There are two separate incidents here in the same article. Yesterday a tire was filmed falling off a 777 that was 20 years old. The 737 Max that rolled off the tarmac happened today.
"Carbon is extracted from the air in the form of CO2 and combined with the hydrogen in a process called synthesis."
It seems like at least re-burning the carbon that's already in the air is better than burning new dug up carbon? This is at least not net atmospheric carbon positive. You can do sequestration too...
I am by no means a chemist (beyond a secondary school level), but burning CO2 doesn’t seem possible. Doesn’t burning through application of some energy split the bonds of complicated stable molecules into less complicated, but stable molecules (by adding oxygen), thus releasing energy.
In this case; how do they recombine the CO2 into more complicated hydrocarbons? And if it’s energy negative, is it better to do this, or to use it to capture carbon?
> In this case; how do they recombine the CO2 into more complicated hydrocarbons?
Fischer–Tropsch process.
> And if it’s energy negative, is it better to do this, or to use it to capture carbon?
It's obviously "energy negative", as it would be a violation of thermodynamics for it not to be, entropy being how it is. As far as doing it over carbon capture, I would be more interested in hearing your thoughts on why carbon capture would be a better alternative.
"In this case; how do they recombine..." that is exactly what the article is about. E-fuels are atmospheric carbon dioxide that is electrolyzed using renewable sources and combined with additional hydrogen in order to produce octane. So, my original parent is saying the process we should focus on is sequestration (Atmospheric carbon dioxide -> electrolyze to carbon and oxygen [this is the energy intensive step] -> bury the carbon and leave the oxygen -> harvest natural hydrocarbons / oil -> distill into various weights -> burn the octane). I propose achieving similar atmospheric carbon balance with similar energy inputs with the cycle (Atmospheric carbon dioxide -> electrolyze to carbon and oxygen [same energy per carbon] -> hydogenate the carbon to octane for portability and compatibility reasons -> burn the octane). The only point in doing all of this of course is the huge installed user base for engines that burn octane, a portable and stable fuel.
I think the parent is saying that the new CRO is bad not because they caused the dumpster fire - the new CRO is bad because after interviewing in January, they saw the dumpster fire and either thought it didn't matter, or that they could fix it. Not a case of "incompetent because they couldn't fix the problem", instead a case of "must be incompetent because they saw the books but took the job anyway".
Do you have to be a bad risk officer to be willing to get paid to save whatever is possible to save even if the ship is sinking? Maybe because of them five percent fewer businesses will go under because of SVB.
Because now the bank has to pay interest to depositors of $150M instead of $100M, which means that they'll pay a lower, less competitive rate. So, in order to keep customers, banks are incentivized to lend out any and all spare cash for whatever yield that they can get, in order to give attractive rates to depositors. Losing customers though shouldn't really be a problem for the bank, after all, those customers did deposit "too much" money - once enough have left to seek higher yields elsewhere, there will be less cash on the sidelines, and so higher yields for the remaining customers. I suppose if your whole philosophy is "growth at any cost", and you're measuring growth not just by AUM but also by number of customers, you get excess risk taking and yield chasing.
A: We have too many depositors! We are not getting enough yield to pay interest without taking on risk.
B: What if we reduced the interest we pay on deposits?
A: Then we'd stop getting new depositors! Our only option is to take on risk.
You are right, this feels like a very unsympathetic problem to have. If you are a regulated bank you need to act like a grown-up and understand that overworking the soil and underworking the soil will both give you a bad yield in the end.
At the SVB bought the securities in question, interest rates were 0 across nearly all savings products. SVB was trying to maximize profits for itself and shareholders. This isn't about attracting customers with high-yield accounts.
I feel most banks are coasting off the inertia from longtime and/or unsophisticated customers.
Up until I switched to a neobank late last year to get some actual yield on my savings, I'd been using the same brick-and-mortar checking and savings account I opened in high school.
Apparently your average person is much more likely to move homes than move banks. Bank accounts are incredibly sticky, and even though it's not really that hard to open up a new account (and maybe switch over some recurring transactions), people nevertheless don't do it.
Oh wow, see my other comment in another thread. I had a ridiculously bad experience trying to get a key fob made last week - all the numbers would lead me around in circles, then I'd get "spam caller" numbers calling me telling me they were on their way. Switching to Yelp reviews seemed to solve the problem for locksmiths in particular, and I really can't figure out why...
Replying to myself to add: for any other household service I probably wouldn't have even noticed. But, being in a vulnerable position, having sketchy locksmith services really freaked me out. You want my address and credit card info and also know that I have a disabled vehicle potentially outside of my garage? No thanks, not taking any extra chances here.
So this is why when I called a locksmith last week, they took down my info and then 30 minutes later got a call from no less than 5 other locksmiths who were "on their way to my house". Nobody's phone number matched, nobody wanted to tell me who they worked for. Totally sketched out with Google Maps' suggestions, I switched to yelp. The first service I called on yelp was reasonably priced, was actually the person coming to my house, and totally hassle free. How is Yelp dealing with this when Google can't seem to?
I wouldn't give Yelp too much praise. It's been alleged that Yelp engages in astroturfing and unfair business practices[0], and the documentary "Billion Dollar Bully"[1] even accuses them of "Mob-Like Behavior".
