Free Republic

For a number of years, I’ve been observing demands of activists and promises of politicians that we transition our electrical grid to being supplied mainly by the intermittent renewables, wind and solar, with all large dispatchable sources (fossil fuel and nuclear) banished. Early on, I thought it was obvious that such a transition would inevitably mean that the only way to make the grid function full-time would be energy storage — on a vast scale never before contemplated or attempted. How much storage, and at what potential cost? This is actually an arithmetic problem, somewhat cumbersome but conceptually very elementary,...

a, Dual-beam configuration for super-resolution writing and reading. b, Spin-coating process for material addition, material diffusion and blank-disk molding. c, The capacity of a single 3D nanoscale disk is approximately equivalent to that of a petabit-level Blu-ray library or an HDD data array. Credit: Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06980-y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A team of photonic engineers affiliated with several institutions in China has developed a new type of optical DVD that is capable of holding up to a petabyte of data. The group used a new material to coat the DVDs and new laser techniques to write data. The results are published...

If you want to know in what regard the Biden administration holds our military, look no further than a policy implemented last fall that has flown under the radar. Until last fall, the Army funded storage requests for soldiers who were deployed. That is no longer the case, according to Task & Purpose. On Oct 1, 2023, a memo was issued by Army Sustainment Command notifying soldiers that the Army would no longer store household goods or privately-owned vehicles for “soldiers deployed for contingency operations.” “We understand the burden this could potentially place on Soldiers,” Army spokesperson Sgt. Pablo Saez...

The Headrest Safe™ has a universal design that allows it to fit all vehicles. There are three ways to get quick access to The Headrest Safe™. First a biometric reader that uses your individual thumbprint or fingerprint. Second, a 4 to 8 digit passcode. Third, the tried and true method of a key.

“Both whistleblowers noted one instance in which IRS agents sought to search a storage unit in northern Virginia belonging to Hunter Biden. When the agents reached out to Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf with their request for a warrant, she informed Biden’s defense team about their interest in the property. “It was at this point for me that I started to believe that the attorneys with the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office and DOJ Tax were not acting appropriately“

A Scotts Valley man was reunited with his guitar after it was stolen from a storage unit. According to the Scotts Valley Police Department, an investigation led detectives to a guitar shop in Santa Clara County. The recovered guitar was a 1964 Gibson L7C. Similar guitars have an online asking price of more than $7,000. The police department says the investigation into the storage unit thefts is ongoing. No suspects or arrests have been announced.

It could be argued that the basic arithmetic showing wind power is an economic and societal disaster in the making should be clear to a bright primary school child. Now the Oxford University mathematician and physicist, researcher at CERN and Fellow of Keble College, Emeritus Professor Wade Allison has done the sums. The U.K. is facing the likelihood of a failure in the electricity supply, he concludes. “Wind power fails on every count,” he says, adding that governments are ignoring “overwhelming evidence” of the inadequacies of wind power, “and resorting to bluster rather than reasoned analysis”. Professor Allison’s dire warnings...

Many stakeholders are pinning their long-term storage hopes on lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery storage solutions, with this market expected to grow by almost 20% per year between 2022 and 2023, according to Precedence Research. But the reality is that, although Li-ion batteries have an important role to play on the road to net zero, this technology is neither robust nor versatile enough to single-handedly fulfill energy storage requirements. As a result, a diverse range of alternative grid-scale solutions that can deliver an unprecedented expansion in storage capacity are needed to offset our reliance on Li-ion batteries and drive the renewable energy...

The former employee posted a video on social media sharing how the tech giant allegedly 'scams' its customers.. CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA: A former Apple employee claims the company is allowing an iOS bug to fill customers' iPhone memory so they can update their software. The former employee posted a video on TikTok sharing how the tech giant allegedly "scams" its customers. In the video, he says that it's "not your fault" when iPhone storage runs low. ... The person, who goes by @nabeel_co, says there is a "long-standing" bug in iOS that prevents cache files and temporary files from being deleted...

Apparently the world’s supply of a favorite hot dog condiment doesn’t cut the … err … mustard. And, as a result, we may be looking at an international mustard shortage sooner than we think. According to Business Insider, a year of poor mustard seed production is the cause of what may result in a lack of mustard on American grocery store shelves in the near future. Experts say you can thank climate change for the large drop in mustard seed production, with Canada (the world’s second largest producer) and France watching the most recent growing season’s yields fall 28 percent...

