rgmerk

I dunno, a RAM expansion on my Commodore 64 Ultimate might let it open bigger documents in GEOS…

I was a kid at the time, so I only got as far as writing and modifying a few programs in MBASIC.

Anyone that got anything nontrivial to work on those systems deserves much respect.

CP/M - because pip just makes more sense than copy.

Yeah, 95% of the job is just telling people not to sell in the dips and buy at the peaks.

The Internet was hugely disruptive. The dot-com bubble burst and tech stocks flatlined for years afterward.

The difference is that there establishment space launch companies were basically monopolies using ancient technology and processes. That’s not true for commercial aviation, which is subject to pretty relentless cost pressures.

I wish them well but a startup building an airliner seems like an utterly impossible task.

From what I’ve read the only part of their business that is holding up is the 911 and particularly the high-end variants. It’s everything else that’s struggling.

The rate of success of side projects seems unrealistically high. Yeah, I know, it's the YC dream, but even acquisitions where the founders walk away with a few million dollars are rare enough, right?

You can make decent code with AI assistance. You can churn out 37kLOC per day.

However, I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that you can do both.

Yes, there have been hot days across northern Europe before; however, the frequency of very hot weather has increased substantially.

It may not have gotten the headlines of this year’s heatwave, but we were in Switzerland and Germany for a month last July. For three of those four weeks, it was stinking hot. The maximum temperatures weren’t so bad, but the nights were oppressive, and there was no letup. If that’s going to be the norm most summers, it absolutely justifies investing in air conditioning.

> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer

Cite your sources.

There are specific issues in specific places (eg heritage restrictions in Paris), a higher prevalence of shared infrastructure rather than single family homes, and a higher level of renting rather than home ownership.

And there are people on the green-left end of the political spectrum in parts of northern Europe with weird hangups about air conditioning.

But as best I can tell this claim is false; the biggest reason why air conditioning is not so widespread in Northern Europe as in the United States is that the climate simply hasn’t, until recently, required it.

That sounds like an absolute nightmare to get approvals for.

The evening peak is well on its way to being a solved problem in Australia.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/big-batteries-took-a-bite-out-of...

And average prices in the Australian national electricity market are going down as a result:

https://www.aemo.com.au/newsroom/media-release/renewables-li...

If a mega volcano explodes and blocks the sun, lack of electricity will be the least of the world’s problems.

You pay for it.

There is - arguably a case for nuclear power in cold miserable places like Canada or Northern Europe because solar - by far the cheapest form of renewable energy, and still with a substantial runway to get cheaper - produces the least amount of energy precisely when those places need it most.

Australia, being a warm, sunny place, has far less seasonal variation in solar production, and at worst bas a grid that needs roughly the same amount of energy in winter and summer peaks.

Even in a net zero scenario things like running a gas turbine on biomethane or synthesised hydrogen for that last few percent of demand will make more economic sense than building nuclear in Australia.

If someone figures how to churn out SMRs for $3.95 each, sure, that would change matters, but that remains a hypothetical possibility that Australia does not have to plan around.

It put the chart title directly on top of Australia.

Which just about sums up my experience with using LLMs to code, really (though not with these state-of-the-art models, admittedly) - it's amazing what they can do, but left to their own devices they'll make boneheaded decisions.

You could do this, but on all present evidence you won’t get anything that anyone would volunteer to watch.

Agreed. There was already too much human generated slop in academia.

And I’m not talking about good faith research that didn’t pan out, I mean research that is completely useless for any other purpose other than convincing a casual observer that the authors are doing research.

Good.

If it’s not worth your time to check the output of your LLM carefully, it’s not worth my time to read it.

I can assure you having observed the process of clothes shopping for the women in my life, that as far as they are concerned, clothes do not just “fit them”.

Alcatraz or whale watching? Sure.

But Pier 39? I’d rather poke my eyeballs out with a stick. I can eat shitty fast food at home, thanks.

Good luck, but there’s a reason why subsistence farmers move to city slums as soon as they can.

Maybe I’m missing something, but there’s also the idea that you don’t need to be perfectly secure, you just need to be secure enough that it’s not worth the effort to break in.

In the case of crooks (rather than spooks) that often means your security has to be as good as your peers, because crooks will spend their time going with the best gain/effort ratio.

Dart/Wong for America ‘28 - Give America Back Its Groove.

Can you link to it? I'm curious.

In theory, at least, they have finished their design, had it reviewed by the NRC, and had it approved, so there should be no significant design changes.

But that also applies for the current generation of reactors and nobody can build them to schedule or budget in the USA or Europe.

I did have the same thought, had a quick look (I'm not a polymarket user) and couldn't find a market relating to this project.

Put it this way, if it's in commercial operation by 2031 I'll eat my hat.

Their hoped-for completion date is "2031". Anyone want to hazard a guess about what their actual completion date for this plant will be?

Hmmm. If we do simple extrapolation based on a battery density improvement rate of 5% a year, it takes about 30 years to get there. So it's not as crazy as it sounds - and it's also worth noting that there are incremental improvements in aerodynamics and materials so that gets you there faster...

However, as others have pointed out, the battery-powered plane doesn't get lighter as it burns fuel.