Uhm, no. We *already* have plenty of safe "free" energy.
* wave (Why do you think our planet even has a moon in the first place!) * geothermal * solar
The problem is collecting that energy, which invariably requires massive amounts of land and resources.
The problem with wind and most energy solutions is NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard).
Yes, and so it would be far preferable to use technologies which have a very small environmental footprint, and which can be placed anywhere. Conventional nuclear has the same problem, though arguably on a smaller scale, and it is still intractable.
Nuclear is too high-maintenance and the negative risks FAR out weight ALL the other alternatives. How many more Chernobyl and Fukushima "incidents" before we learn that we are not smart enough to safely run nuclear reactors.
An objective view does not support this conclusion. That aside, conventional nuclear does have scalability and cost issues. Our failing is not in designing safe reactors, but embracing the technology, which looks nothing like today's reactors. Long ago, Alvin Weinberg showed us a safer nuclear, with molten salt reactors like the LFTR. Those solve all of the aforementioned problems, among many others. All we need is the will to commercially develop an already proven technology.
Theoretically there's plenty of wind power. Theoretically there's plenty of solar power. Theoretically there's plenty of geothermal power. Theoretically there's plenty of power in the vacuum of space.
It's that niggling practicality of GETTING and USING that energy that confounds us.
Arguably, I'd say the only one that's really proven itself over the long term is solar; as the Earth is essentially a closed system with only solar energy as an input, it's proven that there is amply "enough" input solar energy falling on half of the globe at any given time to drive that system.
You are right that while sufficient, harvesting those energy sources efficiently is the crux of the problem, and that is unlikely to change. Their diffuse nature inherently requires massive areas and resources to be consumed for their capture. All except the third one: geothermal; though not in the way you might expect.
Fundamentally, geothermal is actually nuclear, as the heat comes from the natural decay of thorium and uranium in the earth, which incidentally, will outlast the sun itself. In that sense, it is even more sustainable. The energy contained in the nucleus is incredibly dense, and in the right machine, we can harvest it very efficiently, safely, cheaply, and with virtually no impact on the environment.
That machine is the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, a proven technology which is not only fundamentally superior to conventional nuclear reactors, but also lower impact than any of the other "green" energy sources. Furthermore, it solves the nuclear waste issue, as it can also consume existing waste and weapons materials, while producing virtually no waste of its own. (There is no spent fuel at all--only fission products, most of which are stable within 10 years, and many of which are highly valuable themselves.)
NASA's (mis-)management aside, congress added an extra $2.2B to the cost by disregarding the review panel's findings and not funding the project in a timely manner. Read more about it here, courtesy of an earlier slashdot article: How the Webb Space Telescope Got So Expensive.
Disbelief of the dust-immune property of this cooler is addressed in the first question of the interview:
Jeff Koplow: I did not mean to imply that there is literally no dust fouling; some dust accumulation eventually becomes visible to the naked eye on the very leading edge of the blades. The point is that dust fouling is reduced to such a large extent that we are unable to detect any degradation of cooling performance operating the device in a relatively dirty environment over an extended period of time. Thus for all intents and purposes the dust fouling problem has been taken off the table. In contrast, with conventional CPU coolers, eventually the entire heat exchanger surface becomes entombed in dust. I suppose there are some applications in which computers are operated in extremely dusty environments that might be too much for the heat-sink-impeller. This is common sense. In trying to figure out a way around the longstanding problem of CPU cooler dust fouling, I was thinking in terms of residential and commercial environments where the vast majority of PCs are found.
Once again, it is disappointing how many people so yearn for the status quo, when presented with clearly superior technologies. Not that they always pan out, but it is disheartening to see such hostility toward progress.
It is a convenient hack which allows Apple to move forward without solving the real problems. We see that they are very fond of this approach with filesystems as well, and it is disgraceful that a company with their resources doesn't focus more effort on proper solutions. Hiding problems behind a pretty veneer only works so well, and for so long.
