1,790 karma · joined March 10, 2026
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/france#how-much-of...
China produced 41% of electricity from low-carbon sources last year.
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china#how-much-of-...
They should have used the term "error". For example in statistics, there many kinds of errors, discretization error, prediction error, sampling error, ...
Of course I'm a bit naive here, because we are talking about the richest companies in the world with lot of money to spend on lobbying (or bribes).
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/23/trump-ai-...
https://arxiv.org/html/2408.02487v3
I wonder how would Microsoft react if someone would synthesize a code solution based on Windows source code.
How much do the current LLMs invent solutions for user tasks, how much they just copy and adopt existing open-source solutions from from Github and other code repositories?
This not a problem for open-source code under permissive software license, but works derived from open-source code with copyleft software license should be also under copyleft license.
Could the biggest commercial benefit of LLMs be just working around limitations of copyleft licenses?
What is the monetary value of human work put into copyleft software and later used to train LLMs? It's hard to estimate, but the study "Estimating the Total Development Cost of a Linux Distribution", estimated that it would cost $1.4 billion to develop the Linux kernel alone.
https://consortiuminfo.org/metalibrary/estimating-the-total-...
" The National Security Agency is the largest employer of mathematicians in the U.S. "
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mathematicians-an...
Before the Russian invasion in 2022 Germany imported on average US$25 billions worth of goods from Russia each year. Dominated by crude oil and natural gas.
https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/imports/russia
At the time it was seen as good business, because the prices were good and German economy enjoyed the benefit of cheap energy for decades. But Putin was just waiting for the real payment and the real payment is Ukraine.
It would be unfair to blame it only on Germany, because whole Europe was importing a lot of fossil fuels from Russia and financing Russian economy and Russian army, but Germany had the biggest share and biggest hope that the invasion will be quickly over.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/26/russia-ukraine...
"No. The CLOUD Act applies to all electronic communication service or remote computing service providers that operate or have a legal presence in the U.S. For example, the CLOUD Act is also applicable to a cloud service provider that is headquartered in the EU and has operations in the United State"
- Thomas JeffersonIf you want to address all the issues in the article, it should generalized to:
Stop using email.
NSA is allowed to collect any information about non-U.S. citizens outside U.S. and there are some limitations to collection of information about U.S. citizens outside U.S.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla...
Google's ex-CEO Eric Schmidt in 2009:
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines—including Google—do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."
" He was convicted of 19 counts of insider trading in Qwest stock on April 19, 2007 – charges his defense team claimed were U.S. government retaliation for his refusal to give customer data to the National Security Agency in February, 2001. This defense was not admissible in court because the U.S. Department of Justice filed an in limine motion, which is often used in national security cases, to exclude information which may reveal state secrets. Information from the Classified Information Procedures Act hearings in Nacchio's case was likewise ruled inadmissible. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactor_grade_plutonium
This also the reason why every civilian nuclear reactor in non-nuclear weapon states is under constant monitoring of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and all spend nuclear fuel is under constant monitoring. Every gram of special nuclear material is accounted. Any irregularities detected by IAEA are then handled by United Nations Security Council, with possible diplomatic sanctions or military actions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAEA_safeguards
Outside of few experiments, civilian power reactors are not used for plutonium production for use in weapons, because to get high quality weapon grade plutonium you have to frequently put nuclear fuel into reactor and out of reactor (every few weeks). This increases down-time and makes electric production more expensive. Also civilian nuclear reactor use high temperature and high pressure steam, this makes change of nuclear fuel under power a risky business.
Plutonium for weapons is produced in smaller, cheaper production reactors. They run at much lower thermal power and are optimized for frequent cycling of nuclear fuel and easy handling of spend nuclear fuel.
Because any spend nuclear fuel could be in theory be used to make a nuclear bomb, U.S. in general doesn't allow countries to develop spend nuclear fuel reprocessing capabilities, or strongly tries to persuaded them not to develop such capabilities. This was a corner stone of U.S. foreign policy for many decades and also the reason why U.S. stopped development of fast-neutron breeder reactors under Carter (they didn't want other countries to pursue this technology).
The long-term U.S. policy for decades was to prevent any kind civilian nuclear power production in developing countries, as written in Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978.
"The United States shall endeavor to cooperate with other nations, international institutions, and private organizations in establishing programs to assist in the development of non-nuclear energy resources, to cooperate with both developing and industrialized nations in protecting the international environment from contamination arising from both nuclear and non-nuclear energy activities, and shall seek to cooperate with and aid developing countries in meeting their energy needs through the development of such resources and the application of non-nuclear technologies consistent with the economic factors, the material resources of those countries, and environmental protection."
Developing countries have been prevented from exploring nuclear power generation but they were free to explore coal power generation.
As a side-note: The are many countries that developed nuclear weapons before building nuclear power plants, there are countries (Israel, North Korea) which have nuclear weapons today and didn't deliver a single Joule of electricity from nuclear reactor to the electric grid.
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/how-cheap-is-batter...
At this scale there just few projects in the pipeline:
https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/bw-e...
https://reglobal.org/greenvolt-group-secures-financing-for-1...
