> The problem with Solar is once someone buys it they can continuously use it for a long time with out participating in the economy.
An odd statement. That could be considered a "problem" for an incumbent energy provider, like say Exxon. But it would be considered a solution for an energy user who would now have more money to devote to something else in the economy.
the US is an odd place and so I guess it depends on what you consider a norm there. Favouring incumbent rent extractors and profits, versus maximising consumer benefit with low costs — it’s arguable the norm in the US is the former
What is the cost of electricity per KWh where you are from?
Here in the USA it varies greatly from Hawaii and California having prices that exceed $0.30 to $0.50+ per KWh but in the midwest electricity is cheap as low as $0.12-15 per KWh for American standards. The former markets lead the USA in soalr installs and that's why. It's a financial decision and the ROI on going solar in the Midwest, USA for example is very long. Illinois is a Midwestern state and is a SREC market so that's a added incentive from the state so the ROI is less. For residential solar cash and bank financed solar projects, we lost the Federal ITC last year but PPAs in residential still exist. The Federal ITC existed though from 2006 under President Bush a Republican extended under President Obama a Democrat and ended under President Trump 2026 for just cash and bank financed residentials projects. The 30% Federal tax credits for the cost of the solar system and a reduction in your federal income taxes lasted for 20 years which is really what drove solar energy growth along with state tax incentives in USA. We had the Rural Renewable Energy Programs (REAP) grants or used to which made the cost of solar for farmers in America like a 2-3 year payback after the Federal ITC, State tax credits and REAP grants. I support solar and have worked in the industry for 10+ years. It's not going anywhere in the USA. We just have to adopt and grow but the USA is still one of the global leaders in the solar installed capacity.
There are no working SMR's ready to be deployed in the West. The company (NuScale) that was furthest along had its flagship project die after cost estimates ballooned. Its other project was a crypto scam.
Whether any of these companies work out and make it to serial production is very speculative.
NuScale is a terrible example. Their flagship project collapsed before it even started because of cost escalation and their other project was some sort of crypto scam.
Good for Anthropic for standing up for themselves but think of the masses of companies that decided not to take the risk. The tone was definitely set at Trump's inauguration with all the tech execs front and center on display. They knew that if they didn't play ball Trump would use government power against them.
Law firms blackmailed into doing pro bono work for Trump's pet causes, intelligence analysts not able to tell the truth, energy companies giving up wind leases and switching to fossil fuels. And of course the constant shakedowns for cash.
In his recent interview Emil Michael (DoW undersecretary, "AI czar") even mentions that the Anthropic case served as motivation for Google folding.
It is a shame that Google's leadership is so spineless. On the minuscule off-chance any of those VPs are reading HN - you are bad and you should feel shame for increasing x-risk for a percentage point of profit.
Don't forget OpenAI, whose CEO bragged gleefully about taking the contract Anthropic refused to sign since it granted the DoW the ability to build Skynet (autonomous weapons) and a Chinese-style mass domestic surveillance system using their models.
Google does plenty of evil. This has nothing to do with the slogan.
"Don't be evil" was never removed. But even if it was, the idea that Google just was champing at the bit to do all this evil but was held back by the pesky slogan is ridiculous.
> It is a shame that Google's leadership is so spineless.
This is wrong, just like the article you linked. Google has been a proud member of the military industrial complex for many years.
Alex Turner is naive when he thinks big psychopath corporation may have internal regulations to protect us from big psychopath government. He's somewhat deluded when he thinks this is a new problem and he personally has power against this. The only way we workers can enforce some level of ethics is via powerful unions (with strikes/sabotage), not as lonely individual "threatening" to leave the company.
I'm sorry he had to learn this the hard way. There's still plenty of time for you to realize that no or few company will grow a spine, because that's not what companies do, what they are for, or what they're directed to do (except maybe a small mom and pop shop).
> The US isn't expanding fossil fuel extraction, its quite the opposite.
Not according to the federal government's data. BTUs from fossil fuel production set a record last year and is on a faster pace this year. Your bringing up a few coal plants is only tangentially relevant.
> The US could switch every ICE vehicle to EV's and install solar and wind turbines in every inch of the country and it won't combat what's going on in China, India and other developing countries that rely on coal for cheap energy.
Are you familiar with the concept of necessary but not sufficient?
In any event the war with Iran is speeding up the future that was coming anyway. China's EV and solar exports are surging throughout the world. Both China and India have said for many years that their emissions would rise and then fall.
For those that don't recall or weren't around the Obama administration send thousands of medical and military to assist with the 2013-2016 outbreak. A big part of what they did was construct medical wards, but they helped with treatment, PPE, testing infrastructure, etc.
That outbreak had 11K dead and things were on the verge of being a lot worse. There were beginning to be neighborhood level lockdowns to prevent spread and civil unrest. Its difficult to play what-if games but it certainly was a very serious situation.
From what I've heard this outbreak is spreading faster than that one at the same stage.
The US has travel restrictions, therefore you are incorrect that "western countries don't even entertain the possibility of preemptively denying travel from these countries until things get under control"
OK, guess I missed that one. Score a point for mean ol' Trump I guess.
But, you're ignoring that it's also not exactly a blanket ban on travel from the DRC, just "within the last 21 days", which... does that make a meaningful difference? And, where are the other western countries doing the same? Kinda my point. If it's done at all, it's a day late and a dollar short.
I believe that Ebola will kill you a lot faster than 21 days. It's not going to be latent in you for that long.
[Edit: Arodex notes that it can remain dormant for years (at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49418182). So, yes, someone could bring it back. It probably wouldn't be an active infection, though. But what is the alternative? Nobody who ever visits the DRC can enter the US ever again? That seems like overkill.]
> But, you're ignoring that it's also not exactly a blanket ban on travel from the DRC, just "within the last 21 days", which... does that make a meaningful difference?
What's the alternative here though? It's not really okay to lock your own citizens out of the country indefinitely, so there has to be some way for people to be able to come back home eventually. Requiring an Ebola test on entry would be one option, but those Ebola tests would probably be better used on patients in Africa, so it would be hard to defend such a policy from an allocation of resources perspective.
This would seem to be an issue MAHA would want to engage on. But they instead seem to be focused on issues for which there's no evidence or even substantial negative evidence like vaccines. What a wasted opportunity to actually improve public health.
yes, but at least you know what Grokipedia is, just like you know what you're going to get if you read Truth Social, or the Jacobin.
but because the content is assimilated by GPT/Claude/Gemini and then mixed in with everything else, the bias is much much difficult to spot, making it much more effective and reaching a much wider audience (i.e., those who never visit Grokipedia)
An odd statement. That could be considered a "problem" for an incumbent energy provider, like say Exxon. But it would be considered a solution for an energy user who would now have more money to devote to something else in the economy.
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