Gravity-based energy storage technology company Energy Vault has formed a strategic partnership with non-ferrous metals smelting and refinery company Korea Zinc, including a US$50 million investment commitment. The announcement, made yesterday, comes as Swiss-American company Energy Vault targets a business combination with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Novus Capital Corporation II. The transaction is expected to close during this quarter and the combined company, to be named Energy Vault Holdings, will list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) as a result. Energy Vault said in October as it announced the intended merger that it has private investment in public...

The Department of Justice today announced a new rule to help enable the safe and secure storage of firearms and published a Best Practices Guide for federal firearms licensees (FFLs). This new rule implements the existing Gun Control Act requirement that federal firearms licensees that sell firearms to the general public (non-licensees) must certify that they have available secure gun storage or safety devices. “Today’s announcements build on the department’s efforts to reduce the risk of firearms falling into the wrong hands,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “Gun safety is a Department of Justice priority, and we will continue...

Used lithium-ion batteries taken from carmaker Audi’s electric vehicles (EVs) have been repurposed into a ‘second-life’ stationary energy storage system by energy company RWE at a project in Herdecke, Germany. RWE has deployed the system, which has a capacity of around 4.5MWh, at the site of its pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) plant at Hengsteysee reservoir in the North-Rhine Westphalia region of north-west Germany. The decommissioned batteries are taken from development models of Audi’s e-tron EVs, which have a maximum range of 252 miles when used for transport. They still had about 80% of their residual capacity remaining when taken...

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” called for a national safe storage law when reacting to James and Jennifer Crumbley being charged with involuntary manslaughter after their son 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley was charged for terrorism and murder in the school shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan.

Purdue University innovators have created technology aimed at replacing Morse code with colored “digital characters” to modernize optical storage. They are confident the advancement will help with the explosion of remote data storage during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Morse code has been around since the 1830s. The familiar dots and dashes system may seem antiquated given the amount of information needed to be acquired, digitally archived and rapidly accessed every day. But those same basic dots and dashes are still used in many optical media to aid in storage. A new technology developed at Purdue is aimed at modernizing...

An Introduction to the Art of Food storage done easily, and inexpensively – by Wendy Dewitt A 57 minute instructional video of making sense of economical and logical food storage to: “ store what you eat, and eat what you store”. Learn from those who have experience of storing and actually regularly using their food storage program, and the benefits of regularly rotating your supplies to keep them fresh. This is a training video to maximize the benefits of your food stage, geared to novice, intermediate, and advanced practitioners ; it is chocked full of helpful information ! Wendy presents...

LOG IN CORONAVIRUS About 800 Moderna COVID vaccine doses improperly stored at Fort Meade; recipients will likely need third shot By HEATHER MONGILIO CAPITAL GAZETTE APR 22, 2021 AT 1:50 PM Approximately 800 Department of Defense employees and members of the military community who received COVID-19 vaccines at Fort George G. Meade on April 7 and on April 12 will likely need to get a third dose after Kimbrough Ambulatory Center discovered some of the vials of the Moderna vaccine were improperly stored. Eighty vials of the vaccine were stored outside of the temperature range recommended by Moderna, which affects...

The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine no longer needs to be kept at ultra-freezing temperatures and can be safely stored inside normal medical freezers — making distribution easier, the firm said in a report Friday. The makers of the shots, including the German biotechnology firm BioNTech, have discovered the doses can remain at between 5 and -13 degrees Fahrenheit without spoiling — instead of -94 degrees like previously thought, according to the Financial Times.

The vaccine, which was developed with German drugmaker BioNTech, currently needs to be stored in ultra-cold freezers that keep it between minus 112 and minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the FDA. Pfizer said it submitted new data to the U.S. agency that shows the vaccine is stable between minus 13 and 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

From a friend via a copy-pasted email thread Many of you you have asked how safely store what we'll call "the modern sporting rifle" for the long term. Particularly let's focus on storage in what we'll euphemistically call "environmentally exposed" locations. The typical answer has been to liberally coat the firearm in some sort of viscous grease (last generally sold in the Korean War era) that can take an hour to get off if the firearm is needed/desired for use, and place all the parts in various bags inside a large diameter PVC Schedule 40 or better pipe, with threaded...