[HN Gopher] A Cool Customer
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A Cool Customer
Author : beardyw
Score : 36 points
Date : 2021-10-12 12:43 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.futilitycloset.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.futilitycloset.com)
| branon wrote:
| The judge's notion that the saline solution acquiring heat from
| the defendant's cellar equates to production/transportation of
| energy seems wrong to me.
|
| Heat is not a desirable form of energy in this context, it's
| either a waste product created by the cooling system, or a
| naturally occurring element that is counteracted by the saline
| solution.
|
| Maybe the judge isn't technically wrong, he just got it
| backwards. The energy here is expended to eliminate heat, while
| creating it would be the opposite endeavor.
|
| Is this the reason why?
| mattnewton wrote:
| My understanding is that this is like borrowing water from your
| house and returning it into your septic system with "gratuitous"
| waste in it. It's dumping entropy, or "stealing" a low entropy
| state on the plantiff. Not sure if this is the technical answer
| the article wanted though.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| How can you complain? I borrowed plain old clean water and
| returned it with extra biomass, for free!
| mynegation wrote:
| "Your justice, how about I come to your house on a hot summer day
| and open all the windows and doors so the heat from the outside
| could give more energy to your air conditioner"
| turtlebits wrote:
| Is the retailer rerouting the coolant into his cellar, or just
| using the fact that his cellar is cold because of the proximity
| of the pipe?
|
| If the latter, I'd say there is no theft- the brewer needs to
| insulate his pipe to prevent thermal losses.
| bipson wrote:
| We hit this (what seems to be a) paradoxon in a research project
| a few years ago, where we modelled production facilities that
| needed heat and cold at the same time (industrial bakery
| producing freezed goods, different pipes).
|
| Since our goal was the optimization of energy flows, being able
| to use e.g. energy recovery of "waste heat", we could easily get
| paradoxical results, when counting with "hot" and "cold'
| energies.
|
| The thing is, any medium can potentially carry energy (and in
| fact does), but if it is "usable" to you, depends on the
| difference to the environment you want to use it in/against.
|
| 400deg hot oil? Net plus J in an oven, but net minus J for a
| chiller.
|
| Yet, _generating_ a certain amount of that hot oil took x Joule.
| Same goes for cold water or saline solution.
|
| I think the plaintiff's argument was actually very fitting.
|
| Mine is still not technical though.
| setr wrote:
| That doesn't seem to match. In this case, AFAICT, both wanted
| the cooling effect. No one wants the heat.
|
| The saline solution was now being used to cool double the
| volume (2x the cellar space), so it seems pretty clear-cut to
| me -- if saline cooling cost increases with volume being
| cooled, it should be trivial to say he's now covering someone
| else's costs. I don't even see why we even need to bother
| digging into thermodynamics -- looking at the cost structure of
| the cooling unit alone should tell us the answer. If there's no
| relationship saline-usage-cost based on volume, then it still
| taken but no harm was done. If there is, then it's trivial to
| calculate how much harm occurred
|
| If one cellar was being heated, and the other cooled, then your
| paradox could be triggered (but it also seems to me the
| "paradox" is trivially resolved by double-entry accounting --
| the problem is simply in the name "waste")
| ksdale wrote:
| If you complained about a neighbor making your product dirty,
| this judge would say, "No, no, they're actually giving you free
| dirt!"
| paulsutter wrote:
| The neighbor was stealing the coolness of the solution. Coolness
| was the desired/useful property, and it was taken for use in the
| neighbors cellar
| llimos wrote:
| The energy he is stealing is the extra power he is causing to be
| used by the cooling unit, which is going to his benefit.
|
| If I hook my house up to your house's electricity supply, it's
| the same thing. Even though you don't have less electricity than
| you had before, I have caused more to be used that you are paying
| for and I am taking and benefiting from.
|
| I am in effect causing the electric company to sell you more
| power, which I am then taking for myself.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Seems to me that it would depend on the details. If the store
| just happens to be cooled because the pipes run closely by the
| store, then I'd say it's on the brewery to insulate the pipes.
| If the store rigged up something specifically to dump their
| heat into the pipes, then surely the legality would depend on
| how the property rights work for pipes running through the
| ground.
| h2odragon wrote:
| The expense was incurred in order to create a thermal gradient;
| which was diminished by the actions of the thief.
|
| There should be a pretty straightforward relationship between
| expense and temperature of medium vs environment that would be
| amenable to simple mathematical manipulations suitable for a
| court demonstration.
|
| Being that its a court, of course, the facts dont matter and it
| all hinges on whom each party is related to and which side's
| lawyers gave the judge the best hookers and likker at the country
| club.
| beardyw wrote:
| Is that a kind of potential energy?
| conductr wrote:
| "Theft of thermal energy" or maybe "thermal state" may be a
| succinct way to put it. It applies to hot/cool that's being
| stolen and is agnostic to the energy required to create that
| temperature. I think that's the challenge here, finding a way to
| phrase it that would be acceptable to write in a judge's ruling
| bin_bash wrote:
| Nothing was stolen on this episode of the Sopranos either:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg-G1E1UwAY
| elil17 wrote:
| Defendant was stealing negentropy (negative entropy, or order).
| Good luck explaining that to a judge!
|
| Alternatively, it could be a claim of vandalism - the defendant
| didn't steal anything, but rather damaged the saline by imparting
| energy on the molecules which disordered them.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| I have to agree with the judge here. The issue is not criminal
| theft here per the letter of the law. A lot of things that may
| seem like criminal theft to untrained eyes are not considered
| theft in the eyes of the law. For example, joyriding usually have
| to be added as a separate crime to criminal codes because they
| would not fall under the definition of theft in most
| jurisdictions.
|
| That being said, the neighbour definitely has a civil case here
| and it should be easy to win that one.
| ThinBold wrote:
| Basically every party that is contributing to the global warming
| can defend like this.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > The court of appeals ruled: "The saline solution acquires heat
| from the retailer's cellar; therefore, energy belonging to the
| brewery is not being stolen. On the contrary, the brewery is
| receiving gratuitous energy from the retailer."
|
| Of course, there are cases where sending gratuitous energy to
| your neighbor clearly appears to be tortious. Like a high-powered
| laser weapon.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I strongly recommend the 'Futility Closet' podcast that
| accompanies the website. It is one of the most consistently
| interesting podcasts out there.
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(page generated 2021-10-12 23:02 UTC)