A true resolution independent interface is needed as much today as ever. Not for high-DPI support, but for accessibility. Doubling pixel dimensions does no good to address that problem; user eyesight varies, and we need to be able to scale the interface appropriately. It is as simple as that really, and a solution to that problem is long overdue.
This is total nonsense. While overheating and fire is a risk with fuel freshly removed from an operating reactor--after it has been sitting this long, nothing catastrophic will happen. The fuel rods will get a bit hotter than usual, though nothing will burn.
That said, fuel should be moved to dry cask storage or further reprocessed in a timely manner. Stockpiling huge quantities of spent fuel in pools is not a good idea, as every time you add hot fuel, that does introduce a window of danger for about six months. Outside of that window though, the pools could be drained without consequence.
We do not want, and should not aim for an Internet which is 100% full. Inevitable network congestion issues aside, the Internet only has real value when there is significant room for growth. It is disturbing to see the concept of "efficiency" increasingly applied in this manner, as it is indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the Internet, and to pursue it, is to deliberately damage the Internet.
The only "efficiency" here is in how efficiently existing infrastructure is monetized, and how thoroughly startups and other newcomers can be squeezed out by the large incumbents. Metering removes any incentives to actually grow the Internet. The problem is a fundamental disconnect between what is sold and what is provided; by metering data, the relationship is entirely arbitrary, and lacking the most crucial parameter: time.
Data, which is measured in bits, is not an actual consumable, and there is no fair way to attach a price to it. What is consumed is bandwidth on the Internet links the data traverses at the time of usage; both of which are time-dependent. Needless to say, it would be insane, both technically and otherwise, to try to bill in this way. Furthermore, there still remains no incentive to actually grow the Internet, in the absence of competition.
Rather than data based metering, ISPs could be required to sell connections based on minimum guaranteed bandwidth to customers, at regulated prices. This is not the only fair scheme, but regardless, there needs to be a correlation between what is sold, and what is provided. If people want to purchase more, there must be an incentive to build out the networks, rather than to adopt a model of artificial scarcity, and bill accordingly.
Of course, selling connections fairly in this way also has technical difficulties, and it would be far simpler and cheaper if they just dispensed with all of this nonsense, and reverted to the way it used to be. Sell connections based on bandwidth, and build out the networks until there are no significant congestion issues. Other countries have proven that this model is still economically viable, even while providing people with gigabit connections. The only thing preventing it here is the lack of competition and associated stagnation of infrastructure and gouging. Let's not adopt new models of pricing which encourage more of that.
That's nice if you have a selected Intel chip, but many sold today lack such modern extensions, including the i3 you mention.
For the rest, it would great if SSH supported high-speed software crypto like Salsa20 or the improved ChaCha variant. Even on my ancient Athlon 64 fileserver, Salsa20/8 and ChaCha8 would give me perfectly usable crypto at < 5 cycles/byte. That is roughly 400MB/s, and modern chips get closer to 2 cycles/byte and at twice the clock rate with more cores. At this point, aggregate crypto performance is several GB/s, and hardware AES is basically unnecessary.
Unfortunately, I'm stuck with AES which is slow as hell. Or AES-XTS on disk, which is even worse. The Salsa20 key/iv setup is virtually free, and while it is not suited to generic block crypto, it would be perfect for an encrypting filesystem. (XSalsa20 affords 24 bytes of nonce within which to put a transaction# + disk ID + block# avoiding all the expense of a mode like XTS.)
Your claim is fucking ridiculous. There are 25 PB of data. It's nearly impossible for there not to be significant amounts of legitimate data on there.
Moreover, unless you are using MAFIAA math to calculate "damages", it is absolutely certain that shutting down the site has caused far more damage to legitimate users. It is outrageous that the US government is being used as a tool for private industry at the people's expense, and without any consideration for collateral damage.
Though, the US government is increasingly engaged in morally outrageous acts these days, so it isn't that surprising.
...and what accessory provides stylus support? Those artificial fingers that Apple appologists point out every time don't count. A pen is a perfectly natural input device for most everyone, and it is a gaping hole in the feature set of any tablet that lacks one.
