I love how resourceful you people are, every time I check out a HN thread I learn about more databases and references.
Some of us are young and untrained in how these markets work. I think the original commenter wanted to contribute a counter-example because they're learning about this market.
What would you suggest for learning more about the energy industry? Best references and anything to avoid?
Just dig around on the web. There is lots and lots of material, EIA and API are good sources for factual information and data. Just keep in mind that there are opinions and biases when it comes to energy/policies.
To me it's always astonishing how gigantic this entire industry and the associated infrastructure is and how little average Joe knows and cares about it when he fills his car at the pump. The picture in this article captures it for me: https://www.portofgothenburg.com/news-room/press-releases/hi...
Not oil-specific, but there are two podcasts I've been listening to that are really great. The Energy Transition Show and The Energy Gang. The former being a bit dry but very informative, the latter being more entertaining and maybe just as informative.
After sports and politics, oil and energy are probably among the most data-rich areas of human activity.
There's a global trade, it's critically important, the commodity, its trade, and data are quite fluid.
The US EIA, EU's IEA, and various private data providers (BP's Annual Statistical Review being among the more notable) are all excellent sources. And of course the financial markets for current trading prices.
For a wider viewpoint, there are numerous books and references.
For a general history (through the early 1990s), Daniel Yergin's The Prize is simply staggering. He's very much an industry partisan and cheerleader, but the story he tells is worth hearing for anyone, and to me read as strongly cautionary. It's quite well researched and you'll find a wealth of other earlier references within it.
For a more current general reading, Vaclav Smil cranks out a book or two a year, and has covered energy, energy transitions, and oil repeatedly since the early 1990 through the current year. Again, he does excellent research and will have numerous references worth exploring.
The IPCC have extensive information on oil, coal, and gas activity, past and future, as well as explorations of alternative energy. There are a few reports which specifically look at the energy mix and considerations. These are voluminous, and the consortium's website is a bit of a disaster to navigate, but the information is absolutely first-rate. I can check later to find the specific reference I have in mind, ping back if you'd like a pointer.
On the energy conservation / transition / renewables side, mileage varies. I'm a firm believer that we'll have to go that direction, but also caution that there's a lot of woo, bogosity, and outright scams around. The US national energy research labs, particularly the National Renewabale Energy Lab (NREL) in Colorado, do excellent (if occasionally politically-motivated) work.
Rocky Mountain Institute has looked into alternative and low-carbon energy since the early 1980s, under Amory and Hunter Lovins.
The Post-Carbon Institute is a less-technical, more political group based in Norther California, which publishes materials on peak oil and post-carbon issues. It and 350.org, founded by Bill McKibben, are among the better decarbonisation groups I'm aware of. (There are many such, quality ... varies.)
The Worldwatch Institute seem to have gone inactive but published a series of books on the State of the World, covering numerous issues. Many are available at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/search.php?query=worldwatch+institute+st... Definitely opinionated, cover much more than oil, but high-quality information.
On who to look out for --- I'd take anything coming from the Libertarian/Free Market think tank network know as the Atlas Network with massive heapings of salt. That includes the Cato Institute, Heartland Institute, Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute, and many hundreds of other organisations around the world. Fortunately there's a handy list: https://www.atlasnetwork.org/partners
If you'd like to know why, I recommend Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway's Merchants of Doubt, which discusses the half-century-plus campaign of propaganda and disinformation these groups have carried out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt
(As with much propaganda, there's often a kernel of truth, and frequently much more. The problem is that this is wrapped in a large helping of distraction and rhetoric whose principle aim is to persuade rather than inform.)
There are more like 50 different Microsofts, one for each major product.
My theory is that there are still some old Ballmer loyalists left over running some of these products. Dark UX is not what Satya wants.
And yet here we are. I think it’s more likely that Satya wants a perception that he doesn’t want Dark UX and then use it everywhere. Windows and azure is full of this stuff and it doesn’t make sense that people are secretly going against the CEO’s vision and direction.
I don’t expect CEO micromanagement, but if Satya wanted a positive user experience seriously, then the solitaire PM wouldn’t have added ads or at least would have removed them after the backlash.
I think Microsoft has really improved (eg, WSL, vscode, GitHub) but think it’s just PR about how great everything is supposed to be.
It’s like the Amazon ads that show happy workers getting degrees and stuff. I’m glad those things are happening but it’s just PR.
Great stuff. I was thinking about this after watching a talk by the Beyond Meat CEO in which he states that instead of using animals to rearrange plant proteins into animal proteins (muscles), they're taking the animal out of the equation.