Oh definitely - I can't say that I've had stellar experiences with Yelp in the past for restaurants, barbers, etc, from the consumer side, and I hear it is much worse as a business. I was just very surprised that in this niche Google performed so poorly and Yelp so well. I wouldn't go on to generalize from this experience though.
These kinds of businesses are common for scams, by kind of business I mean “urgent” ones: such as a locksmith, or garage door repair. In either case its unlikely you already know/have one, and you urgently want the issue fixed, so you’re most likely to search google and pick the one with the most reviews.
I had this happen to me with the garage door case, dude showed up, different name on card than the van, and different than who I even called. Searching google maps for “garage door repair” turned up tons of businesses with fake sounding names, all a ton of fake 5 star reviews.
I used to work in this field (verifying local business listings). Locksmiths are traditionally the spammiest and scammiest industry of them all (along with taxis, before rideshare cut down their ROI). Basically any service area business has huge incentive to spam any and all business listing providers, and for whatever reason the locksmith industry became the worst of them. Flower delivery and personal injury lawyers often fall into the same bucket. You'll still see companies named "AAA Locksmith" and the like because this behavior dates back to the days of the Yellow Pages.
As to why Yelp is better than Google on this, I'd guess it's either that you got lucky, or that Google is more targeted than Yelp these days. I'm not up on the current state of how listing verification works now, but it's possible that Google's process is easier to target than Yelp's, and if there are any weaknesses, a locksmith marketer will figure it out pretty quickly.
Just to illustrate how long locksmiths have been a problem, here's an article from 2009 talking about locksmith spam on maps. The techniques have changed but the general reliance on sketchy tactics hasn't.
Specifically for locksmiths and garage door companies, Google Ads tries to fight back against this[0]. I've gone through this with a few clients.
However, they still let lead aggregators get verified, provided they have a local business license. However, "legacy" google ads accounts like locksmithdirectory.com seem to be able to advertise anywhere in the nation.[1]
Several years back I needed a plumber in a bit of a hurry. I used Angie’s List, now angi.com, with a little less hesitancy than using Google reviews or yelp.
The plumber I hired this way did a good job at a fair price. For less urgent work I hired this company for other work even after getting bids from others.
When I needed a plumber I reached out to a bunch of buddies to see who they use.
I got quotes from three of their recommendations and ended up using the one a buddy found on the back of a church bulletin. Guy was amazing - a one man shop - super professional, fair price, quality work and replacement parts. Done in less than 1 hour. It's great to have a trustworthy plumber.
I don't know about the US but in Europe many cities/communes will list registered businesses in the area, usually these are manually curated lists. so while you don't necessarily get ratings/reviews (which I have basically stopped trusting altogether), you'll get legitimate.
Hiya jaycroft, et al. First time / long time, here. It sounds like you're already taken care of, but I hope this will benefit /someone/ reading through here. Iofd, I am a card-carrying ALoA member and professional locksmith.
The Associated Locksmiths of America (ALoA) [0] has its own search tool [1]. Of course, the same rules apply as everywhere. Not all good locksmiths are members, and not all members are good locksmiths. But, personally, I'll take the word of a trade organization over that of an advertiser any day. The real tragedy here is that both google and yelp apparently missed the opportunity to serve up a tool like this, in favor of (I'm guessing here) whoever bought the most expensive SEO package.
To answer your question: In my experience, yelp is dealing with this by being a smaller service, in every sense.
Google has, by making itself the de faco choice for each and every mode of search, become a "bucket of crabs" [2][3]. As such, it as an environment is selecting for that crab who can best pull down the other crabs, and not the "tastiest" or whatever.
That said, I can't think of anyone, off the top of my head, who puts any money into yelp. Where I live, it simply isn't popular. It's not a part of the culture, the same way that google is, and so is not as attractive to interlopers, "puppy mill"-style franchises, etc. I believe you're getting better results simply because it's too small a bucket for bad-ish actors to see it as a viable feeding target.
Back to the trades: Imho, screw search engines at large - even ALoA's. Ask your friends for recommendations. Don't have any friends? Call up your favorite cafe, and ask them who they use. Even if their tradesmen work strictly in the commercial space, and you're looking for someone to do some residential work, they /really should/ be willing to recommend another tradesman. One doesn't work in the trades for very long, without being exposed to the other players in one's area.
Lastly, I beg you: if you've found a tradesman who treated you well at a fair price - evangelize on their behalf. Tell your friends and family. Ask that locksmith for a dozen business cards. Most of us will knock a few bucks off of a service call if we were recommended by word-of-mouth. Not everything needs to be an on-line affair.
[3] - The only entity that wins, in this scenario, is the cat who owns the bucket... I know a number of very good tradesmen who feel like they need to spend very big money on SEO and advertising just to come out one index-position ahead of their competition. If the numbers -one and -two position, on google specifically in my area, would put aside what I call their "advertising cold war," they could both afford to take a very nice holiday every year. Sadly, they choose to subsidize some advertiser's very nice holiday. So goes the world.
That's very possible - reviews by obscurity or something. Although I really feel like 10 years ago the roles of Google and Yelp were very much reversed here. Changing times changing strategies I suppose.
Furthermore we know that the wallet spent coins in 2017, three years after Hal's death. Someone other than Hal had (has?) access to the private key for that address.