A pen is not a specialty item, and singling out Artists as the only ones who might want one is daft. Think students, or anyone else who needs to take notes or annotate something. Natural input of Chinese/Japanese or other unicode characters not found on a keyboard. Mathematical and technical symbols. A pen also allows for far more efficient text input with systems such as ShapeWriter.
Precisely. As an aside, the Uranium and Thorium present in seawater can be extracted for use in nuclear reactors. Not that we would run out of land-based resources for many thousands of years, but it is interesting that nuclear fuel is so energy dense that this is even economically viable. It could also be economically recovered from coal ash, and there is no shortage of that either.
Ultimately, cheap energy is at the foundation of prosperity. While the US is wasting trillions on wars to keep the oil flowing, and inviting terrorism which we must then defend against, China is investing heavily in securing a cheap source of energy. Not only are they building out conventional nuclear as fast as they can, they are also investing heavily in next generation reactors. Before long, Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors will provide them with a rapidly scalable energy source that is cheaper than coal, and allow the massive Chinese population a true chance at prosperity.
While it is only a hope for the Chinese, the possibilities are endless. Meanwhile, the US is truly headed right off the cliff, and before long we will probably be looking upon the now pitiable working class in China with envy. Even our vaunted freedoms and liberties are disappearing rapidly, and it looks like we have a 1984-esque security any surveillance state to look forward to. With a prison state producing slave labor, populated by infractions of laws which shouldn't exist, such as growing a plant or sharing a file.
The lives of most Chinese today may be miserable, but they will have a hope for their children. Our leaders have staked our entire future on intellectual monopoly and war, and there is no hope there whatsoever. The US cannot survive on litigation and banking alone; we desperately need to be investing in a manufacturing base and energy supply. In critical infrastructure, such as transportation and networking. In the people themselves through education. Together we could prosper, but individually the greedy sociopaths running our nation have resorted to cannibalizing the shrinking wealth, rather than investing in the future.
Our government has been complicit, but large corporations like Apple are at fault. They have pushed nearly everything of value out of the country in pursuit of obscene profits, and actively lobby at every turn to thwart any meaningful progress.
NAT provides only the illusion of privacy; the problem isn't the addressing, but rather the huge centralized systems that we have come to depend upon and which are controlled by only a handful of entities.
Meaningful privacy assurances require effort, and must be addressed at the application layer. This is best served by crypto and peer-to-peer communications, and keeping third parties out of the loop. IPv6 offers the possibility of restoring the most important and fundamental property of the Internet: the end-to-end principle. (If you haven't already, please read this.) IPv6 provides the basic foundation for applications of the future, allowing one to build in as much security, privacy, and anonymity as they may want. To communicate freely and on your own terms.
The only lemmings I am worried about are the ones who needlessly cling to NAT, and would willingly cripple their own IPv6 networks with similar restrictions. The primary value of the Internet, is that it allows everyone connected to be an equal participant. Once you hoist a NAT (or overly zealous firewall) in front of your connection, you are turning yourself into a mere client, subject to the whims and abuses of some service provider.
Not if the mermen militarise the plutonium and use it against the land people.
They're vicious SOBs down there.
This may be a joke, but it is worth pointing out that the Plutonium used in RTGs is not fissile, and can't be used to make bombs. Pu-238 is only useful for RTGs. The isotope used in bombs is Pu-239, which is a common product of Uranium based reactors.
Producing Pu-238 is actually very difficult, as described in the above link. Unfortunately, the worlds supply is dwindling, and this endangers many upcoming space missions. One attractive option for creating more is to use Liquid fluoride thorium reactors, where Pu-238 is one of many useful products created.
Conventional maglevs are very expensive, yes. An Inductrack based system would be far cheaper though, and may be cost competitive with the proposed high speed rail. The ECCO cargo maglev proposal estimated an Inductrack maglev to be competitive with highways based on throughput. (It would require an 8-lane highway to provide the same throughput, and that isn't cheap either. See page 116.) Obviously, this is not directly comparable, but the point is that maglev isn't necessarily as outrageously expensive as most people assume.
