Seems like electric is the end goal

[redpoint5]

I see batteries as a quick acting buffer, not something to sustain a grid for hours or days at a time.

[freebeard]

Juggling the phases on the three legs of the power line takes microseconds, batteries milliseconds, rotating steam turbines come last.

Competing headlines on Slashdot:

hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/04/17/0130214/german-government-rejects-bavarias-offer-to-reopen-its-closed-nuclear-plant

hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/04/16/1635247/after-18-years-europes-largest-nuclear-reactor-starts-regular-output

[redpoint5]

I'm sure engineering a nuclear plant is way more complex than I could begin to understand... but fission energy extraction is super old. Engineers and builders should have this down to a science by now. I get the impression that every new nuke plant that is built, the people have to rediscover how fission works and how to engineer something to harness it...

Doesn't help that we have decades go by without building a plant, so it's not like the guys who knew what they were doing are still around, or keep in practice.

It's absurd when a functional and structurally sound nuke plant is shut down. The cost is sunk, just get the relatively free power from it as long as you can safely do so.

[freebeard]

I'm sure engineering a nuclear plant is way more complex than I could begin to understand... but fission energy extraction is super old.

A cursory glance at the history reveals that Thorium went onto the back burner in the 1960s.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

Long story short, Rickover wanted Plutonium.

[freebeard]

Doesn't help that we have decades go by without building a plant, so it's not like the guys who knew what they were doing are still around, or keep in practice.

All the extant text and images are fodder for machine learning. With a large enough training set, one could interrogate the guys in question. Anyways, ECE forevah!

1900 Stirling Engines Galore And Blade's Competition -- Robert Murray-Smith

duckduckgo.com/?q=philips+mp1002ca+stirling+generator&ia=web


duckduckgo.com/?q=philips+mp1002ca+stirling+generator&ia=web

....and of course, we'll always have the napthamobile:


justacarguy.blogspot.com/2011/09/bruce-mccalls-zany-afternoons.html

Darién Gap?

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

I'm fine with globalism so long as all eggs aren't in a single communist country. If there were multiple countries producing the same type of good, that creates a bit of resiliency.

That's why it's quite upsetting that so many multinational corporations set some joint-ventures with high-rank Chinese communist party officials to outsource manufacturing, instead of setting plants in more countries not only across Asia but also Latin America or even Africa. GM for instance, went away from Thailand, India and South Africa. That joint-venture model implemented in China only favored the predatory industrial policy of the Chinese dictatorship, not only through its dumping which prevented other countries from having a stronger industrial output (including strategic industries) but also impacted other countries which used to have a much greater industrial development.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

That's why it's quite upsetting that so many multinational corporations set some joint-ventures with high-rank Chinese communist party officials to outsource manufacturing, instead of setting plants in more countries not only across Asia but also Latin America or even Africa. GM for instance, went away from Thailand, India and South Africa. That joint-venture model implemented in China only favored the predatory industrial policy of the Chinese dictatorship, not only through its dumping which prevented other countries from having a stronger industrial output (including strategic industries) but also impacted other countries which used to have a much greater industrial development.

I've wondered why businesses don't seek the absolute lowest wages for their manufacturing base. It seems stability is also an important factor. If lowest wages were the only factor, all manufacturing would be in various African cities. Only thing I can think of for why China is the defacto manufacturing location is a combination of lowish labor costs and a high degree of orderliness.

My guess is we will rely more heavily on Mexican labor in the coming years, for the few remaining years manual labor is still performed by humans.

Technology is going to reshore manufacturing. Wealth will increasingly come down to who can produce the cheapest, most plentiful and reliable energy, and to a lesser extent mineral resources.

AI has potential to capture enormous wealth, but then again, it's iterable so competing AI will place downward pressure on profitability.

[freebeard]

Will AI balkanize and eat itself before it gaslights all humanity into self-Darwinating?

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Will AI balkanize and eat itself before it gaslights all humanity into self-Darwinating?

My guess is that like most technologies, it will be utilized for both extraordinary good, and extraordinary bad. Also, the medical field will be the very last to broadly adopt the technology. That idiot field occupied by geniuses still faxes documents.

[Piotrsko]

Not to worry. Ai learns from the zeitgeist of the internet where there are known untruths. Cant overtake everything if your learning experience is flaky because that leaves entry points for an eneny exploit. Look to the SCIFi writers for illustration