradually wearing out in some way and "retaining 75% of their brightness". Then at the end of the month you have a bucket of tired algae, and that's the stored carbon. I don't know what you do with it. You probably shouldn't chuck it in a river. Its likely fate is methane, wherever you put it.


That sounds kinda like carbon capture, but decentralized to these light nodes


It seems to me that it has the same problem as carbon capture, which is how to make the result inert, or which deep hole to pump it into. Two people apparently silently disagreed with this, I wonder what was bothering them?


Unlike artificial carbon capture, natural carbon capture like algae here become insect/worm/bird feed or manure/coal.


“Hello, I’m from the algae company. I came to replace your tired algae with a fresh one.”


if the output is consistent, could be used for producing biofuel or plastic.


I just get Error: SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER from Firefox and Edge.


Germany just enacted a law that makes landlords pay part of the heating bill to change the incentives for upgrading the equipment.


That's the same thing, no?


It needs some extra valves to switch the flow of coolant around, but yes.


Some refrigerants are more suited for cold climates, some of which require very high pressures.


In the same way that an electric motor and a generator are the same thing.


In an EV they literally are.


Yes?

But without the few bits and bobs of extra control for handling that condition they are, effectively, not.

Same for AC and heat pumps.


EVs have regenerative breaking and so come with those bits and bobs.


But not all electric motors are paired such. Which is the point: a heat pump and an AC are "the same thing" at the gross level, but that doesn't mean all ACs have all the bits and bobs necessary for them to act as heat pumps.


I think they mean "air exchange" (split AC) vs "heat pump" (dig into the earth to draw/eliminate heat). Not saying that's the right definition though. I am guessing at an auto-correction of what they meant.


Dug into the ground, we usually call a "ground source heat pump", or less accurately, "geothermal". The normal split systems are "air source heat pumps". AC is a heat pump without a reversing valve.


A heat pump is not necessarily dug into the earth. Rather, the flow of the heat pump is moving heat (thermal energy) from outdoors to indoors or the other way around in an air conditioner.

Depending on the direction of the coolant flow, you get either a indoor heating or cooling unit. This is best demonstrated by going in front of the outdoor unit of a heat pump, when they are cooling, the outdoor unit generates heat because it's compressing gas, which then is then expanded when it reaches the indoor unit, generating cold. Exactly like a refridgerator.


There's also air-to-water retrofits for houses where you had centralised gas/wood heaters and water radiators.


split a/c (heat/cooling) is dirt cheap compared to the cost of heat pump installation


NIMBYs are the reason why large parts of the mentioned new 700 km Südlink connection are being built as below ground cables, adding enomous costs.


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