5 ms·
Finally, 24 years in, it’s really starting to FEEL like a new century.
by encoderer 2y ago
Finally, 24 years in, it’s really starting to FEEL like a new century.
- create-username 2y agoWhatever. We’ve done too little, too late in order to tackle the climate threats. We’ve had the technology to build and deploy nuclear reactors for decades but we’ve been burning coal and fuel like there’s no tomorrow so well…
- toomuchtodo 2y agoWe're getting there. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10102024/inside-clean-energy-largest-coal-plants-retirement-dates/ https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10102024/inside-clean-ene... https://coal.sierraclub.org/coal-plant-map https://coal.sierraclub.org/coal-plant-map https://www.vox.com/climate/372852/solar-power-energy-growth-record-us-climate-china https://www.vox.com/climate/372852/solar-power-energy-growth... https://www.dnv.com/news/eto-energy-related-emissions-will-peak-in-2024/ https://www.dnv.com/news/eto-energy-related-emissions-will-p... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41602799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41602799 (citations)
- create-username 2y agodaily temperatures consistently above +2 ºC the median average since 1970 in my region
- toomuchtodo 2y agoWe should probably prioritize getting there faster then, and taking fossil fuel supply chain infrastructure and generation offline.
- fwip 2y agoThe famous 4chan quote springs to mind. "The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best is now."
- mattlondon 2y ago4chan? Are you serious? That proverb is ancient - it has been around for centuries (if not longer).
- umeshunni 2y agoPick your favorite wise quote source: [1] Ancient Chinese proverb [2] Abraham Lincoln [3] Albert Einstein [4] 4Chat/Reddit/Twitter
- fwip 2y agoExactly. I see a lot of people attributing it to a Ancient Chinese Saying, but no verification. At least I know for sure it was said on 4chan.
- mattlondon 2y agoIt was said here too, but that doesn't make HN the source. 4chan gets a lot of credit as the origin for various things which I don't think it deserves most of the time.
- silver_silver 2y agoIt’s still possible to mitigate without upending society (provided the Hansen paper is wrong), but just barely and not for long. It is absolutely dire and urgent but we’re not beyond hope for the future generations yet.
- quotemstr 2y agoEpochal "century" boundaries don't always line up with year % 100. One could argue that the 20th century didn't properly begin until some idiot shot an archduke. It likewise seems like the 20th century likewise overshot Y2K by a decade or two. Now things are accelerating in a different, new, and exciting direction.
- crazygringo 2y agoIt's the same thing with decades. People often say the "sixties" didn't really start till 1963. And when you think of the start of 1980's culture, a lot of people are really only talking about 1983-1984. Like, 1960 itself clearly belonged to the 1950's, the same way 1980 still belonged to the 1970's -- culturally, that is. Obviously, the question of what year a decade "really" started in, allows for endless argument. :)
- dmd 2y agoThe 90s ended on 9/11.
- chx 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Long_nineteenth_century&oldid=1221942919 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Long_nineteenth_c... (I am linking like this because this version I read myself.)
- rongenre 2y agoThe future is here, it's just not evenly distributed..
- Dig1t 2y agoSort of feels like we wasted a long time having our best and brightest figuring out how to optimize advertising algorithms. I think we're finally starting to recover from that phase.
- bpodgursky 2y agoThese nuclear reactors are literally being built to optimize advertising algorithms.
- Dig1t 2y agoSort of, they are being built to power AI models which do all kinds of things, but yes definitely advertising is part of it. Ads are mature now though, these mega corps have fine-tuned their products and squeezed every last advertising penny out of their audiences that they can, there isn't as much new stuff to build in that area now.
- asdf000333 2y agoI'm still curious what all these companies exactly want genAI for, but I doubt it's about ads. And the other kinds of AI aren't driving the new power usage.
- throw10920 2y agoCitation needed for the claim that any particular non-trivial fraction of engineering talent has been wasted on ad algorithms, or that those are the "best and brightest", or that those people would have been doing other useful work if the ads didn't exist. Without evidence this is just a repetition of an old, unproven meme for internet points.
- asdf000333 2y agoYou can look at what percentage of each big tech company's revenue is ads or how much they've spent on their advertising platforms.
- slashdave 2y agoUm, fission reactors are very much last century.
- elcritch 2y agoNah, those are the giant overly complex fission reactors. Now we're talking about sleek, much safer, miniature designs that are mass produced. Well, technically they're actually mass fueled. ;)
- asdf000333 2y agoIsn't this what they say every time there's a new reactor design? Then somehow there's still an accident like in Fukushima.
- elcritch 2y agoNo, not really? Fukushima first became operational in 1971. That's 40 years before that incident or 50 years ago. Development of generation III+ "fail-safe" reactors began to be developed around 1990's. To my knowledge none of them have had accidents like Fukushima. Also Fukushima didn't result in any, or nearly no, deaths. However, I do hear of major oil catastrophes every decade or less. Deep Horizon accident in 2010 in comparison had 11 fatalities, 17 injuries, and spilled 134 million gallons of oil polluting almost the entire Gulf of Mexico. According to Google the history of "fail safe" reactors is: > Development of Generation III+ reactors began in the 1990s. The Westinghouse AP1000 was the first Generation III+ reactor to receive final design certification from the NRC in 2005.
- Moldoteck 2y agoap1000 and new smr designs - not quite
- simonsarris 2y agoyou don't think smartphones and total mobile phone adoption were a massive change to life before?
- encoderer 2y agoWhen I was a kid and imagined the future I didn’t spend too much time thinking about the communicator. Kind of boring in the bigger picture.
- Aachen 2y agoI did. There was no talking to friends after turning off the computer and then it was also too late to make phone calls. I remember pretend-playing (if that's the English word for it) having conversations in them while already in bed. Nowadays that's not uncommon to do at all Not that I had a grand vision as, what was I, perhaps 7 years old? But communication and the transfer of information are two of the main things to live for. Neither seems boring or small beans to me at all
- encoderer 2y agoAbsolutely nothing boring about communicating, but the communicator itself is near/low tech. That’s why we have billions of them already in people’s hands. Glad you have one!!