Researchers can't sustain fusion for long periods (hours to days) and fusion reactions have only seen net energy gains for ultra short periods. Those "gains" are very modest on a percentage basis and measured very generously.

The science isn't close to sorted out. Once it is, engineering challenges of scaling and economics still loom large over fusion power and may take further decades to address fusion power is deployed displaces other generation sources, especially those using fossil fuels.

Clean, unlimited power is a worthy goal but if it arrives after 600 PPM CO2 and four critical tipping points, it is pointless. Resources would be better allocated to scaling up things that work now and at known and reasonable cost: solar/wind plus batteries, nuclear, consumption side efficiency gains, transmission upgrades and the most efficient NG peakers we can muster as backup.

I was skeptical as well until I saw one with my own eyes. It was stationary, silent and had navigation lights, something the FAA would require. The sky was dark but light enough still from sundown that I could make out some strut-like structure to the drone against the night sky. Size was difficult to determine but it looked to be about a square yard.

I was driving in a car and wasn't inclined to stop but I had a clear visual of the drone from about 150 feet away for 15 seconds. Since I was moving, I could judge distance from parallax shift. It was CLOSE.

I have a DJI drone and flew RC planes as a kid. My area is near a GA type small airport so we do get a lot of small aircraft and business jets. I know what those look like. This was a drone.

The New York Times did an article in July exploring this precise issue, sorry for the paywall:
      https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F07%2F08%2Fopinion%2Felevator-construction-regulation-labor-immigration.html

Basically, all elevators in the US are custom and installed by union labor. In Europe they are standardized and installed by non-specialized crews. Europe has an easy time fixing and replacing elevators because they are cheaper to start with and use a common set of parts. Europe also has more sense about single stairway access apartment buildings, but that is another topic.

The doctor that proved ulcers were caused by bacteria didn't just cure himself, he intentionally gave himself an ulcer and then cured it.
          https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FBarry_Marshall

100% bad ass. I logged in to see if I had mod points for you. No points so you get a reply in agreement.

No mod points so I'll just reply on that I agree as well.

DNA co-mingles data and code. We figured out the data portion, at least the codons for amino acid sequences that become proteins. But the idea that the rest of the DNA is "junk" is kind of silly.

DNA is expensive to maintain, from a biological stand point. Why would nature select for simple pairs chromosomes but fill them with 90%+ junk. Why not "spend" your DNA budget on tetra+ chromosome groups and less junk? The answer is that there is much more going on with DNA than protein recipes and what we thought was junk... isn't.

The operating system of the cell is in there somewhere, we just haven't decoded it yet. It is all working in parallel with layers of promotion and inhibition on the basis of chemical signals from the cell proper. More science to come.

This isn't a fair comparison. The amazing LLM "compression" is simply the LLM reproducing an image that it was been trained on and is recalling by reference. That's not compression the way most people think about it.

There are already compression algorithms that require a large shared data library on the decompression side that is used improve efficiency. It can drastically improve on zip, arj, rar, .gz etc but that's sort of cheating. Compression algorithms that don't use a library must embed the equivalent data in the archive itself rather than presume it's available.

Even 80 miles of range would be helpful in swappable capacity. That would be ~20kwhrs? Clunky but doable. A swap or two could make a trip doable in one go and help with any “rescues”, like a jerry can for EVs.

Modern industry and military researchers have spent decades trying to increase combustion temperatures in turbines in order to maximize performance, but inevitably the material science can’t keep up. Modern turbofans are materials strained above 900c and limited to 1400c. For an industrial process the lower end is a more practical bound. It is tough to beat combustion for a heat process.

Putting Black Mirror in such a short prompt is what lead to the mash up of black mirror plots as an output.

A more clever prompt might be: write me a story about a near future period when a current technology has advanced further. The technology seems helpful at first but is now a negative for people is its advanced form.

As a second prompt ask ChatGPT to write the resulting story in the style of a black mirror episode

The ecosystem battles are ridiculous but here we are. The best long term solution is an old laptop or reasonably efficient desktop tucked into cabinet with hdmi to the TV. Virtually every service supports PC and always will. It takes some effort to get the interface clean but at least you get control. There are some ok media PC “remotes” out there to help.

Lots of us have old hardware in a closet or just get a laptop with a broken screen off ebay for cheap.

Static weight on the top of the turbine matters very little. The overwhelming load consideration for a turbine is air pressure on the blades. That increases tremendously while they are spinning and harvesting power.

Direct drive generators with rare earth magnets are preferred offshore because of lower maintenance and improved efficiency, but in fact are *heavier* than induction. Induction motors use a gear box that is prone to wearing out but allows for a much smaller, lighter, faster spinning generator. it's right there on Wikipedia.

Most rare earths are not that rare just messy to extract, concentrate and purify, but once we have the material it will be recycled forever. The sooner we have that Nd in spinning magnets the sooner we are displacing carbon heavy generation sources. North sea offshore wind is a no brainer, especially considering the limited local solar resources from cloudy conditions and high latitude.

GPUs are one of the main offenders. I messed around with linux based SBCs for a while and they end up being stuck with a particular kernel and distro most of the time. The binaries just won’t play nicely with anything new and update to date. It’s a real shame and I don’t see anything fixing it.

In fact "making peace" with your tinnitus and doing your best to ignore it is one of the few existing therapies. Fixating on the sound can strengthen it.

I have a high pitch whine all the time despite limited exposure to loud noise. My ears are just really sensitive. Ok, now I'm fixating on the sound... time to go back to ignoring it.

Why compromise the orientation and efficiency of a solar panel by also trying to make it a window?

It’s better to have an optimized solar farm where there is space and just transmit the electricity to urban areas. Let windows be windows.