Do you think it will be possible to use them together? Having some sort of unified distributed system is intriguing to me. (e.g. can the Radical foundation and AT-proto foundation integrate, even?)
The surface is too small and you only get like 4% of the energy you need (Assuming you like being naked under full sunlight all day long. The article is for cows, but I guess the number is similar for humans.) 4% of 2400 kcal is almost 100 kcal, that is the content of a small diet treat or 2 apples.
These sea slugs can survive because they move very slowly. For a human, I think it's not enough energy to survive even if all the activity is to watch TV inside a hot swimming pool.
Dietary need scales with volume, whereas incident sunlight would scale with surface area.
Assuming a spherical cow and a spherical human, the calories needed would scale with the radius cubed, whereas the calories gained from sunlight would scale with the radius squared. So while I agree this wouldn't be very many calories, even if you sat under the sun all day, I think the 4% figure is probably quite pessimistic.
Good stuff. But I would blame the Trump admin more then data centers for coal power plants staying on line. Gas would substitute for the coal ata minimum otherwise.
> Nine coal power plants that were set for retirement last year have had their operating lives extended, including five in response to emergency orders from the Department of Energy.
Maybe the other 4 still stay open without the bullshit DoE order keeping the 5 open, but who knows.
It’s worth noting that at least one of those is being kept open against the operator’s wishes, as it’s no longer profitable to operate. That’s how ridiculous these people are about coal.
If an incumbent US Senator's electability depends upon a single coal power plant they're already in deep shit.
On the other hand for House reps the elections are every two years like clockwork, "after they win election" is in effect never because they will already be thinking about re-election, so if that's what they're asking for they mean never.
A promise of Nuclear SMRs (Small Modular Reactors) is that they could be dropped into existing coal fired power plants and leverage the existing power generation equipment.
Apparently they are failing to attain traction because despite the promise of lower cost reactors due to them no longer being bespoke, their LCOE cannot compete with renewables.
I'd argue that we should subsidize those and help make them happen NOW even if the cost is not as low as it should be, as we need all the energy we can get and we need to get off of fossil fuels NOW to try to mitigate global warming.
The problem with small nuclear reactors is that costs don't scale down linearly with size or power output. Like you still need about the same number of armed security guards to protect the site.
They might be a good option for remote sites off the grid where physical security isn't a concern.
Some costs scale down more than linearly, some less. For example, because of the square-cube law, you lose more neutrons through the walls of the reactor, so you often times need a higher level of uranium enrichment, and you produce less energy per ton of fuel, all other things being equal. That’s bad news for SMRs. But many reactor components, being significantly smaller, become much cheaper to manufacture, at least that’s the theory. We don’t know yet. But China is planning to start operating its ACP100 SMR in the next few months, and we will probably hear soon how happy they are with it.
Much of the article and general palace intrigue is predicated on the idea that OpenAI has a singularly revolutionary product. If it later turns out to be a commodity, or OpenAI is simply outcompeted nonetheless, then the idea that Sam Altman's personal shortcomings are something to stress about would seem quaint. Just another hubristic tech billionaire acting in bad faith doesn't really pry attention the same way as someone "controlling your future".
reply