as if they started the war, as if they killed their leaders themselves. Ofc they are being boomed in the desert, have not lost anything. US and Isreal has the most valuable things or only them considered human beings? Oh, rest of the people living in the world, they should be grateful to US and Isreal to let them live.
The iranian government/IRGC isn't innocent but remember that its the regular people, the working class of Iran that is actually suffering further because of hostilities initiated by US/Israel
> remember that its the regular people, the working class of Iran that is actually suffering further because of hostilities initiated by US/Israel
This is true of any war. That’s damning for the party that starts a war of choice. But it’s no vindication for the regime that’s built itself up as a regional pest, including sponsor of actual terrorism against ordinary people, for years.
You realise that no vindication for the regime that’s built itself up as a regional pest, including sponsor of actual terrorism against ordinary people, for years. is a valid descriptor of the US as well?
America hasn't really been a regional pest unless we expand the scope of region to cover two continents. Not until this administration. And the U.S. is not a systematic sponsor of terrorism the way Tehran has become. Even e.g. the Afghan Mujahideen wasn't known to target civilians the way Hamas and Hezbollah have been.
History is full of such incidents. Isn't US have been using EU air space to conduct strikes in other countries? Is not EU kept silence for the election stolen in Pakistan? Is EU kept silence when hundreds of people were killed by Pakistan Army in 2024 and 2025? Is not EU kept Pakistan 2024 election report unpublished for 2 years? Why do EU support Pakistan Army's illegal rule? Oh, and Isn't NATO has been killing in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan?
Solar is not less than revolution in Pakistan. Almost every home and factory has solar installed on their roofs. More affluent houses have almost gone off grid; others are selling back to grid and others who can't afford has their own small scale 12V solar panels to run fans in the scorching summer of Pakistan to save electricity bills. It is all done by people independently without much support from the government as ROI (if you are using full potential of your installed capacity, it can be as low as 1 year and afterwords it will be free) is much better on solar than paying the grid.
I myself has got one my roof, 6KW with 5Kwh battery backup costing me 700K roughly 2500$. Now, I can use AC without thinking of electricity bills and the most importantly I do not have to face inconvenience of grid being not available in some cases for 24 hours.
Now Pakistan is facing energy crises not because it does not have enough, because it has too much as people are generating their own and due to nature of the contracts with electricity producing companies' government has to pay them according to their installed capacity not by generated.
According to a government report in 2021, 116,816Gwh was consumed commercially and in 2024 it stands at 111,110Gwh and in 25 and 26 in would be even lower.
> The Chief Financial Officer of Pakistan’s Fauji Cement Co. installed its first solar array in 2019 at Jhang Bhatar, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of the capital Islamabad. There are now 69 megawatts of panels across the company’s five main sites, at least twice what Tesla Inc. appears to have on the rooftops of its gigafactories in Nevada and Texas.1 They contribute about 23% of the company’s electricity, with a further 35% coming from recovering waste heat from its coal-fired clinker kilns.
Especially for hot and sunny areas solar is insane.
At mid day, max heat, you get the peak production and can run your AC at full throttle.
That enables you to efficiently work at nice temperatures.
Why is that always posted without stating the magnitude of the effect? The numbers that you find online are around 15% relative loss at 60°C vs. 25°C panel temperatur (I remember a HN comment reporting 12% comparing peak April to peak July). That is significant, but not world changing, especially for AC.
There are 30 year old still functioning panels in Australia.
Buried in that longevity, is an observation that a fifth of panels degrade faster than expected
The long tail appears on graphs showing the degradation rate per year of the panels, indicating that up to 20% of all samples perform 1.5 times worse than the average.
It exists and does degrade panels but the time horizon is pretty wide. Real world data shows something like 0.5% to 0.7% degregation per year on average.
At the start the degregation is higher and but it slows down with age.
So a 20 year old panel might be at around 80% in the worst case.
Often they are in much better shape.
This seems like a pretty good deal to me.
Marginally. Between 77F and 100F you only lose about 5%, so you still get 95% of the stated max efficiency. It’s basically negligible and not really relevant.
It is genuninely insane (in a good way!) I've encountered some degree of apprehension and disbelief from people in Western countries when I told them, that countries considered poor and backwards often are further along in the transition to renewables, and even for the everyman, installing solar and having (a usually Chinese) EV just makes sense - economically, and not only in terms of saving the planet.
