xxgreg
Having said that, half the world seems to run on Excel spreadsheets, which are full of money values, and Excel is basically all floats (with some funky precision logic to make it deterministic - would be curious to know more).
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2815407/can-someone-conf...
* Do you want to do it in-place or as a copy?
* Is it an ASCII or Unicode string? If using Unicode, I assume you want to reverse on grapheme cluster boundaries?
Asking these questions let you as a candidate demonstrate your knowledge.
If the candidate doesn't ask these questions, the interviewer can ask follow up questions like.
* What is the time/space complexity of the algorithm? (Easy answer!)
* How does this work with UTF strings?
I don't particularly like the question, but have been in interviews where this exact question was used. From the discussion with the candidate it did very quickly weed out inexperienced developers. I was amazed at how many people applied for roles and had no knowledge of these concepts.
> Do you actually reverse strings here?
We've also tried doing more in-depth code exercises, which are more applicable to our business domain. That didn't work much better, and required upfront work from the candidate, which isn't always fair on them.
Anyways - happily not involved in the recruiting process any more.
In my opinion, existing tech is able to solve the climate crisis. Breakthroughs can make the solution cheaper and sooner.
In my view the main problem is the attitude of doom amongst the general population. If people felt there was a solution, and were excited and energised by the challenge, they'd be more willing to support political changes. I.e. pushing back against entrenched obstructionist industries, pricing externalities, and investing in infrastructure.
Now the EU has a single gas market, and had upgraded pipelines to be used in reverse directions. For example, recently since gas transport from Russia to Poland was reduced, Germany has been exporting gas to Poland.
Putin is testing Germany's new government and the EU leadership.
More renewables, and using gas more efficiently, i.e better insulated buildings throughout the EU will solve this.
New nuclear isn't going to happen much in the EU, and existing nuclear is only a small part of EU wide generation, and becoming increasingly unreliable. France has even higher electricity prices ATM due to nuclear outages.
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-ne...
A fossil power plant wastes ~60% of the energy, a nuclear plant ~75%, a small petrol engine ~75%. Once you take this into account, the stats look a little better.
https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/draft-v...
https://qz.com/2004569/the-global-chip-shortage-can-be-expla...
Also, Toyota is now cutting 40 percent of global production due to chip shortage.
It's not yet known how the virus escaped the quarantine centre. None of the quarantine centre staff have tested positive, despite being tested multiple times.
It's suspected that the transmission occurred by somebody walking near the hotel while the initial case was arriving, or in a fenced off outdoor exercise area.
6 people walked by on CCTV at this point. 4 have been contacted, but 2 haven't been identified.
Also worth noting, the border isn't completely closed. There is a steady stream of returning New Zealanders, and also exceptions for some workers. Everyone does a 2 week quarantine stay on entering the country. Some of these people test positive for Corona, but so far it hasn't escaped a quarantine centre. Looks like Delta is harder to contain.
The big German power companies definitely have a lot to answer for. At least there is now an agreed timeline to shut off all the coal plants.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
What is not well known in the Anglosphere is that the German nuclear phase-out was actually legislated around 2000, and not in 2011 after Fukushima.
In 2011 Merkel extended the phase-out end date by ~10 years, which was democratically very unpopular. 3-months later Fukushima happened, and the phase-out went back to an end-date similar to the original.
More charts here: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
While it is an energy imbalance which causes the climate to change, modifying the energy input or output via geoengineering will also cause the climate to change, even if the overall balance stays the same.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
In fact brokdorf was taken offline early due to a failure during a load following experiment. It was only ramping by a small percentage of load.
It's more likely that keeping the reactors online would have made the coal phaseout negotiations harder, and made it easier for the big four power companies to prevent renewables from being deployed.
In my view it's more important to build up industry capable of constantly deploying new zero carbon generation, and exporting this technology, than to keep the reactors running for more than 35 years (the phase out agreement).
There are significant energy losses if all you want on the other end is electricity. But not so bad if you're burning it for heat.
In theory a nuclear reactor could produce both electricity and heat to produce synthetic fuels, making it more cost effective than renewables.
For electricity only it looks like renewables are significantly cheaper however.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
Also interesting, between 2000 and 2010, before Fukushima, Japan had a large increase in coal use.
There are also a number of existing hydrogen pipelines in operation. One of which was first built in the the 30s.
The first step will be replacing hydrogen from fossil sources with renewable. This also provides industry which cannot be electrified a path to low carbon emissions.
Hydrogen is valuable for other processes such producing steel, high temperature heat, and chemicals.
German industry already uses large amounts of hydrogen produced from fossil methane. The first step will be to replace this with renewable hydrogen.
Interesting fact: Germany has a few 100km of hydrogen pipelines which have been in operation since the 1930s.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
Batteries can help to some extent for shifting day to day peaks.
Seasonal storage is more tricky. Germany has about 3 months worth of natgas stored in underground caverns. One approach would be to use this to store syntheticly produced gases from electrolysis.
Note so far everyone here is talking about electricity which only makes up a third of Germany's emissions.
Synthetic gases (non-fossil) will be required for high temperature heat, and chemical feedstocks for industry. For example some steel smelters in Germany are transitioning from coal to hydrogen.
Nuclear is a poor fit to an electrical grid which is mostly renewable for both economic and technical reasons. However it may be a good fit for running synthetic gas plants which can use both the heat and electricity and require 24/7 energy.