That said, when you aren't moving bulk cargo, a PRT system like Skytran may be more attractive yet. Furthermore, the speed of a maglev is primarily limited by air resistance. Systems like ETT use evacuated tubes, and "proposed speeds are up to 350 mph (560 km/h) for in-state use and up to 4,000 mph (6,400 km/h) for cross country and global travel."
Way too many people to continue consumption of fossil fuels at current rates, but the planet will support considerably more if we adopt responsible technologies, such as the Liquid fluoride thorium reactor. Observe that developed countries do not experience exponential population growth; their growth is typically only slightly greater than the replacement rate. So, one we have an inexpensive and ubiquitous means of energy production, we can focus on raising the standard of lining for the rest of the world, and the problem will solve itself. (Along with many other social problems created by contention over energy resources.)
Beyond that, it is silly to be concerned about population problems; there is plenty of space off world.
You haven't addressed the most relevant point: cost. It is as prohibitive today as it was decades ago, and so will it be decades from now. There is simply no solution to the fundamental problems, and pretending that there is, is a dangerous fantasy which distracts from real and practical solutions. If molten salt reactor technology was pursued rather than set aside by politicians, we would be energy independent today, or close to it. Furthermore, we could be exporting these reactors throughout the world, where energy and clean water are desperately needed. We need to invest in technologies that have the potential to solve the very real problems facing us, both social and otherwise.
The energy density of renewables is simply too low and requires massive resources to harvest it, in terms of both materials and land, and also ongoing maintenance and replacement. The low capacity factor and remote locations will also require enormous growth of the distribution network, which is not economically viable when the infrastructure is idle 80% of the time, to say nothing of the completely intractable energy storage problems. Base load energy sources such as gas are still required, so don't forget to factor in that cost as well. When all is accounted for, the panels could be free and it still wouldn't make sense. Nuclear is also an option for base load, but then why bother with the renewables at all?
Neodymium aside, concrete and steel require considerable energy input to create in such quantities, primarily from fossil fuels. We talk about lost land to contamination from nuclear accidents, but that is nothing compared to the amount of land that would be permanently unusable due to wide scale renewables, to say nothing of natural habitat destruction. Even hydro is very destructive and land intensive.
Finally, solar and wind are labor intensive, and while that might create jobs, it is not a constructive use of human abilities, any more than having those people slaving away in coal mines would be. As we are better able to exploit the atom, we should have the luxury of working not only less time, but on more intellectual satisfying endeavors. The purpose of jobs programs should not be to keep people busy with mindless work.
The important thing, is that we get away from fossil fuels as soon as possible; their cost in terms of life (including resource wars) and environmental damage is simply too great. I would advocate conventional nuclear, but only as a stopgap measure until advanced reactors can be developed and deployed. Little could be worse though than maintaining the status quo, and preventing the replacement of aging reactors with newer and safer options.
Innovation is nothing but the combination of existing ideas, which are very occasionally novel in some way. Even so, no innovation is deserving of monopolistic protections, which are inevitably harmful to all. The greatest of innovations, which are arguably most deserving, do the greatest harm by limiting or outright preventing widespread use of such ideas. Think of what would happen if key energy technology patents fell into the hands of a fossil fuel corporation? Even with a less hostile corporation, patents will inevitably impede progress, at a time in which the need is greatest. This has already happened with NiMH battery patents delaying electric cars. Also, the industrial revolution was basically postponed for 20 years on account of Watt's patent on the steam engine.
It will be bitterly ironic if the Chinese commercialize the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, and succeed in securing extensive monopoly protection on foundational innovations. All of the crusades of the US in exporting our draconion IP law, and for what? We will have locked ourselves out of our own energy future, for the sake of media cartel profits. No one deserves to profit at the expense of the rest of humanity.
