It is sadly really inconsistent. The stdlib statistics has two separate functions, stdev for sample and pstdev for population. Numpy and pandas both have .std() with ddof (delta degrees of freedom) as a parameter, but numpy defaults to 0 (population) and pandas to 1 (sample).
Someone correct me if I'm completely wrong, but by default (i.e. precompiled wheels) numpy has 0 dependencies and pandas has 5, one of which is numpy. So not really "squillions" of dependencies.
NumPy will fall back to internal and very slow BLAS and LAPACK implementations if your system does not have a better one, but assuming you're using NumPy for its performance and not just the convenience of adding array programming features to Python, you're really gonna want better ones, and what that is heavily depends on the computer you're using.
This isn't really a Python thing, though. It's a hard problem to solve with any kind of scientific computing. If you insist on using a dynamic interpreted language, which you probably have to do for exploratory interactive analysis, and you still need speed over large datasets, you're gonna need to have a native FFI and link against native libraries. Thanks to standardization, you'll have many choices and which is fastest depends heavily on your hardware setup.
The wheels will most likely come with openblas, so while you can get the original blas (which is really only slow by comparison, for small tasks it's likely users won't notice), this is generally not an issue.
They're not represented, because those are build-time dependencies. Most users when they do pip install numpy or equivalent, just get the precompiled binaries and none of those get installed. And even if you compile it yourself, you still don't need those for running numpy.
I looked at tomorrow's (8th of October 2025) prices in Norway and Sweden. Northern Norway drops down to (negative!) -15 €/MWh at 17:45 while southern Sweden peaks at 190 €/MWh at the same time. So that's that for buying "from across the continent", let alone from your neighbors or even your own small country. I'm not sure that even the suggested reconductoring would help that much.
To answer ajross: I'm quite sure that the shutdown of Ringhals and Barsebäck in southern Sweden has had a much greater impact on their and likely southern Norway's prices as well than building for example 10 times the equivalent solar capacity in Spain. It is not even about losses, but just the grid capacity. Theoretically the prices in Nord Pool (from southern France and western Ireland to northern Norway and eastern Baltics) should be equal. As pointed out, in practice they vary wildly. And in principle it can get even worse. It would not be too unrealistic to have negative prices in northern Norway and rolling blackouts in southern Sweden at the same time. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader how the latter can even happen when Sweden has enough capacity to meet its power demand at that time.
Too bad gas and oil didn't have trillions in subsidies over the past 100 years. Maybe had we listened to Jimmy Carter we would have continued to lead the world instead of now being firmly in the back.
Very few people realize that for most of the US, cheaper electricity costs for the utilities means lower profits, because most are regulated utilities that take a fixed profit on costs. Models for this vary greatly, sometimes they only take fixed profit on necessary grid investments (where necessary is determined by the utility, then stamped for approval by a Public Utility Commission, which has a board that might be elected and susceptible to bribing/election malefeasance, such as in Arizona...)
So-called "natural" monopolies are quite difficult to regulate correctly. And the solution we chose as a society a century ago might not be the right one for today.
Utilities tend to make most profit as a fixed rate of return on infrastructure built, not really based on electricity costs. Build a new substation, some poles & wires to distribute it to the new subdivisions, and bammo, regulator grants you a fixed rate of return on that from your ratebase (paying customers) over the lifetime of that infrastructure.
You get a fixed return on that infrastructure, but you need to keep pace with inflation in all other areas of the business. Storms, errant vehicles, animals, fires, all sorts of things cause that same infrastructure to require maintenance personnel and equipment, and that equipment needs its own maintenance, as do the offices for the personnel, and so on. It becomes a balancing act because you only get to adjust the rates every so often, and with regulator approval.
Solar also offers the possibility of grid defection, as is occurring on a large scale in Pakistan. At some point (and particularly if that thermal storage thing I've been touting matures) electric utilities may see dramatic shrinkage, particularly in less populated areas with ample unused land.
I don't say it as a bad thing at all, I say it as a thing that's in contrast to the rest of the companies and proprietors and corporations we deal with. (And my last comment also hinted that I think it's time to reevaluate this social relationship with the utilities...)
Typically, if a person/corporation is clever and figures out a way to reduce costs, they are incentivized heavily to do so because they take the gains, at least for a while until others figure it out too and compete.
