It's surprising to me that a series of mirrors and a few pumps are still more expensive to operate than a technically complex photovoltaic system, or a natural gas plant with lots of moving parts. I guess those mirror adjusters must need a lot of maintenance.

Ivanpah was also supposedly a copied design from a similar, profitable (?) facility in Israel. Lots more background information here https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powermag.com%2Fivanp....

It's surprising they would put this at Livermore, in California, where electricity is Not Cheap.

I realize the need to distribute resources among the NNSA labs of Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia, but I would think the operating / electrical costs would be significantly lower in New Mexico rather than just outside of San Francisco, CA.

The Vogtle reactors, Units 3 and 4, are the 2 newest units in the US. They were marred by horrible cost overruns (including $3.7B paid to the original construction contractor to **walk away** from the project), totaling a little over $34B for 2,234MW of electricity.

Of course, that's first of a kind rollout. So let's say you could reduce those costs by 50%. You're still looking at an installation cost of $7.6M per megawatt of electricity.

The site permit was first applied for in 2006, and Unit 3 was connected to the grid on April 1, 2023 - seventeen years from permit application to juice-on-the-grid. Even if you reduce THAT by 2/3 (which is laughably optimistic), you're still looking at 6 years out. I think that's way beyond the time horizon that OpenAI can even think about - for 1 GW of electricity, let alone 5.

This made sense 20 years ago, when a small mac was appealing; remember "BYOKDM"? (Bring Your Own Keyboard, Display, and Mouse"). It could be a home theater PC (which is what I happily did), or maybe a kiosk machine, or a cheap way to get your parents on a mac (also did that).

But what's the market for this now? Who wants a super small mac desktop? HTPC is owned by smaller dongles, and I'm afraid the price is going to be far above an inexpensive Win box.

If they are trying to "double the shipments" of devices in 2024, the only way they're going to get significant numbers sold is if it runs Switch 1 games in addition to Switch 2. If so, shut up and take my money.
If not ... meh.

If you're really interested in PARC, read Dealers of Lightning by Michael Hiltzik (used copies as cheap as $2.70). It's a long but fascinating tale of the birth, growth, and eventual fizzling out of PARC.

It's fascinating how much tech came out of there: BitBLT, Ethernet, laser printers, windowed operating systems, SuperPaint, early precursors of DOOM...

This is how it begins. Politicians ignore or dismiss climate change effects for as long as it's convenient - does anyone remember the 2012 presidential primary debates, where Republican candidates were denying the existence or extent of global warming? And countries are unwilling to spend any serious resources addressing the problem...

Until we witness huge sheets of ice sliding off Greenland and Antarctica with undeniable images of massive icebergs floating off. Then the finger pointing begins, the blame game, the denial of responsibility, and STILL the bickering of "how much is enough" to throw at the problem.

Real solutions are still 20 years off, IMO.

As a counter example, the entire country of Austria did away with AM radio (known as "medium-wave" there) in 1976, and they've been surviving quite well without it for the past 45 years.

Personally, I would rather see the spectrum removed from radio use and put to something more useful. What exactly that is, I don't know, but I'm sure the 1.2MHz of bandwidth could be useful to someone in that long-transmission-length spectrum.

For contrast, the country of Austria banned the use of AM radio (or medium wave radio) in 1976, and they're still doing fine.

Judging by the drone footage of the camp (here), they picked a spectacularly bad place to camp, due west of Reactor Number 4. However, all of the really radioactive fission products, with half lives of days, weeks, or months, have had the past 35 years to decay away, so all that is really left is Cs-137 with a 30.1 year half life.

Yes, Russian solders raided sources from a lab in Chernobyl, but my strong suspicion (based on having been there) is that there are only check sources and really low level sources stored there. Nothing that would harm anyone from holding for a while.

The CNN article is mostly alarmist and clickbaity. The level at which we can detect radiation is far lower than the level at which it's harmful to humans.

However, what the Russians did is absolutely deplorable, reckless, and inexcusable. The Ukrainian operators told them exactly where they where and what they were dealing with. The soldiers will get what they deserve.

While all 4 RBMK's have been shut down since the early 2000's, there is still 20+ years of spent fuel on the site, in large spent fuel ponds. That water needs to be processed, cleaned, and cooled.
They were also doing lots of fuel handling work, getting it in a form suitable for long term dry storage (ISF-1 and ISF-2).
I've taken the workers train from Slavutych into the Chernobyl exclusion zone a few times; three trains depart each morning, each with about 500 people on board. There's a reasonable amount of work to be done on the site. They need a shift change. Daily.

I will always and only associate Bungie with Marathon. Everything else is just their latest incremental update to Marathon Infinity.
Oh, and I like how "Bob" is in your name, Darinbob.

Hi also from Austria. Here is the AGES dashboard of hospitalizations in Austria. Currently 20% of ICU beds are filled with COVID patients, and another 45% of beds with non-COVID patients.

I kind of question the denominator in those percentages, though - I think the "total number of beds available" is a very optimistic scenario, where 'available bed' includes whatever they could hack together in the surgeon conference room.

But still, the recent hockey-stick of infections (it's way higher, per capita, than in the US) has forced the government to do something. Which I agree with.

I JUST published a historical science fiction novel about this.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB09HJQJ59R%2F

In short, how effective could you be if you were suddenly thrown back to 1763 Colonial America? And how would someone from 1763 be able to cope with society in 2026? There's also an X50 solar flare thrown in that wipes out electrical distribution in the western hemisphere, which freaks people out today, but Benjamin Franklin is unfazed.

When HUGE solar flares happen, they create more carbon-14 in the upper atmosphere, which can be detected in tree rings of really old trees. There was apparently a huge one in 774 / 775. The Carrington Event of 1859 barely made a blip in the tree ring record. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fncomms2783%2F So you could say that the really big whoppers seem to hit earth about every 1,000 years or so, but the data is really, really sparse.

I'm happy to support a company like Panic who makes good quality hardware AND keeps it repair-friendly. I want to see more of this, so I'm willing to spend more $$$ to boost this particular economy.