You do not appear to understand what a republic or a democracy is, so I'll ignore the last sentence.

"Independent" does not mean unaccountable to the people. The President is independent of Congress, and vice versa, but both are accountable to the people. Well, the current president doesn't seem to think so, but legally he is.

The civil service is not a part of the executive but is a co-equal branch.

You are correct. In principle, presidents have no authority whatsoever to dictate how an agency runs. The executive branch should have zero authority over the civil service, which is intended to constitute a fourth co-equal branch of government.

In the US, in principle, the status of the civil service as co-equal to, and independent of, the executive should be added to the Constitution and enshrined in law for good measure. Not that that would help much with the current SCOTUS, but a Constitutional change might possibly persuade the current government that absolute authoritatian control is not as popular as Trump thinks.

That is the idea that, in Britain, entities like the NHS and the BBC have operated under. Charters specify the responsibilties and duties, and guarantee the funding needed to provide these, but the organisation is (supposed) to carry these out wholly independently of the government of the day.

It actually worked quite well for some time, but has been under increasing pressure and subject to increasing government sabotage over the past 20-25 years.

It's also the idea behind science/engineering research funding bodies the world over. These should direct funding for grant proposals not on political whim or popularity but on the basis of what is actually needed. Again, though, it does get sabotaged a fair bit.

Exactly how you'd mitigate this is unclear, many governments have - after all - the leading talent in manipulation, corruption, and kickbacks. But presumably, strategies can be devised to weaken political influence.

Look, I know "nuclear device" is correctly generic, so that RTGs and things like them, legitimately count. But let's be serious: right around the very same time this real stuff happened, some really great fake stuff happened too: the movie Goldfinger.

And once you've watched Goldfinger, "nuclear device" is just a euphemism for a bomb. So don't go calling RTGs "nuclear devices," please.

The Sam Altman types, and the Thiel/Musk types especially, want technofeudalism with them on top. For some of them the "good of society" factors in but it is always after this.

Not the encore dump? Shame, shame!

230 prevents sites from being prosecuted. So, right now, they do b all moderation of any kind (except to eliminate speech for the other side).

Remove 230 and sites become liable for most of the abuses. Those sites don't have anything like the pockets of those abusing them. The sites have two options - risk a lot of lawsuits (as they're softer targets) or become "private" (which avoids any liability as nobody who would be bothered would be bothered spending money on them). Both of these deal with the issue - the first by getting rid of the abusers, the second by getting rid of the easily-swayed.

it is pretty clear trump would pardon or vacate any fine against a right winger org.

The president does not yet have pardoning power over civil judgements. Maybe a constitutional amendment to do that is coming, but we haven't had a vote on it yet.

USENET predates 230.
Slashdot predates 230.
Hell, back then we also had Kuro5hin and Technocrat.

Post-230, we have X and Facebook trying to out-extreme each other, rampant fraud, corruption on an unimaginable scale, etc etc.

What has 230 ever done for us? (And I'm pretty sure we already had roads and aqueducts...)

I'd disagree.

Multiple examples of fraudulent coercion in elections, multiple examples of American plutocrats attempting to trigger armed insurrections in European nations, multiple "free speech" spaces that are "free speech" only if you're on the side that they support, and multiple suicides from cyberharassment, doxing, and swatting, along with a few murder-by-swatting events.

But very very very little evidence of any actual benefits. With a SNR that would look great on a punk album but is terrible for actually trying to get anything done, there is absolutely no meaningful evidence anyone has actually benefitted. Hell, take Slashdot. Has SNR gone up or down since this law? Slashdot is a lot older than 230 and I can tell you for a fact that SNR has dropped. That is NOT a benefit.

Some good has come from promoting more user speech online, but also a lot of bullying, harassment, echo chambers, doxxing, stochastic terrorism, and so on.

You make it sound as dangerous as a 1775 soap box that people like Sam Adams would stand upon and shout from, or a pamphlet-printing-press that someone like Thomas Paine might use, where in both cases the goal was often to rowse the rabble into protest and action.

But is the internet really that dangerous?

"The platforms" are, at best, a percent of the internet.

Sign up for a linode, put up any sort of website you can imagine on it, and explain why you would choose for the algorithms you write or install, to work the way that you fear.

It doesn't have to be as bad as you say, unless you want it. That's essential freedom.

This would result in suppression of anti Trump opinion

It will result in suppression of all anti- power/wealth opinion, i.e. all criticism of government or big-pocketed business.

This change is sponsored by litigious motherfuckers. Trump is only the instance-du-jour, a few percent of the overall threat, though very much a shining example of it.

So it looks like the editor sprinkled the magic word “AI” on the headline and slashdot did what it always does: auto-spawned 200 trollish variations of “lol AI hype.” Cute. Meanwhile, the actual story here is a lot more practical than the kneejerk anti-AI trolls realize.

What Zanskar is using machine-learning models to spot blind hydrothermal systems: reservoirs with no obvious surface tells. No hot springs, no geysers, no “hey look, free steam!” signpost. In other words: no leaking clues. Humans have traditionally hunted where the geology is loud. Zanskar is trying to hear the quiet stuff, then drill to confirm.

And once you confirm it, the extraction is basically the normal geothermal playbook: Find and a likely spot->drill production well(s)->bring up hot fluid->strip heat at the surface->reinject the cooled fluid back underground.

So the key tradeoff vs traditiona” geothermal isn’t new extraction vs old extraction. AI reduces exploration risk (fewer dry holes), but you still face the classic geothermal buildout grind: drilling cost, reservoir management, cooling choice, permitting, interconnection queues, etc. Zanskar’s bet isn’t new thermodynamics. It’s “we can de-risk the needle-in-a-haystack exploration phase."

Now here's the part where Arizona, Nevada, and Utah start side-eyeing the whole thing. If this hydrothermal renaissance turns into “power for data centers, paid for by sucking from the last puddle,” that’s not clean energy. That’s just a different flavor of externalized cost, and those of us living in the waterless paradise that is the desert Southwest get to pick up the tab. The good news: geothermal doesn’t have to be a water vampire. Many systems reinject what they produce. The risk knobs are mostly water recovery -- especially surface evaparoation in wet-cool loops, which are the most likely (read: highest profit margin) system designs,

My hope, and my ask, for anyone deploying this in the West is to be smart about it. Treat potable groundwater as off-limits unless there’s no alternative and it’s transparently justified. Prioritize closed-loop/reinjection-heavy designs and aggressive leak accounting. Use non-potable sources for any makeup water (brackish, treated, industrial) whenever possible, and pick cooling systems with the desert reality in mind, not the pie-in-the-sky brochure pitch to investors. Last but not least -- monitor and disclose environmental impacts like you actually have to live here afterward.

Using AI to find the needle in the hydrothermal haystack? Absolutely. That’s a sensible tool applied to a hard search problem. Just don’t let “AI found clean energy” become the preface to “and then we sucked your groundwater reserves dry to power yet another chip fab/AI datacenter in Phoenix.