With utilities, they are actively incentivized to increase prices as much as possible. This is a crucial distinction for people asking why cheaper electricity generation methods are not resulting in cheaper utility bills: because the regulatory structure is not operating the way it should, and they need to get involved democratically to change the system!
A century isn't very long. I guess things have changed somewhat since then, but age isn't a very convincing argument against these regulations imo. Having to update all of this every hundred years sounds exhausting to me.
There's nothing techy about cigarettes, and you can still vape inside in lots of places, so 100 years really is either too much or not enough anyways. Maybe we shouldn't regulate things that are so flimsy?
Yes you did, you said "let's not regulate things that are flimsy" and your example was smoking (???) because we have vapes now (???) and so effectively people still smoke inside (???)
Really? We can't even regulate smoking? That's too far for you? Jesus Christ.
If this isn't "we tried nothing and we're all out of ideas" then I don't know what is.
Yes, regulations are not perfect and do have to be updated. That doesn't mean theyre worthless and we shouldn't bother. Thats stupid.
Fortunately, we pay people who are called "legislators" who pass laws and are paid to pass legislation to fix problems like this and update laws when they become outdated.
of course they are. market forces are what you want for everything. granted, you may want to internalize a negative externality like the climate change induced by greenhouse gas emissions, but that's literally correcting market forces.
I kind of agree in the sense that utilities at least need regulation. You can't leave it all up to the market. (I've lived through the winter storm days-long blackout that lies down that path.)
But, I don't think this particular thing proves that point. What we have here is a chaotic shift to a new equilibrium. Technology has changed and needs/priorities have changed.
People wouldn't overbuild solar if they could forecast that it wouldn't be profitable. The issue is they can't forecast.
The reason we aren't allocating resources optimally is not about who is in control or what their motives are. It's that we don't have the information we would need in order to be able to.
Couple of years with occasional negative prices and that market you so detest will cover the place with batteries, solving both the negative prices and reducing load on the grid.
And all it cost was a 6th major extinction event! I don’t believe we have the luxury of letting the market figure this out. We should have started turning the ship decades ago.
You can view this as a natural or even beneficial feedback mechanism that keeps solar generation and battery storage on par with each other.
Too much solar leads to crashing prices which leads to more battery investment. Once the batteries are built, solar prices recover somewhat and solar investment starts to make sense again.
Ideally you wouldn't overshoot too much on the solar and have big price crashes. But if you do overshoot dramatically, the incentive to build batteries increases, so maybe you recover faster.
This was one of the actual problems highlighted by the people who coined the term "duck curve" over a decade ago.
One of the main ways we've avoided this problem so far is that solar kept getting cheaper.
So it's not really a problem caused by cheap solar, it's just basic market competition, lots of supply with no barrier to entry drives prices down towards the long term marginal cost.
Right, but would not marginal cost approaching zero amplify this problem under the current market system (and without any other mitigations)? So not exactly causal, but making it from a small to a bigger issue.
The issue was that the decarbonisation of electricity (and therefore society) would slow or stop before we'd decarbonise if expensive solar lost any of its market. Not cheap energy, that is a good thing.
Between batteries, wind, demand response, EVs etc. that slowdown doesn't seem likely to happen.
And the lure of cheaper energy expands solar out horizontally to new markets, speeding up global decarbonisation.
I don't think it will happen either, but I do think there is a bit of imbalance developing in the whole system right now.
For example a decade ago electricity prices in Nord Pool were relatively stable (and reasonable/lowish). Now it is quite common to either have 0 or even negative prices during summer and artificially set maximums in the autumn/winter. IIRC, the rules were that if the price hit 60% of the maximum, it had to be raised by 1000 €/MWh. It got to 4000 €/MWh (which is 4 € or $4.7/kWh) in 2022 and was supposed to be raised by another 1000, but it was decided not to do it, so I think it stands there right now. But in any case, this is a ridiculous price. As are the negative ones.
This is really a non-problem. Curtailment is easy and doesn't cost anything, it just needs a slightly better feedback mechanism than the current grid supplies, but honestly even a 24hr timer and ammeter would do it.
It's lagging behind because energy developers operate on the economic margin. At the margin, solar is more profitable, up until the point that the grid is saturated with solar, then it flips. But only a small proportion of geographical locations are saturated, hence the marginal investment is still primarily in solar. This is not concerning, it is the market working as it should. The demand for storage will come and then the supply will follow only after the demand shows up.
