alt.hn

4/1/2026 at 2:19:25 PM

Iran war sparks renewables boom as Europeans rush to buy solar, heat pumps, EVs

 https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/31/iran-war-sparks-renewables-boom-as-europeans-rush-to-buy-solar-heat-pumps-and-evs

by vrganj

4/1/2026 at 4:00:27 PM

If only the US was doing this too.

by josefritzishere

4/1/2026 at 4:13:15 PM

At a federal level the US is moving backwards. But at a local and personal level, for the first time in generation, a huge number are waking up to the direct consequences of their dependency on the global oil markets and it's impacts their daily lives.

People in the US still don't like feeling like hostages, and this episode is a stark reminder of that.

The last geopolitical oil shocks of the 1970s resulted in huge efficiency increases in transportation and energy - this will likely do the same, but with current technologies.

by danans

4/1/2026 at 5:29:06 PM

From the stats I've seen, people in the US are doing it. A huge amount, and more each year.

The economics of it are just too good. Adding grid connectivity seems to be the bottleneck right now.

by extraduder_ire

4/1/2026 at 4:08:43 PM

It will again eventually, will just take more time than it otherwise would've taken.

https://electrek.co/2026/03/25/eia-new-solar-wind-storage-ca...

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy-manufactur...

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/balcony-solar-tak...

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/were-harvesting-t...

https://www.brightsaver.org/publicly-filed-states

by toomuchtodo

4/1/2026 at 4:17:04 PM

I'd argue it already is. Only 7% of electricity generating capacity being added in 2026 will be natural gas.

> Solar power makes up 51% of the planned 2026 capacity additions, followed by battery storage at 28% and wind at 14%.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205

by kieranmaine

4/1/2026 at 4:34:16 PM

We can go faster, as China demonstrates (~400GW of renewables deployed annually), and as someone who believes in climate change, I personally would like to go as fast as physics will allow.

https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/china-energy-transi...

https://www.cfr.org/articles/china-is-planning-decades-ahead...

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/07/10/1119941/china-en...

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/china-renewable-photo-essay

https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/statistics/202601/30/cont...

by toomuchtodo

4/1/2026 at 7:29:18 PM

I like that y'all are hopefull. It's nice that someone is.

by josefritzishere

4/1/2026 at 4:30:52 PM

Solar power is 10000x as hard to permit where I live. I was able to connect to the grid without anyone looking at it. Laterally just hooked up a 200amp secondary connection straight to the grid without anyone from the government batting an eye and on the power in the house went. If I wanted even a 200W solar panel it requires a code inspection, a marked roof plan (my house doesn't even have building plans, so how to even do this?), license, special solar bond, and a special warranty and then clearance from the power company.

Fuck that.

Many counties have made it so that solar only makes sense if you are wildcatting it out in some remote place where the planning and zoning fascists won't find you out. In such case you can install it for an order of magnitude cheaper and then it actually makes sense.

Meanwhile I can build a 200 foot tall oil derrick on my land with NO PERMIT WHATSOEVER because of course the oil companies had the political influence to exempt oil related infrastructure from requirements.

by mothballed

4/1/2026 at 4:36:43 PM

Solution: oil derrick covered in solar panels.

(joking, but wow that really does highlight how absolutely dysfunctional US regulation is, no wonder everyone over there hates their government)

by pjc50

4/1/2026 at 4:39:22 PM

I've thought about it. My thought was a giant oil derrick with a bunch of utilities on it. I also thought about just making the entire house part of an oil derrick.

by mothballed

4/1/2026 at 4:35:22 PM

I cannot speak to where you live without knowing where you live, but https://www.gosolarapp.org/ was incubated by a DOE lab to streamline residential permitting with automation, and many states override local planning for permitting and siting utility scale solar.

As always, this is an OSI layer 8 people problem; if you can and want to, get involved.

by toomuchtodo

4/1/2026 at 4:03:04 PM

Trump might ironically end up being the guy that pushes society over the green energy tipping point.

EVs were all the rage a few years ago, but they were expensive and gas prices collapsed. However if we get another $5-$6/gal gut punch, a lot of people will probably say "You know what? I'm done with this shit."

by WarmWash

4/1/2026 at 4:19:34 PM

UK petrol prices (at time of comment) of ~£1.50/l are equivalent to $7.50/USgal.

