myrmidon

47 ms·

841.
by myrmidon 2y ago
> Nuclear fission absolutely needs to be part of that mix, as we work to master fusion and other advanced, safe, and environmentally responsible forms of energy production. Relying on fusion power to clean up electricity generation is hi
842.
by myrmidon 2y ago
> For example, the Gen II+ plants built in the 90's had an (inflation adjusted) price of about $500 million per GWe. Whereas, the cost of the recent Vogtl build was $15 billion per GWe! I fully agree that nuclear plants are cheaper
843.
by myrmidon 2y ago
I'll bite. Lets break the highest number down, Fermi-style. => 30% social services => 10% military and education => 10% healthcare Leaves 10% for infrastructure (road/rail), governmental services (police, regulation of tr
844.
by myrmidon 2y ago
Just to be clear: I'm not accusing Helion of being dishonest or even fraudulent. It's just that from everything I know about the project, they still have a long way to go, and there are a lot of milestones to hit that are just pip
845.
by myrmidon 2y ago
Meh. They promised 50MW by 2021 in 2018. In 2021, they got half a billion $, but the 50MW plant is still not running. But the bigger problem is that those are all just pretty prototypes; according to a 2018 ARPA report, magnetic field compr
846.
by myrmidon 2y ago
Even if you had free housing/food/etc-- how many somewhat qualified people in the US are willing to work for 6-10$/hour? And those additional social services would need a big budget, which the current government is never gonn
847.
by myrmidon 2y ago
Helion also promised 50MW prototypes by 2021. It's 2025 and they have no 50MW prototype still. Fusion power roadmaps are generally exercises in wishful thinking, while fusion power startup roadmaps are basically gaslighting-as-a-seri
848.
by myrmidon 2y ago
I think this is hopelessly optimistic. From what I can tell, they have not even started building the ARC reactor. There is about zero reason to believe that all the completely unproven concepts, like the molten-salt liquid blanket (or triti
849.
by myrmidon 2y ago
What is your exact scenario for cheap fusion? Because IMO the only approach that is even capable of delivering here is the Helion one (=> direct conversion). And that design is incredibly far from ready, the whole approach is completely
850.
by myrmidon 2y ago
A "fair" share is in my view (at least) a fixed percentage . I'm not sure what "fairness" means to you? A fixed amount , per capita? Would you then throw everyone not making the cut into some kind of debtors priso
851.
by myrmidon 2y ago
You misunderstand the argument. The population being taxed via tariffs instead of income/capital gains is a net gain for wealthy people always , because they spend a much smaller fraction of their income, and a significant portion of
852.
by myrmidon 2y ago
When people are talking about "the rich not paying their fair share", it is typically about the income class that makes most of the income not from "working", but from "owning" (capital gains, profit from owned
853.
by myrmidon 2y ago
Would IMO need significantly more tariffs to effect significant shifts (and, even more importantly, some certainty that those tariffs are going to stick for the next decades, which is hard to provide). Chinese mean manufacturing wage is ~
854.
by myrmidon 2y ago
Absolutely; but "non-abused" H1B positions should not be affected too much, because US companies would pay competitive wages for those (presumably). The proposal would actually help the intended H1B usecase, because it removes tho
855.
by myrmidon 2y ago
Are you suggesting allowing unrestricted immigration as long as there is a job offer? That is simply not going to happen in the current political climate (and not under the next government either). The whole problem from the local workers p
856.
by myrmidon 2y ago
This would not be quite that easy to circumvent. The main appeal of H1B abuse is cost effectiveness. If you ruin that by forcing competitive salaries (to even get the H1B in the first place), then that ruins the whole point (and companies a
857.
by myrmidon 2y ago
> This highlighted the potential for synergy between human and artificial intelligence, where the combination of both could surpass the capabilities of each individually. This potential only existed for a very short period of time; curre
858.
by myrmidon 2y ago
> this thesis supported by many Americans, that the Chinese companies are too strong competitors for the US companies only due to governmental subsidies and lax environmental regulation is an extremely dangerous illusion. [...] I have se
859.
by myrmidon 2y ago
I understand what you mean-- I was just curious about why we could not just stick with gram-meter-second (since we have a bunch of "poorly proportioned" derived units anyway)...
860.
by myrmidon 2y ago
> The base units of the original metric system (metre and gram) were poorly proportioned for practical use What is the dealbreaker here though? Because we have plenty of "poorly proportioned" SI units anyway; e.g. it would be m
861.
by myrmidon 2y ago
What makes fusion research "future critical"? I honestly don't see any realistic timeline where fusion energy contributes >10% to any nations electricity grid in 2040. Sure, throwing money at the problem might accelera
862.
by myrmidon 2y ago
Loosely related question: What prevents manufacturers from taking some existing mid/toprange consumer GPU design, and just slapping like 256GB VRAM onto it? (enabling consumers to run big-LLM inference locally). Would that be useless f
863.
by myrmidon 2y ago
I fully agree with you that effecting "better"/more democratic politics abroad via trade has a poor track record (EU buying Russian gas would be another example). But answer honestly: Do you think that the US/Europe shap
864.
by myrmidon 2y ago
> Like half the reason why people do manufacturing in China is because all the manufacturing is there It sure helps, but the primary reason is price. And the main driver for that are wages. Chinese manufacturing pays workers an average $
865.
by myrmidon 2y ago
> Of course in practice this has gone badly in the long term. The current generations are certainly feeling the consequences. Has it though? Because I think preventing lower-skill industry from migrating to lower-wage countries would hav
866.
by myrmidon 2y ago
I don't think that this is an obvious decision at all, and it is very easy to be deceptive about upsides and gloss over the downsides of forcefully retaining domestic industry sectors: If you want to keep industries like this, you are
867.
by myrmidon 2y ago
The factories are not in China because they were subsidized, they are there because wages are lower. Yes, some caveats apply, there is some network effect, and you need sufficient infrastructure, suitable workforce and administrative stabil
868.
by myrmidon 2y ago
> if a source gives you such fatigue, you will stop reading it naturally. That is not not at all how this works out in reality. People are not subconciously opposed to being driven to outrage, especially if it reinforces their biases (th
869.
by myrmidon 2y ago
Could not agree more with the article. Billboards are basically paid side-channel attacks on your mind . Feel free to try and change my view on that, I'm very open for discussion! I will concede that there can be "ad-adjacent&quo
870.
by myrmidon 2y ago
"Outrage fatigue can wear us down"-- the subtitle of the article :P

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