My next thought was, can't you take the plant out of the equation too? How difficult is it to rearrange these nutrients from a fertilizer mix straight into something resembling animal proteins (though easier for humans to digest)? I wonder at what point plants scale better than raw conversion of fertilizer to whatever protein these companies seem to be synthesizing.
I make a monthly donation to charity: water that I believe directly impacts the life of some ~20 people in South America, Africa, and Asia who otherwise wouldn't be able to access clean drinking water.
It's not like I created the charity, so I don't think I'm some superhero for doing the minimal thing of giving them some of my hard-earned money, but I do think the charity is making a difference in real peoples' lives.
I had my first allergic reaction to red meat in 2013. My diet currently consists of some form of chicken at every meal, or ground turkey.
It was 6 months of torturous experimentation to figure out why my stomach was burning like lava after every meal. When I had something important to do that day I knew I could eat bread or crackers to avoid a food reaction.
The allergy is rare in my home state so I had to see a doctor from South Carolina to recognize my symptoms and order the correct test.
Sorry your reactions are digestive :( I feel lucky to have skin hives only in response to this - worst being lips and tongue occasionally.
Ask your doctors to become educated on it, though I'm not sure it'll do much good to you it may help the next guy they see with AGS. Send them the nih.gov papers linked in these comments.
Man I miss the old youtube, you can hardly find those cool zero budget "filmed on dad's camcorder" kind of videos anymore with all of the high budget 10 minute production videos being dumped onto it. I've had to start watching at 1.25x speed, I think they slow some videos down to hit the 10 minute mark. Youtube sucks.
Do you have some savings? You should do a vacation in the south. Get some sunlight in a southern state (Cali, Texas, Florida). With proper planning your interactions with other people can be as minimal as your average gas station run-in.
The world isn't burning, the media definitely is though. That's a dying animal doing everything it can to keep your eyes glued to the "latest disaster" and their ads of course.
We are going to get a vaccine and slowly work back to normal. If you are concerned about the world, do something about your little slice of the world. Pick up some trash and drop some groceries off for an elderly neighbor.
This summer was the third very dry summer in germany. A dryness i haven't seen before.
A dryness which hurt the trees outside of my window as they did not get enough water, which i also have not seen.
But don't get me wrong. Knowing whats going on is stressful, reading irrelevant drama and not reading about people who are changing and trying to change the world is frustrating.
Instead of reading about new and less co2 producing stuff, i read about an idiot trump who plays kindergarden tantrum on the highest political level. The level which should give a direction and guidance.
And yes i'm not from the USA but if 'not even' the USA can do it, i can't expect a lot more countries not to do it.
At least my country is reasonable boring and smart (yes germany go germany :P)
Reddit is cute dog gifs on the surface and a quickly sloping pit of torment once you sink into it. I'm glad to have deleted it from my phone. I browse the internet much more responsibly on a laptop.
I deleted all social and news apps from my phone, I basically have email, maps, and a chess app. I was bored for a day, but now that I'm not pumping stupidity into my eyes through this phone I'm actually creating music and learning chess deeply. I'm much more conscious of constructive uses of my time now. Gotta cut that cord, most of you are probably addicted to those apps.
I used to listen to lots of metal (In Flames, Iced Earth, Dimmu Borgir, also things like Hypocrisy, Pain (Peter Tägtgren) or Paradise Lost, plus good old stuff like Maiden) and sadly it felt like it had quite an effect on my mood. It matched my mood, sure but it wasn't helpful. For years.
Now - don't laugh! - I am listening to 80s synthwave compilations on Youtube all day long. 80s synthwave! - I can't think of any other music genre that sounds more lighthearted and unworried and it really helps to brighten my mood. The effect is enormous.
Other things I currently do to keep my sanity is lots of walking. The effect of physical excercise on me is pretty great but I really need to get the heart pumping and to sweat. This is as easy as putting on too many layers of cloths for the temperature/activity and a few inclines/hills also helps. Being out in the sun (if the schedule makes it possible) and at the fresh air also improves my mood. Walking through a forest also soothes my mind. Also: walking faster than I normally would helps because I need to concentrate to walk faster than I normally would - which means I can't think of anything else i.e. it is actually keeping my mind free of other (sometimes negative) thoughts.
Neither of this actually solves your problems of course but it might help to cope with some of their effects and put you mentally in a spot where you can better reason about solutions.
Let me know if there is anything you want to talk about and all the best!
Synthwave is actually fairly close musically to demoscene music. Try listening to Scenestream / Nectarine and tell me what you think. I find it pretty nice as work-music.
Some of us are young and untrained in how these markets work. I think the original commenter wanted to contribute a counter-example because they're learning about this market.
What would you suggest for learning more about the energy industry? Best references and anything to avoid?