People around me are expecting to see diesel at £2/l soon.

by pjc50

4/2/2026 at 8:43:03 AM

For much of my late teens and early 20s, I was hearing about people using vegetable oil as a substitute for diesel. If that still works, there may be some additional impact that both limits the fuel price and increases food prices: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/272515844?_gl...

To the point of the comment you're replying to, US cars are infamously inefficient compared to European cars, and also there's that old quote about how "In the US 100 years is a long time, while in Europe 100 miles is a long way", so the US can still get a price shock even with cheaper fuel than the UK/EU.

by ben_w

4/2/2026 at 9:24:16 AM

Vegetable oil will cause long-term damage in modern diesel engines with direct injection or common rail injection systems. Older indirect injection diesel engines could tolerate it much better because of the pre-combustion stage.

by neilalexander

4/1/2026 at 4:25:05 PM

It all depends on how long they remain that high. After reading [1] this i would not count on it.

[1](https://archive.ph/NLJWJ)

by ghm2199

4/1/2026 at 4:21:43 PM

The Greenest President Ever!

The World works in mysterious ways.

by tharmas

4/1/2026 at 4:26:21 PM

If it were to be so I would exclaim "What a poor vessel have we found to do this work." Sigh..

by ghm2199

4/1/2026 at 4:15:41 PM

Similar to how Hitler ushered in a whole generation of liberal demacracy and human rights protection across the world.

by sampton

4/1/2026 at 4:24:54 PM

Well Trump doesn't exactly have the sufficient work ethic, mental acuity or sense of purpose to as much damage (and hopefully not more than a handful of years left on this earth in general to end up having to shot himself in a bunker).

by pqtyw

4/1/2026 at 2:59:50 PM

[flagged]

by juliusceasar

4/1/2026 at 3:37:03 PM

So these two are definitely amongst the biggest, but let's not forget about the Russians literally murdering our neighbors.

by vrganj

4/1/2026 at 4:27:12 PM

Well Russia doesn't have much going for it besides oil, nukes (and obviously Trump propping it up).

by pqtyw

4/1/2026 at 4:22:41 PM

Lol every single comment in your posting history is one sentence that includes the world Israel.

by xyzelement

4/1/2026 at 4:27:09 PM

Truth hurts some people. They start attacking the person instead of the message.

by juliusceasar

4/1/2026 at 8:21:19 PM

Israel's not even close to being the biggest threat for the way of living in Europe.

This is because Israel's neighbours who they are attacking aren't in Europe, and also there's a lot of tourists in Europe that Israel would like to be visiting them, but the point isn't why, it's just that Israel are not themselves a threat to Europe.

USA's probably number 2 threat after Russia. But neither Israel's nor the USA's belligerence regarding Iran seems to be so much as painting a target on European backs this time around. Which may be because Iran noticed the USA threatening Europe, IDK.

by ben_w

4/2/2026 at 12:48:58 AM

- Israel foments conflicts and urges/pressurizes the US to fight them out on its behalf - already confirmed by General Wesley Clark who talked about the Seven Nation Plan.

- Refugees flee those conflicts and move to the closest nations providing asylum en masse - Turkey and then the EU.

- Israeli and other Jewish NGOs facilitate refugee migrations to Europe in the name of humanitarianism.

The US at least helps/used to help protect Europe via NATO. Israel doesn't.

by fakedang

4/2/2026 at 8:07:54 AM

None of those things are a "biggest threat for the way of living in Europe", which is what I was quoting from the now flagged comment from juliusceasar.

Not even with the asylum seekers arriving via Turkey; though as the Turkish leadership actively tried to use the flow of asylum seekers to extract concessions from Europe, IMO Turkey gets the blame for that.

The US indeed used to help protect Europe via NATO, but even back then (so, two years ago), the much bigger metaphorical footprint of the US vs. Israel means the US posed a bigger threat than Israel currently does just by mis-stepping.

