zksmk

The western hemisphere isn’t just the Americas. It includes half of europe…

"Half" is stretching it. More like a slice: UK, Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, Spain and a slice of France.

I think you're getting hung up on the word "federations" (noun) instead of the adjective "federated".

Who decides who gets to email who? The email provider admins. Should everyone be in a single email network/bubble since otherwise there is no communication? Mostly, yes. Do I need a separate account per email bubble? Per email bubble? Yes. But how many email bubbles are there? One? Whats the practical limit on number of providers per the email world? None, mostly?

Gmail does ban a lot of small email providers if they don't seem "legit" enough. And that is where you're onto something with the noun federations.

If a bunch of instances really disliked a different bunch of instances they can indeed severe each other from each other. The admins would do that. They put the other instances on a block list. Most Mastodon instances block Trump's Lie ehm Truth Social etc. But otherwise you can talk from gmail to hotmail to mcselfhost, with one account.

Basically federation works based on a block-list, not a allow-list, unless the admins of the instance set it that way, just like email providers.

Not a single sentence in the article of how this actually works. I found the original progress from 2017 and newer research and the newest stuff that caused the article. Plus the full thing.

The main benefit compared to photovoltaic cells plus classic batteries appears to be the fact that one chemical, a liquid, does both the energy absorption from the sun and serves as the storage medium. And it's long term storage. Also easy to transport.

It works based on a specially designed molecule that changes shape when it comes into contact with sunlight, storing energy. And that energy is later released at any point in time as heat by running the chemical through a catalyst, and converted into electricity in a small chip-scale thing.

Obviously, this is still early research, long way until it's a freely available and economically viable technology. Still great tho, looks promising. I wonder how much energy it packs per kg or liter.

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