NextApex #003: Is Tidal Energy Truly Renewable? And How European Tech Sectors Differ from the U.S.

NextApex #003

Discover tomorrow’s tech advances, today. Vincent here with NextApex, a newsletter dedicated to tech advances and keeping current with the tsunami of tech, ai-tools, and science. In each issue we’ll look at a couple new developments in the tech world and enjoy a beautiful image. Sound good? Please spread the word.

1. Tidal Energy is not renewable and if we build lots of tidal energy absorbers, we will slow down the rotation of the earth, eventually causing permawinter and permadesert on either side. [1] Yes this is true, I’m an engineer. [1] Liu, Jerry Z. Ph.D. explains at the cited url.
   
   Essentially, the tidal energy is rotational in moment and harnessing the energy will dampen the rotational oomph of the earth.
   
   
   
   

2. European tech sector much more risk-averse than American; an anecdote:
   
   As an American, I’m very interested in how other tech sectors operate around the world, such as in Europe.
   
   In various comments on HN, mustafa points out that the
   “[Risk-Averse-or-Not Mentality is] definitely one of the most distinctive difference between US and Europe. Of course it is not all the same. Germans are on the more conservative side, while the Dutch are known to be more entrepreneurial. But overall none is on the same level as you Americans.” This was attributed to cultural and banking factors.

   
   Mustafa said that it is the same risk-averse mentality that prevents lucrative internships and loads of startup capital from trickling into the European tech sector, but in the same breath pointed out that there is a spectrum of gung-ho-entrepreneurialism and risk-averse-accounting across the various cultural zones of Europe.
   
   If you recall world history, the Dutch were quite colonial, which might give hint as to why they are more entrepreneurial today, compared to other places in Europe.

1. [https://cs.stanford.edu/people/zjl/tide.html]
   

2. From a comment thread on HN post “What OpenAI Really Wants” [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37390378]

Thanks agin for joining me in NextApex! Next issue again we will cover all the salient tech and scientific advances that make it to the “top of mind” and keep it at 3 or so minutes for fun, brevity, and success.