Israel may be important to the US, but the nation is just not that potent in any direction in Europe.

by ben_w

4/2/2026 at 5:23:16 AM

The US is a sovreign state. As such it is alone responsible for its actions. The conflict with Iran wouldn't be as hot without the US.

by krior

4/1/2026 at 3:58:59 PM

[flagged]

by gryzzly

4/1/2026 at 3:59:22 PM

also not a single hacker-news/technology related comment

by gryzzly

4/1/2026 at 6:56:03 PM

Their comment is on topic, your's is not, and also what you're doing is against site guidelines.

by spaghetdefects

4/1/2026 at 11:20:00 PM

lol yours is the same, 35 days ago

by gryzzly

4/2/2026 at 12:56:03 AM

So? We have a Zionism crisis in the tech industry, expect people to discuss it. Mind you 100% of your comments are pro-Zionist propaganda.

by spaghetdefects

4/2/2026 at 8:36:34 AM

Ah yeah? Since 2011? You know everyone can verify what I say and what you say, ayatollah

by gryzzly

4/1/2026 at 3:51:17 PM

[flagged]

by guywithahat

4/1/2026 at 4:00:39 PM

Guess where the midlle-east mass migration comes from? Surely not from the US bombing the everliving shit out of folks living there and leaving us to deal with the fallout?

The only thing the US shows Europe is a cautionary tale of social decay and the consequences of letting Capital run their society.

by vrganj

4/1/2026 at 4:09:40 PM

I mean, y'all gotta own the mess in the middle east too. That's far from a US solo production.

by neutronicus

4/1/2026 at 4:11:28 PM

The latest mess is all on the Americans. But yes, the French were also not without blame.

by vrganj

4/1/2026 at 4:27:00 PM

When? The French are to blame for Algeria an most of Africa, but Lebanon is the ex-french colony that suffered the less from French rule, and used to be a perfect example of multiculturalism before a nearby rogue state started putting their greasy hands everywhere.

Unless you talk about Lybia, but that's not ME (and yes, 80% of the French)

by orwin

4/1/2026 at 4:06:09 PM

> they're considerably freer and richer than the EU

Freer to bend over for ICE thugs, or is there some other definition of freedom that you’ve meant?

> especially when Europe is currently fighting a war in Ukraine

Ukraine is fighting war in Ukraine with financial support of Europe. Big difference.

> and struggling to handle mass middle-east immigration

Caused by US bombing.

by wiseowise

4/1/2026 at 4:15:19 PM

Not Assad gassing his own people with chemical weapons with support of Russia?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_intervention_in_the_Sy...

by gryzzly

4/1/2026 at 8:50:10 PM

Syria isn't part of Europe.

by ben_w

4/1/2026 at 11:21:02 PM

that’s the level of discussion here now. two comments up – "mass middle-east immigration".

by gryzzly

4/1/2026 at 11:38:03 PM

Oh! From the lack of quotations I assumed you were replying to

  Freer to bend over for ICE thugs, or is there some other definition of freedom that you’ve meant?
not

  Caused by US bombing.
For Syria, my understanding is that there was a lot of bad intervention from a lot of different external actors, all of whom can independently take blame: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_...

by ben_w

4/1/2026 at 4:06:39 PM

A country can be your largest trading partner and single biggest threat to sovereignty at the same time. Just ask Canadians.

I also take issue with the claim that Americans are freer or richer. The Iranian adventure, even were it to end immediately, has taken socialized medicine off the table for another generation of Americans, leaving typical Americans a lot poorer than salaries suggest. A ground invasion could easily bankrupt the U.S.. Meanwhile, Trump is trying to operate as a pre-Magna Carta king and the courts charged with stopping him are rapidly crumbling under pressure. This is a serious backslide into authoritarianism.

by beloch

4/1/2026 at 4:38:29 PM

The irony about tRump is he sometimes says the quiet part out loud. He is a pathological liar yet at the same time he speaks truth. He revealed the USA's ruling Elite's desire to make Canada a vassal state. Arguably, the Canadian Elite did it when Brian Mulroney, (he was originally against it himself but the Business lobby told him otherwise: he dutifully complied with his donors), pushed and signed the free trade agreement: "I'm rolling the dice!". He was persuaded to put the decision to an election first. He won the majority of seats, but not the popular vote. He signed it anyway. Now, Canada finds itself in the position that his opposition warned about: that putting your eggs in one basket was taking a big risk that US wasn't going to be ruled by a Fascist Dictator.