The markup on solar in Europe is insane, and it usually comes down to shitty government regulations - we were forced to upgrade to a 3 phase system (even though our net drain from the grid was looking to decrease), install a government monitoring and control system (and were locked out of some inverter settings), and install a lot of questionable 'safety' equipment (like a DC fire safety cutout, which some argue is even a bigger fire hazard than not having it), and basically all but being forced to install a grid-tie system, as isolated systems (that can take but not feed back to the grid) are a legal gray area.
Not to mention, all the red tape.
But in exchange we get to feed back to the power grid for like 5% of the original price. To be fair, we got a substantial subsidy and in the end, jumping through these hoops was only a bit more expensive that going at it by myself and installing the hardware we actually needed and paying for it out of pocket.
> countries considered poor and backwards often are further along in the transition to renewables
This isn’t surprising; cell phones and mobile payments also took over much faster in Africa than Europe/US because the existing infrastructure (landlines, banks) was highly underdeveloped or unreliable.
> all but being forced to install a grid-tie system, as isolated systems (that can take but not feed back to the grid) are a legal gray area.
Isn't that exactly backwards of what you'd naively expect? Peak regulatory dysfunction.
Are these mandated systems capable of operating in the event of a grid outage? I understand that a lot of US installs cheap out on the necessary component.
Yes, that's drive me insane, west which is biggest advocator of climate change and preaches renewable energy has not done as much as a poor country like Pakistan has done.
And Pakistan is the one who is affected the most by the climate change. From September to February Pakistan AQI is basically unbreathable. Rain pattern is disturbed, winter has become shorter and summer has become longer, basically there is no spring or autumn, either it's summer or winter.
EU has to do more and make it easier for them to install solar panels.
It's not like Pakistan doesn't have these regulations, or doesn't try to tax solar power. It's just that the Chinese-Pakistan border is open and nobody's paying import taxes or listening to government regulations.
So the problem in Western Europe is simply that government is actually effective. This generates surprising differences with Pakistan. The government is effective at forcing employers to actually pay their employees. The government is effective at giving women their rights. The government is effective at taxing solar power.
You misunderstand. Nobody should be getting short changed (who doesn't deserve it).
It's just that the difference between the cost of something that's safe and effective and one that is ensured to be safe and effective by the govt should be no more than 10-20%.
Instead it costs 3x as much, and comes with mandatory government monitoring, and the sword of Damocles over your head that things are liable to change in the near future on the governments whim' instead of you owning the solar plant you have bought.
All the subsidies the government hands out are calculated for it to cover the cost of a self-install, and then maybe a bit. So tax money (which is YOUR money) gets used by the system to support itself rather than you, even when its supporting you.
> Yes, that's drive me insane, west which is biggest advocator of climate change and preaches renewable energy has not done as much as a poor country like Pakistan has done.
The "west" is not a single place and I hate that term, because it contains that "we against them" narrative, which is pushed on us from many directions in recent years.
France, Germany or the USA all have a very different energy strategy, shaped by the availability of resources and geopolitics.
But for the average Joe, the situation across the globe and also in the "west" is not so different from what was described in other commments about Pakistan: People install solar on their rooftop, backyards, balconies etc. because it is dirt cheap now and amortises in a reasonable amount of time.
> EU has to do more and make it easier for them to install solar panels.
I can't speak for all countries in the EU, but at least in Germany, it's already quite easy and became even easier in recent years, e.g. private solar installations are exempt from various taxes.
The effort and money put into renewable energy in the EU is significant. In Germany around 60% of energy now comes from renewable energy [1] (Pakistan for comparison [2]), which was unthinkable 15 years ago. I remember quite well, that the fear mongers foretold, that we never will exceed 20% renewables or if we did, that the grid no longer will be reliable.
That said, you're right that the EU could and should do more. It feels like we're doing the "Energiewende" with one arm tied to the back. Unfortunately, there are many groups working against this goal by influencing the public opinion and it will stay like that for the foreseeable future.
Europe no longer can afford to act like it's in a privileged position, and one of the things it cannot afford is to spend exuberantly for the same results others get for the fraction of the price.
It's just tying them into your houses wiring, and therefore the grid, that's expensive. That, and putting them on your roof (Because anything roofing is really expensive, which makes sense since roofing is in the top 5 most dangerous jobs in the US, and it sucks to do, and it doesn't even pay that well even still!)
It is absolutely sane and perfectly reasonable. The climate highly support it, you are already used to a grid that in some cases are not available 24/7, and the major energy consumptions are AC and fans which correlate with production.
I'm not from Pakistan but Karachi is the only vertical city in Pakistan, most people lives in apartment buildings, I would suggest looking at other cities like Lahore.