It is surprisingly hard to find reliable figures. Best I could do was a global solar installation of 2-3 TW and global BESS of around 200 GW/500 GWh right now.
China is leading in both, but I'm more interested in local BESS and other storage deployments locally in northern Europe. I think for example Spain started getting more heavily involved only after their massive blackout. According to those links there is a very large overcapacity in battery production, but I don't see it reflected here. I'm sure it will happen at some point though.
https://ses.jrc.ec.europa.eu/storage-inventory provides European battery storage inventory, but to your point, it will take time for manufactured BESS to be deployed. Spain, only after the recent blackout, has moved towards mandating storage paired with renewables for grid services to improve reliability and health.
Exactly, I would even say the foundation has not only lots, but everything to do with Firefox. I don't understand how there are so many "ackshually" guys in this thread. It is all the same thing, Mozilla, and the separation is and has always been only a technicality, nothing more. It is exactly the same as saying The Walt Disney Company has nothing to do with Disney+.
I worked there for a decade, so I'm pretty confident when I say "no, it has literally nothing to do with Firefox". They are two completely different orgs with different execs, different boards, working on completely different things. The Foundation has no say over what happens on the corp side.
I wouldn't call getting the profits from the corporation (whether through dividends or "royalties"), and having the power to choose the board of directors as "nothing". And the stated purpose of the corporation is to further the "public benefit" of the foundation.
Sure they are separate organizations, but they are at least a little related.
They don't, though. The only money they get from corp is the brand license fee, which in good "we have a corp and non-profit" tradition is fluid but can't exceed a specific amount, and they only "have the power to choose the board" on paper. In reality, the only thing that ties the two orgs together are Surman and Baker.
The corp is a subsidiary. It is irrelevant if and how long you worked there for, the parent company has the financial and legal control over all the subsidiaries. The foundation literally owns the corporation, no need for quotation marks. If they have not or do not exercise that control or interfere in the day-to-day life today, that does not mean they will not do it tomorrow or whenever it becomes necessary. When shit hits the fan all that matters is what's on the paper.
I can also say, that my hypothetical landlord has nothing to do with the place I have lived in for 10 years. So therefore they do not "own" it.
First of all, I'm not that young and naive to appeal to authority any more after having met too many so-called experts why have only succeeded by the "fake it til you make it" technique. So checking someones bio is unnecessary.
"The Mozilla Foundation will ultimately control the activities of the Mozilla Corporation and will retain its 100 percent ownership of the new subsidiary. Any profits made by the Mozilla Corporation will be invested back into the Mozilla project. There will be no shareholders, no stock options will be issued and no dividends will be paid. The Mozilla Corporation will not be floating on the stock market and it will be impossible for any company to take over or buy a stake in the subsidiary. The Mozilla Foundation will continue to own the Mozilla trademarks and other intellectual property and will license them to the Mozilla Corporation. The Foundation will also continue to govern the source code repository and control who is allowed to check in."
If this is wrong, please remove it from Wikipedia too, or add an explanation why this plan failed.
Also, if this is wrong, we cannot trust what anyone from Mozilla has to say, including you since they can say one thing and do another.
Also, if this is wrong, why are there consolidated financial statements of "MOZILLA FOUNDATION AND SUBSIDIARIES (Mozilla)" https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-202... According to the report, Mozilla foundation (and its subsidiaries) had a revenue of $600M in 2021. If the foundation has no control over the corporation, how can it include the revenue of the corp in its financial report? Is something fraudulent going on in Mozilla?
GNU Units has builtins for some standard energy equivalent units, specifically "tonoil" and "barreloil". "litreoil" doesn't seem to be included by default (though it can be added via a local configuration file).
literoil = 1 barreloil * liter/barrel
And the calculation gives me ...10.69 kWh/L
The barreloil value is for crude, diesel may have a slightly higher net energy density. But we're good to 3 sig figs.
I could have bypassed the tonoil step and calculated thermal energy in barreloil directly though saving another conversion.
Otherwise I'd have to remember energy density/L of diesel fuel.
I've added the definitions for litre, pound, and kg oil and can now run:
$ units --terse '40 MWh/30%' literoil
12470.969
The fun part though, at least for me, is showing how to do conversions with GNU units, and the equivalences which become apparent doing so.