But thanks to the Fascist Dictator Canadians have once again woken up to the folly of tying yourself so closely to a giant who goes rogue. The Republican Party should be deeply ashamed of themselves for kowtowing to tRump. Mind you, there is plenty of things the Republican Party should be ashamed about - they helped create the situation that would make the election of tRump possible - with their poverty inducing policies. The Republican Party is as loathsome as the Nazi Party.

And then there is the feckless Democrats. Absolutely useless.

by tharmas

4/1/2026 at 3:59:12 PM

Who do you think caused that mass immigration?

by ginko

4/1/2026 at 4:08:53 PM

Most recently Russia and Iran's Hezbollah in Syria, and Yemen's civil war involving Iran's Houthis and Egypt/Saudi Arabia. The US was involved in the Syrian civil war but not responsible for most of the civilian destruction. People outside the region have this childish understanding of the ME where Iraq is the only thing that happened (conveniently also forgetting the much more brutal Iran-Iraq war).

by energy123

4/1/2026 at 5:04:39 PM

And to further your point mass immigration into Europe isn't just recent; it's been happening for decades. For a while the Islamic state was encouraging attacks in Europe, and hundreds of people were killed by jihadists running cars through Christmas parades and similar events which peaked ~2016 and 2017. I think the largest was an attack in Nice, France on Bastille day killing 86 and injuring hundreds (https://grokipedia.com/page/2016_Nice_truck_attack) and another famous one I can think of was the christmas market attack in Berlin, killing 12 and injuring 56 (https://grokipedia.com/page/2016_Berlin_truck_attack). These were the result of economic immigration, unrelated to anything specific the US had done.

by guywithahat

4/1/2026 at 5:07:10 PM

Where did the Islamic State come from?

The power vacuum after the US messed up Iraq and Syria. Every single wave of mass migration towards Europe is the direct result of the US choosing to bomb the Middle East. That's also part of why this time around, everybody's quite this annoyed at America.

Also please, use serious sources.

by vrganj

4/1/2026 at 4:20:54 PM

> It's incredible how social media addiction warps peoples minds

The most prominent victim of this appears to be the US president himself.

by pjc50

4/1/2026 at 3:53:37 PM

Have you missed the events of the past year under Trump? With literal claims of taking over EU territory?

I know that Trump is the equivalent of a hallucinating LLM, but you can’t just ignore his words whenever convenient.

by Insanity

4/1/2026 at 4:01:36 PM

> considerably freer and richer than the EU

Cope harder. The US doesn't offer a single example of being better than the EU.

by ragall

4/1/2026 at 4:15:44 PM

It's always better to back up ones arguments with facts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index

The USA really hasn't been doing well lately.

by GJim

4/1/2026 at 4:29:56 PM

That's just a small part of it. EU has a better quality of life, better food, better housing, better public infrastructure.

by ragall

4/1/2026 at 4:14:29 PM

At least the US still has energy infrastructure, while the EU is forced to financially support Dictators in Tehran and Moscow to keep their economy from collapsing.

by oceanplexian

4/1/2026 at 8:54:14 PM

Oil is (close to) fungible, which means the higher prices in US fuel pumps are just as much financially supporting dictators in Tehran and Moscow as EU fuel pumps.

Ironically, the "close to" part is just enough to prevent the USA from isolating itself from the world market by refining and using what it currently exports.

by ben_w

4/1/2026 at 11:45:38 PM

Pretty sure the US does not buy energy from natural gas pipelines to Russia, neither are we shutting down all of our Nuclear Power Plants (like Germany) because it's green to import more gas ?

As an American I couldn't tell you what their logic is exactly.

by oceanplexian

4/2/2026 at 7:44:15 AM

> Pretty sure the US does not buy energy from natural gas pipelines to Russia, neither are we shutting down all of our Nuclear Power Plants (like Germany) because it's green to import more gas ?

Irrelevant. Natural gas isn't the only fossil fuel, the US trades oil on the global market, that oil trade cannot help but support all other petrostates.