Sorry, I fixed it to "Almost every". I agree, "Every" is overstated.
I have never been to Karachi, what I know about Karachi, Karachi weather is not as harsh as Punjab or away from coastline so, you might survive (If you are used to living without AC) there without AC. And further, its hugely densely populate area so a lot of people might not have roof to install it. And Karachi gets people from the whole country and most of the people are living there temporarily, they might not want to commit on installing solar system on a rented house.
I hate it Americans/Western advocating democracy, human rights for Iran (Which I believe is their right if the demand so). But let me remind you, Pakistan is facing this since 2022, when an elected PM was removed by an American regime change operation on behalf of US by Pakistan Army.
Since 2022, Pakistanis been protesting, largest political party was banned from elections, largest political party was dismantled by Pakistan Army, journalists were abducted, banned, and killed, the most famous leader was shoot, eventually locked up.
In February 2024 Pakistan Army stolen election, when Pakistan army shut down internet, and keep x.com banned for 1.5 years, thousands of common Pakistanis was abducted, tortured, their homes broken into, killed during protests. Literally no one spoke. EU champion of human rights and democracy did not release Pakistan election 2024 report for 1.5 year. US is silent because Pakistan army general's serve their motives, so they do not have any problem with internet shut down, human right violations, democracy.
Stop this hypocrisy. Democracy and human rights become a thing when their interests are not served, or some dictators serve them then EU/US do not care.
See also the protests in Serbia [1] led by university students, that have been also mostly ignored by both the EU and the USA. The EU commented "they will not accept or support a violent change of power in Serbia", and the USA claimed they do not support "those who undermine the rule of law or who forcefully take over government buildings."
and the governments of the west are most supportive of authoritarian and military regimes. Why are they silent over what is happening in Pakistan? Pakistan election was stollen by Pakistan army in day light robbery. And what happened before the election is another story. Pakistan is going through worst form of its human right/freedom of speech/democratic abuses since its independence and west seems to be careless. Just because people of Pakistan support a person who is nationalist. So, for them a dictator is better than him.
Democracy/free speech/human rights are tools for west, not a moral high ground. Hypocrisy at its peak. :)
This is not new. This kind of things happening for long time especially for hunting high paying jobs in US. Now deep fake is just helping them a little. I joined tech industry in 2020, I did not know anything that how Pakistani/Indian/Bangladeshi companies get good bids from US clients until my friend joined industry next years. He joined a company who used to do this, and my friend help them clear interviews and get that company high paying jobs in US and he will be getting peanuts for the same job he got them probably 10k$/month. They will create fake profile of candidate of US citizen and someone during interview has to pretend to be him. Yeah of course before it has to be real human now, AI can be anyone.
And I have been contacted many times to such kind of arrangement that the offered me that we will give you realistic fake US profile, you have to give interview, if you get hired, we will take some share of salary. And I denied, as I do not want to live with feeling of guilty of lying for earning more than I need where I live, I can live way better with what I make than my other fellow countrymen.
I still use search engines. I do not like to be spoon fed. I want to learn from the real people. Not AI generated shit. ChatGPT or other LLMs are trained on old data, they do not contain newer information. Newer information and knowledge are produced by the real humans. LLMs are great for quick fact checking, but not for searching.
For example: What's the height of mount Everest? LLMs will most probably give right answer.
What are the specs for new Goolge Pixel 9a? LLM can't answer this may after a year they can.
Whenever you search for some advice (laptop with best battery life in 2025) or reviews (hubspot vs. salesforce) you are barraged with torrents of AI-generated slop. Now that it's also taking over the search engine itself (AI summaries) your whole experience will be dumbed down to the point of mindless automaton consuming pre-packaged tidbits of revenue-generating pre-approved sanitised elite-friendly information.
I've always found it curious how the level of technology in Children of Men seemed to have stalled at around the time of the outbreak. From where I see it, the maturation of LLMs is the zombie outbreak for human communication.
Great Book. I presume you are reading the 3rd edition (all 64-bit). I suggest also getting a used copy of the 1st edition (all 32-bit) to compare and contrast. This is the only book that i have all three editions of :-)
Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, I live in the part of the world where books are considered luxury, so we have to pay hefty amounts for original books, which I can't afford and its super hard to find used copies as well for the same reason.
I will try to find over the internet and give it a read.
yes, author does explain multiple factors, which impacts a nation's success. Such as institutions, culture, politics, historical events, vicious or virtuous cycles. Etc. It's good book overall.
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