Also 1 GWh of BESS is better used as batteries in 10,000 - 15,000 EVs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country
We will see how the battery costs change over years, currently they are still very expensive for quantities necessary for large grid stabilization in Europe.
But they start to make economic sense in regions with lot of sun and high electricity costs.
https://www.electrotech-revolution.com/p/harnessing-the-sun-...
In China politicians give the way and whoever is in the way, is removed. It an error of Europe to make itself depend from China. The political system China is the same as in Russia and we can see the result of such dependancy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/germany
I'm interested how China could decarbonize, as they still building a lot of coal power plants. They are slowly decreasing coal electricity production, but ramping up syntetic fuel from coal production.
So if Germany wants to follow Chinas path, they should build a lot of solar, wind, coal, some nuclear and hydro power plants, stop building gas power plants. You don't want it, as coal burning still has significant health impacts in Germany.
https://caneurope.org/publications/coal-burning-eu-countries...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373512769_Environme...
The long-term political decission of China is to become independent of energy imports, they are well aware of their energy import vunerability.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malacca_dilemma
Medium-term thinking in Germany is to import a lot oil, natural gas, PV. Long-term thinking in Germany to import a lot of hydrogen, PV. Nobody talks about Germany becomming energy independent.
Best place for batteries for decarbonization is in EVs, not grid stabilization. Even better for decarbonization are electric trains, electric trams, trolleybus, they run directly from electric grid.
Costs estimates for Energiewende are in hudreds of bilions of euros.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13705-017-0141-0
https://www.euractiv.com/news/blackout-the-battle-to-rewire-...
The Private and External Costs of Germany’s Nuclear Phase-Out
https://academic.oup.com/jeea/article-abstract/20/3/1311/652...
"Asse II: A lesson that is making modern deep repositories safer"
https://www.nagra.ch/en/news/asse-eine-lektion-die-moderne-t...
There were reports in 2008 about brine contaminated with radioactive caesium-137, plutonium and strontium. I would be interested about the amounts of these isotopes in the brine, as we can detect extremely small quantities of radioactive isotopes.
For example for caesium-137 we can measure amounts as low as 5 Bq/kg, the decay of 5 atoms of caesium-137 per second in 1 kg of sample.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK594677/
An adult person usually has activity of 3,000–6,000 becquerels (Bq) of potassium-40. 3,000–6,000 potassium-40 atoms decay and emit a beta particle in adult person every second.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
If you are looking for long term storage of spend nuclear fuel, it's mostly a political issue, not technical issue. In U.S. there is WIPP, in New Mexico, a deep geological repository licensed to store transuranic radioactive waste for 10,000 years. But this is only licensed to store military nuclear waste, not civilian nuclear waste.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant
Finland is building Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
There is also hazardeus chemical waste which is stored in underground. The Herfa-Neurode underground landfill ( UTD Herfa-Neurode ) is the world's largest underground landfill for hazardous waste, includes 690,000 tons of waste containing dioxins and furans , 220,000 tons of waste containing mercury , 127,000 tons of waste containing cyanide , and 83,000 tons of toxic waste containing arsenic.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untertagedeponie_Herfa-Neurode
Most small customers are paying using average prices, but these average prices are calculated from the costs of power suppliers and these are affected by hourly market prices. So when many small customers consume use lot of electricity during hours with high hourly market price, the average price for small customers goes up.
Best solution is instalation of smart meters so that small customers pay according to hourly market price.
" risk-sharing mechanism will be required, for example through two-sided Contracts for Difference and state-backed credit guarantees that reduce investment risk and unlock project financing.”
https://www.renews.biz/offshore-wind/skyborn-calls-for-swedi...
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_and_the_War_on_Terror
“Of course it’s about oil; we can’t really deny that,” said Gen. John Abizaid, former head of U.S. Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq, in 2007. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agreed, writing in his memoir, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Then-Sen. and now Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the same in 2007: “People say we’re not fighting for oil. Of course we are.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juha...
" Death rates are measured based on deaths from accidents and air pollution per terawatt-hour of electricity. "
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
In terms of loss of life Chernobyl disaster is comparable to Bhopal disaster (at least 3,787 over 16,000 claimed deaths), caused by Methyl isocyanate leak from the storage tank. A combination of poorly-maintained or non-functional facilities, a disregard of safety standards, and an under-trained workforce made it possible for water to leak into the MIC tanks in the absence of properly working safety systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
Chernobyl disaster was caused by a combination of reactor design error and operator error. After this errors have been fixed (different nuclear fuel composition, modern monitoring and controlling equipment, improved operator training and procedures) there are still 7 operational RBMK in Russia. (The same reactor type as Chernobyl)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
There are allegation that Microsoft changed Skype architecture (after buying Skype for $8.5 billion) to make wiretapping easier.
" In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism; "
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-...
" It is estimated that a third of annual global food production uses ammonia from the Haber–Bosch process, and that this food supports nearly half the world's population. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber
" Ammonia production is a highly energy intensive process consuming around 1.8% of global energy output each year (steam methane reforming accounts for over 80% of the energy required) and producing as a result about 500 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (about 1.8% of global carbon dioxide emissions) "
https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/low-carbon-...