Also, if you're talking about Germany in particular, renewables have significantly exceeded the peak share of nuclear power: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:StromerzeugungDeutschlan...

(Kernenergie == nuclear)

To use the table that the chart is supposed to be based on, the peak of nuclear production in Germany was only about 60% of 2025's renewables, 284.6 TWh renewables in 2025 vs 169.6 TWh nuclear in 2000: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromerzeugung_in_Deutschland

by ben_w

4/1/2026 at 4:15:38 PM

This article is literally about Europe rapidly building out its sovereign energy infrastructure?

by vrganj

4/1/2026 at 11:40:13 PM

Didn't trump remove sanctions to russia?

by LtWorf

4/1/2026 at 3:58:36 PM

If your energy policy was "hope the Ayatollah doesn't have a bad hair day", you didn't have an energy policy.

Europe could have left their nuclear power plants turned on. Or drilled in the north sea. Or built LNG import terminals. These were all policy choices that had nothing to do with the US or Israel.

by bpodgursky

4/1/2026 at 3:59:50 PM

The energy policy is "let's build out renewables". It's happening rn and it's better than any of the options you mention.

by vrganj

4/1/2026 at 4:11:38 PM

> better than any of the options you mention.

Yeah, no. Merkel's deal to shut off the nuclear plants to make a coalition was 100% a blunder. Not only in hindsight, with the dependence on russian gas, but in general it was a blunder. Nuclear gives you steady energy in ways that renewables can't. We should absolutely do more renewables, but to shut off working nuclear was not good.

by NitpickLawyer

4/1/2026 at 4:28:04 PM

Nuclear is not that steady. Nuclear plants require a lot of water to cool things. And when a particular hot summer happens, rivers dry out and nuclear reactors have to scale down the power production or even be shutdown. And then they require quite significant maintenance periodically.

Granted, in Europe a hot dry summer is when solar is at its peak. So it is much lesser problem than a cold winter with a lot of cloudy days with no wind when nuclear energy is ideal.

Still from a perspective of 20 years ago with unknown prospects about renewables natural gas power stations were considered much more reliable and flexible power source compared with nuclear and way more cleaner than coal. Of cause, as long as one gets gas.

by fpoling

4/1/2026 at 4:35:13 PM

It is simply false that it was Merkel who decided to shut down nuclear power plants. The decision had been made over a decade earlier. She just accelerated the plan in the end after a previous unsuccessful attempt at rolling back part of it. It also wasn't even really her decision, it was the will of the people that sharply turned against nuclear after Fukushima, she just implemented it.

by this_user

4/1/2026 at 4:13:06 PM

I don't disagree, though I see nuclear as an (overly expensive) bridge technology until storage becomes more built-out.

by vrganj

4/1/2026 at 4:29:11 PM

Well besides being 20 years too late. Germany's energy policy was basically do nothing to build renewables, close all nuclear plants and blindly trust Russia for decades...

Besides being a great friend of Putin one of Germany's previous chancellors was literally an openly paid Russian agent who didn't even try hiding it until 2022 (and who knows what "arrangements" he had before he left office...)

by pqtyw

4/1/2026 at 4:34:09 PM

That is just straight up not true: https://www.techeblog.com/europe-balcony-solar-system/

Germany's been a pioneer in incentivizing personal solar installations.

by vrganj

4/1/2026 at 5:59:29 PM

In what way exactly anything I said was not true?

It was too little and too late and Germany only got serious about it when there were no longer any other options.

> personal solar installations

It was entirely insignificant back then and growth pretty much entirely stopped between 2012 and 2018.

by pqtyw

4/1/2026 at 8:47:27 PM

You said "basically do nothing to build renewables", this is what they did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende

The country looks pretty on-schedule to me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_transition_scenari...

vs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_Deutschland.sv...

by ben_w

4/1/2026 at 8:51:58 PM

Again.. too little and too late and that plan was built around the assumption that they will continue having access to "cheap" Russian gas.

by pqtyw

4/1/2026 at 9:03:24 PM

The planned graph is an almost straight line from 2005 to 2050, which it is following very closely in the best of German stereotypes.

