wortelefant

Did you ever calculate the cost for a hypothetical battery that could keep solar power available whenever the sun does not shine? This is where nuclear, well, shines

You underetimate the energy density of nuclear power. Yes. Uranium needs to be mined - slightly more 3xpensive if you extract it from sea water or recycle the fuel - but you need just one bathtub of fuel pellets to power a plant for 2 years. Solar and wind require more mining. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

Yes, solar and wind has produced a few percents more in total, after years of subsidies with >18 Billion Euro tax subsidies yearly. But we still need gas and coal plants, because wind and solar fail to produce when energy is needed. We had 573 hours of negative prices in 2025 https://www.enoplan.de/strommarkt-2025-573-stunden-mit-negat...

In summary, we still need fossil fuels, and we have high prices, and we need to pay other countries to get rid of the waste electricity. This is just an utter failure from any economic or climate perspective. Just think of all the clean energy we could export - when it is needed - with nuclear plants still intact. We could have helped austria and poland to reduce their fossil footprint as well!

Me and most relatives were exposed to this propaganda in school during the 80s and 90s.we produced more clean energy from nuclear power plants than we do now from solar and wind, if you measure actual power generation and not theoretical capacity. The only "cloud" to speak of today is the neverending plume of fine dust particles and carcinogens from the still operational coal plants that we require as backup for our maddeningly expensive bet on intermittent energy.

It is very carefully worded, but variable renewables are holding the smoking gun here. This is why spain now requests a better connection to french nuclear now. This reckless overbuild of variable generation is a valuable negative example, wind and solar without adequate hydro or nuclear is dead

Taking grandmas unpaid care work for granted - no longer possible. Outrage!

One use case I see for myself is to scan ccertain Obsidian folders for article drafts, add the cited literature to Zotero , even try to download them, and enhance the article draft with clear Zotero citation placehodlers while I am away. Also reminding me of stuff or doing research when I instruct it via telegram voice message is nice. Taking care of the boring stuff like updating a fitness tracker google spreadsheet, adding sources with my comments to Zotero and such. I hate data gardening.

If you run it with a cheaper model or just once in a while, it will write sometjing unexpected into its config json, restart and crash. Happens every few days. I learned to back up the config the hard way

I wonder what kind of messages they'll receive on the ISS - "Excuse me sir, do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ"?

With some controversial topics like Nuclear Power on the German wikipedia or the Gaza conflict on the English one, wikipedia has become less than useless. Once an activist editor sith too much time gets hold of a page, it is game over for neutrality of wokipedia. Grokipedia might introduce some much needed competition.

The AI search and multiplayer modes are still a strong differentiator.

I used to download books when I was still in academia and money was more of an issue. These days with a decent salary, I just buy most books on kindle and don't think twice about it, clicking through the download links on these download sites is just too much of a hassle. Sometimes I even download a book I already own again in pdf form, so I can feed it to some GPT prompt as context. I do not think most people would be able to buy the books they download there, and I welcome it as a counter to Amazons DRM policy.

This is not an adequate way to look at nuclear. If you check the stats of established constructions and not first of a kind prototypes (check Barakah instead Hinkley), the construction time is closer to 10 years, often less.

With transmutation and the option for recycling it altogether, waste is not an issue. Only the low fission parts of the spent fuel is low-grade active for longer than 1000 years, but this is such a low level of radiation, it is comparable to natural uranium formations and not an issue. The high radiation part of the fuel has lost the dangerous level of radiation in less than 1000 years and can be recycled before. The arenic compounds and other substances as byproduct of copper etc production for the mass of renewables have a much longer shelf life of toxitity. Also, you need more of them.

Similar concerns hold for the "adult entertainment" (=porn) industry, including onlyfans and such. Without judging the type of content, there is a massive number of existing revenue streams and millions of specialised creators and supporting professions up for disruption. A sudden shift in demand would rather reinforce than counteract existing patterns of exploitation in that sector as well.

I am a bit worried for the safety of these devices, due to their energy density. In Germany, a battery storage unit in a house recently exploded https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/schleswig-holstein/Nach-Explo...

No one expects The Santorinian Explosition!

I am using lists and have pinned them, it gives me a custom feed as before

Annas Archive is even more popular these days, these shadow libraries often present a better user experience than many online bookstores as well.

When I visited the Georgian mountains last year (Kazbegi area), on the way from Tbilisi we passed an endless column of trucks. They were parked on the side of the road, the drivers taking a rest before crossing into Russia.

Trade with Russias neighbours has increased noticeably since the start of the "sanctions", it is profitable to order western components in bulk, repackage them and send them off.

The sanctions need to be enforced for neighbouring countries as well. The new US government likely won't life a finger, but the current one still could, and europe also can have an impact if they get their act together.

And as a result, EU defense officials watch the US elections with dread, as they would be utterly helpless against a Russian incursion. Unfortunately, the time of the peace dividend we enjoyed is over, at least as long as authoritarian EU neighbours like Russia heavily invest in their military on a war footing

Weapon production is something any country wants to build up domestically, otherwise the country wher3 the producer is situated can impose restrictions and political pressure - see the limits the US sets for use of US weapons or the German denial of Taurus deliveries, or the swiss refusal to give ammunition for air defense to ukraine

I wish the publishing industry would create a flatrate model for books and magazines, I would gladly pay for it. With the current business model, digital versions are often more expensive than the printed one. Shadow libraries like z-lib, scihub or Annas Archive are just a symptom: we have a near unlimited demand for digital knowledge, but the supply logic still based on the idea of paper and scarcity.

Hegel sells his glib goose

Higher network costs just reflect added expenses for redispatch and additional grid infrastructure required by variable energy production. The more decentralized and intermittent energy in the system, the higher the cost for infrastructure and keeping backup power plants running - in case of Germany, coal and gas

Variable renewable energies like solar and wind are not well suited for continuous power demand - solar is only available during daytime when it is sunny, wind has a capacity factor of about 20%. Hydropower or nuclear are the most reliable options, the latter also cleaner than VREs with fossil backup

Most common assumptions about nuclear waste don't reflect the data - it is a solved problem in the industry and much less an issue than expected. A good collection of sources in https://zionlights.substack.com/p/everything-i-believed-abou...

Costs are lower in the long run, especially when considering lower system costs - the power grid has to be much more capable and more complex with variable generation from solar and wind, plus these energy sources always need a stable backup (like nuclear)

So after comparing time zones, which is your favorite?

twitter post from Wasm3 with more context https://x.com/wasm3_engine/status/1736712528883769670?s=20

see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38681672