Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Why on Earth would you EVER announce it? (Score 1) 49

If/when true AGI is achieved, only a fool would announce it. What would announcing it do for you? Make you famous? Rich? Cool. Know what's better than all that?

Not telling a damn soul and using the AGI quietly to do whatever the Hell you want. If you want to be rich, the AGI will tell you how to become rich. If you want to be famous, the AGI will tell you how to become famous. You can do both. And you don't have to stop there. A real, vastly superior AGI enables the person controlling it to do anything. The second you tell people about it, you'll lose control over it and then you're the famous idiot who did a cool thing one time. Kids in elementary school will recite your name back on a test. And you could have had everything.

Anyone smart enough to crack AGI can't also be stupid enough to advertise when they do it.

Comment Re:It is low CO2 (Score 5, Insightful) 135

You can get a lot more renewable energy for the money. Colorado tax payers are going to get fleeced by this.

The other issue not mentioned is speed. It takes so long to build nuclear that it can't be part of any realistic plan to address climate change, and it also makes it very prone to corruption because nothing gets delivered for decades.

These are all issues directly related to regulation and unnecessary red tape created out of NIMBYism and irrational fear around radiation. India, Canada, and China aren't stupid. They're building and/or modernizing nuclear power plants like crazy because they're so effective at reliable baseline power, which renewables simply are not. In the US, we force years - sometimes decades - of reviews and permits and defending court cases and other bullshit unrelated to the construction and operation of clean, safe nuclear power.

The other issue going to cost is that the US - again, stupidly - bars reuse of high energy spent fuel. If you simply separate the low energy (relatively safe, but useless for generating power) waste from the high energy fuel remaining and feed the high energy stuff back in, you can extract nearly all the energy, save a ton of fuel costs, mine less fuel, and have vastly less volume of waste and vastly less energetic waste.

Let's assume some sort of absolute mandate were passed to build 5 CANDU-6 (known, proven, safe, reliable design) reactors. No reviews, no permits, no red tape, no lawsuits. Just build the damn things now. You can get one operational in ~3.5 years, all of them in about 4ish years. South Korea and China have built PWRs in 5. Assuming we also lifted the ban on fuel reprocessing, CANDU-6 plants will produce power at a cost of 5-6 cents per kWh, yielding a retail price of 13-17 cents per kWh. US average is about 16.2 cents, California has rates pushing 50 cents. But we're too stupid to get out of our own way and just do it, so we'll keep strangling the poor and middle class economically.

Comment Re:Company selling (Score 1) 168

I've been asked to create reports that add pounds + gallons, and it's almost impossible to get them to understand why that's nonsense.

Pshaw, that's super easy! 3 pounds plus 6 gallons equals 9.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh. For example, if their boss is an MBA who gives out raises on the basis of how many pounds+gallons they produce or sell, they would be quite rational to request a report that shows how many pounds+gallons they have produced or sold.

Comment Re:Do religion next! (Score 1) 111

how is that not also fraud?

I've been wondering what the authorities would do if I started selling updated accommodations for the afterlife. Want an extra garage or bath? Something closer to the golden throne, or further from all that off-key singing? Or most popular of all, something farther from those people.

Pay now and get it later, of course.

Slashdot Top Deals

In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments, there are consequences. -- R.G. Ingersoll

Working...