A decade or so ago, this was described as:

  while the German approach is not unique worldwide, the speed and scope of the Energiewende are exceptional
While they could've done better in a magical alternate universe where the population was not terrified of nuclear power, the transition has in fact been very fast.

For a more detailed graph showing the scale of nuclear vs. renewable, including the period you're criticising in particular, page 12: https://web.archive.org/web/20160602074457/https://www.agora...

by ben_w

4/2/2026 at 9:07:00 AM

So you are implying the current economic mess Germany is in was planned?

i.e. they understood the risks of relying on Russia and made a conscience decision to build their plan for transitioning into renewables around it.

by pqtyw

4/2/2026 at 9:43:22 AM

> So you are implying the current economic mess Germany is in was planned?

Just the energy transition.

The economic mess isn't even mostly about the energy, it's a grandfathered (literally) fear of hyperinflation that means the state is terrified of borrowing even when that's a good thing, plus the infamous bureaucracy which they now plan to solve with a 200-step plan: https://www.dw.com/en/german-leaders-plan-to-cut-red-tape-in...

This is also fairly easy to spot with the GDP graph, which is a long term trend of "line go up", just never quite as fast as the US's line, and the recent dip is quite small compared to that growth: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

> i.e. they understood the risks of relying on Russia and made a conscience decision to build their plan for transitioning into renewables around it.

This was more due to the incorrect belief that nations which have an important trade relationship can use diplomacy to avoid conflict, i.e. Germany being an important customer of Russian oil means that Germany can make a credible threat to cause economic harm to Russia by ceasing to buy Russian oil if Russia does something dumb like invade Ukraine. Germany did in fact cause economic harm to Russia by ceasing (or massively reducing, I'm not clear) purchase of Russian oil, however it turned out that Russian leadership didn't care about economic harm to Russia.

by ben_w

4/1/2026 at 8:40:45 PM

> Or drilled in the north sea

We did. Most of the oil and gas there has now been removed and sold. Oil production peaked in 1999, gas in 2001.

If the same place, the North Sea specifically, was filled with wind farms, it could supply about half of the EU's electricity.

(If all the waters around the British Isles had wind farms, it becomes 140% of current EU total primary energy consumption or 660% of the electricity consumption, assuming I did the substitution efficiency multiplier right).

Guess what's getting built?

by ben_w

4/1/2026 at 11:46:50 PM

[flagged]

by DoctorOetker

4/2/2026 at 8:11:13 AM

If a participant in a war, in good faith, wants to negotiate long-term cessation of hostilities, they wouldn't kill the leaders of the other side. Because who the fuck will you negotiate with after? Who surrenders? That's why historically people don't do that in wars. Israel/The US just want to destroy Iran as a nation state. Thinking that there are going to be any talks with someone with a mandate from the Iranian people in weeks or months is misguided. This is a decades-long thing. We better buckle up.

by abenga

4/2/2026 at 8:46:58 AM

> If a participant in a war, in good faith, wants to negotiate long-term cessation of hostilities, they wouldn't kill the leaders of the other side.

Assassination of leaders is very common in war. Nobody claims the US wanted to negotiate a cease fire with the old regime, they want to negotiate it with whatever phoenix rises from its ashes.

> Because who the fuck will you negotiate with after? Who surrenders? That's why historically people don't do that in wars.

You negotiate with the power structure that remains, it could be equally oppressive figures from the same organizations, it could be opposition leaders, it could be labor unions, it could be whomever locally consolidates power. Put public keys on the shells and rockets. One can not credibly claim lack of agency while firing rockets and drones. Old enough to fire? Old enough to get hit!

I just described a protocol to identify who is in power, administration-agnostic Pentagon can demand the Iranians hold a crypto party bootstrap their own web of trust and forward the keys through physicists then IAEA. The web of trust can be established before any voting or alliance forming.

If Iran predelegated all hostilities in the event of regime decapitation, they effectively sent their troops (and population) on a never ending suicide mission.

The longer power vacuum persists the more casualties result.

Ultimately it is more in the interest of both Iran regime and population to even bootstrap this web of trust without Pentagon demanding it!

> Israel/The US just want to destroy Iran as a nation state. Thinking that there are going to be any talks with someone with a mandate from the Iranian people in weeks or months is misguided. This is a decades-long thing. We better buckle up.

Why does establishing the local power nexus necessarily take decades? The faster it is unambiguously established, the faster negotiation can actually start.

by DoctorOetker

4/2/2026 at 1:10:15 AM

This made me chuckle, thanks.

by ytoawwhra92

4/2/2026 at 12:55:01 AM

> perhaps the White House is making up

There's your answer.

by spaghetdefects

4/2/2026 at 1:24:46 AM

it seems the message flew over your head

this isn't a poll about what you or I believe, it's pointing to the existence of at least one lower-noise avenue than the ones pursued

observe that your position is not verifiable by the world at large, while cryptographically signed messages would be veriable by us individuals across the whole world.

one may counter that the US could make up a large number of fake crypto key / Iranian associations; but surely to the extent that Iran has a functioning regime, surely it could use the IAEA as a channel to communicate the Iranian cryptographic key observations like:

* Khamenei confirms meeting Aragchi in person and Aragchi has chosen such and such a public key

* Aragchi confirms meeting Khamenei in person and Khamenei has chosen such and such a public key

* and so on for all players interested in participating in confirming the present regime or establishing a new one amidst chaos.

(if you don't have control over your physicists at a nuclear power plant, then you don't have control over your regime)

by DoctorOetker

4/2/2026 at 1:12:16 AM

Yea, it’s pretty obvious Trump is lying in an attempt to manipulate the market / voter sentiment. And poorly, too.

by jdlshore

4/2/2026 at 12:38:33 AM

> I don't understand how both the international community as well as say US is dealing with the Iran / Straight of Hormuz crisis.

I don't understand how Americans mistakenly keep referring to the Strait of Hormuz as the Straight of Hormuz in spite of English being their first language.

by fakedang

4/2/2026 at 1:34:28 AM

A comment about ongoing war is replied with spelling pedantics?

Yes while even mapmakers etc during 1500-1700's sometimes used "Straight", the subsequent standardizations in English selected "Strait" as the standard spelling.

How would you know if English is or isn't my first language?

by DoctorOetker

4/1/2026 at 4:30:39 PM

EVs are still a bit underwhelming wrt range - ideally either 450miles/700km or 5 minute 20->80% recharge at an acceptable price (35k EUR) should be the norm. For cities it doesn't matter but for longer vacation trips it's a must, nobody wants to waste 3 hours on a 1100km trip recharging. Chinese EVs might be able to deliver it at this price point (BYD) but EU adds additional (up to) 45% in extra fees to penalize Chinese EV makers and to prevent collapse of EU car makers.

by storus

4/1/2026 at 11:16:10 PM

You should not be spending that much time at a charger. Tech Connextras (the sister channel to Technology Connections) just did a video about a real-life road trip in slightly below freezing temperatures.

"What unplanned EV road trips in cold weather (5°F/-15°C) are actually like these days" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebGLFVzvdfM

by fhdkweig

4/1/2026 at 5:06:44 PM

Honest question, how often do you drive 1100km?

by Gud

4/1/2026 at 5:15:16 PM

On average once a month? Going skiing/biking in the mountains for the weekend or to some sea/lake with a boat.

by storus

4/1/2026 at 8:08:18 PM

Once a month you embark on a 10 hour drive to spend a weekend skiing/boating and then returning with another 10 hour drive?

So for 2 days of doing such activity you'll spent 20 hours in a car?

by 878654Tom

4/1/2026 at 8:58:57 PM

I can stay longer and work remotely from there as well. Anyway, why do you care what exactly do I do? I simply need the range or super fast recharging as non-negotiable items.

by storus

4/1/2026 at 6:44:25 PM

That’s a very unusual usage pattern.

by Gud

4/1/2026 at 7:02:56 PM

I assume that's the comment you wanted to make all the time.

by storus

4/1/2026 at 4:40:07 PM

1 in 4 vehicles sold globally last year were EVs, and they are >50% of the monthly sales in China, the largest market in the world. EVs are mostly solved, even though they will continue to rapidly improve, both range and charging infrastructure. Norway is at ~100% monthly EV sales, other countries will get there eventually.

Importantly, we should expect to go faster as EV sales reach a point where combustion sales have declined to a level where they can no longer support combustion vehicle manufacturers as a going concern. Peak global combustion auto sales occurred in 2017.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47459145 (citations)

by toomuchtodo

4/1/2026 at 4:50:27 PM

The trend is clear but right now they aren't able to replace ICE cars due to what I mentioned above. Either they lack range/recharging convenience or they don't but are too expensive. They need a few more years of scaling or EU to stop penalizing Chinese EVs.

by storus

4/1/2026 at 5:09:27 PM

That 25% is including ICE. From the reference:

> “Electric cars” include battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles

by nomel

4/1/2026 at 5:40:01 PM

ICE =! NEVs (which includes BEVs and PHEVs, with BEVs still the majority). If folks want to buy PHEVs until BEVs steamroll them, whatevs, the BEV cost decline and uptake curves speak for themselves. Combustion isn't getting cheaper anytime soon.

https://cleantechnica.com/2026/02/03/global-ev-sales-leaders...

https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-car-sales-battery-p...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/car-sales

by toomuchtodo

4/1/2026 at 4:03:21 PM

Yeah Europeans are going to stick to their little diesel city cars.

Many Europeans cannot afford iPhones as they are an overpriced costly luxury there, yet I'm supposed to believe they're all going out tomorrow to buy solar panels. Right.

Heat pumps? They're famous for hating air conditioning and mostly heat their homes with hydronic, but whatever.

by longislandguido

4/1/2026 at 4:06:20 PM

A complete 900W solar setup you can put on your balcony, plug into an outlet and cover a good chunk of your energy needs costs 200 Euros: https://shop-sicatron.de/products/sicatron-910w-balkonkraftw...

It's thoroughly practical, especially with energy prices being what they are now.

Unclear what Apple's pricing policy has to do with this,.

by vrganj

4/1/2026 at 4:09:17 PM

That sounds extremely dangerous; you cannot add PV (or any secondary source) in the US and connect it to utility power without it being done by an electrician and inspected by the city.

I'm shocked that safety-conscious Europe—especially Germany, known for its strict rules—would allow this.

Or is this more AliExpress garbage with a German flag glued to it?

by longislandguido

4/1/2026 at 4:10:39 PM

Sounds like the US might have a problem with overregulation holding them back, then?

by vrganj

4/1/2026 at 4:16:13 PM

Astonishingly, this is one case where the Germans have got the regulation right.

by pjc50

4/1/2026 at 4:11:20 PM

> That sounds extremely dangerous; you cannot add PV (or any secondary source) in the US and connect it to utility power without it being done by an electrician and inspected by the city.

This is factually inaccurate. Utah was the first to legalize plug in solar, and 17 other states have legislation pending to do so. It sounds like you are unaware of regulations around islanding in both Europe and the US. This is a solved problem.

> The biggest regulatory concern – energizing lines during an outage and putting line workers at risk – is not really an issue, since inverters are covered by UL 1741, and have “anti-islanding” capability.

UL 3700 specifically addresses plug in solar risks and mitigating them.

Resources on the topic below:

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/03/27/the-theory-and-practi...

https://solarunitedneighbors.org/resources/what-to-know-abou...

https://www.ul.com/news/ul-solutions-debuts-testing-and-cert...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NANIjW3yGsFhpNTzvg30kMHo...

https://permitpower.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2026/01/...

https://www.cesa.org/resource-library/resource/plug-in-solar...

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/balcony-solar-tak...

https://www.brightsaver.org/publicly-filed-states

https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/anti-islanding-and-smart...

by toomuchtodo

4/1/2026 at 4:15:42 PM

I have a set of solar panels and a "hydronic" heat pump, despite living all the way up at 56N in the maybe-Europe UK. We also have access to both cheap Chinese EVs and the increasingly acceptable EU ones, like the Renault 5.

by pjc50

4/1/2026 at 4:34:37 PM

The only reason people skip the iPhone here is because it is directly associated with being an asshole. Sent from my heatpump-heated home in the Julian Alps.

by thefz