Patents should not exist at all. In a world with billions of people, someone else would have thought of that "novel" idea anyway, and chances are, already has. It is not right to deprive the countless people arriving at the same ideas from also benefitting from their employment. It is unheard of for people to mine patents for ideas; they are the exclusive domain of litigators, and nothing but a damper on progress.
Nor do they want one. GE and the others in the nuclear industry won't touch the MSR--they make their money from expensive fuel manufacturing contracts, not plants. There is no fuel manufacturing with an MSR, so it kills their business model.
Helium turbines are actually significantly smaller than steam turbines per unit power. Supercritical CO2 turbines are far smaller, though would need to be sited near water. From what I have read, the quantity of Helium required is just not significant enough to pose concerns on either cost or availability.
The LFTR coupled with an advanced gas turbine offers great potential cost reductions, due to the much smaller containment, reactors, and associated turbines. Initial plants should probably focus on proven steam turbines, but the potential is there, and realizing it is inevitable. This technology is simply not available to conventional low-temperature plants.
Well, the problem was not with the popular imagination, but the poor policy making. The US would be fully energy independent today, and nuclear would be a brilliant, thriving industry, if only it had proceeded in a different direction. Indeed, the entire world would be a very different place, with the proliferation of cheap, safe energy, and reduced friction over fossil fuel resources. Maybe not too cheap to meter, but energy cheaper than from coal is quite possible with Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors. So are synthetic fuels from nuclear heat cheaper than from oil. As an additional benefit over current reactors, water can be desalinated with the rejected heat. All of this, with unparalleled safety, while addressing all of the waste concerns of present reactors.
Instead of pursing the safer, cleaner, and immensely more efficient liquid thorium reactors. The government poured billions into funding the competing liquid metal fast breeder: a fundamentally inferior solid fueled design which requires an immensely greater amount of fissile material, as all fast reactors do. (Plutonium in this case). There are numerous other downsides, but it suffices to say that the molten salt reactor program was cancelled when Alvin Weinberg questioned the safety prospects of the prevailing light water reactors and the direction of the plutonium breeder program. (This is the very person who invented the prevailing reactor technology, so who is more qualified to make such judgements? Now that the politics have played out, and his fears have been realized, perhaps it is time to revisit the liquid thorium reactor.
Now we face energy scarcity, horrific pollution, and accelerating destruction of our environment on a global scale, not to mention the results of climate charge. Please take the time to increase awareness of this technology; it isn't merely some theoretical hope, they ran a reactor successfully for years. It was and still is a genuine solution to all of our energy ills, which requires nothing but the will to embrace it. Learn more at Energy From Thorium, and please take the time to contact your representatives.
That's just the thing--there is no "given bandwidth". The limit you refer to is relevant for a single channel over a wire, or a single transmitter. For the spectrum though, you are effectively allowed an infinite number of transmitters/receivers. By legislating exclusive use of nearly all frequencies, we are killing any potential growth in that direction.
Distinguishing the signals is very much the practical limiting factor, but the capacity is there, and technology will continue to improve. We have barely scratched the surface of what will become possible with phased array antennas. Based on typical usage, people assume that wireless is a shared medium, but it is not. It is fundamentally point to point. (Optical is easy; RF is much harder, and subject to antenna limitations. Sure, there are limitations, but the point holds.)
It wouldn't take a zillion dollars, but it would require a pervasive quality optical network for all of those tiny cells to attach to. We need that anyway though, and that suffers from much the same problem: the carriers are perfectly happy leaving the network to rot. We desperately need public ownership of the plant, and the resulting competition amongst ISPs. Likewise, we need public ownership of a sizable chunk of spectrum. Without that, there is nothing to drive innovation and improvement of the respective mediums--there will always be some corporation focused on protecting their monopoly position, not improving the network.
Photons don't interact with each other, and don't "fill up" anything. What is at issue, is our poor usage of the spectrum, and insistance on treating it like exclusive property. Any number of people can communicate on the very same frequencies, and in the very same space, just as long as there is a way to distinguish the communications. Fortunately, nature provides each device with a unique "address": its location in space. As technology improves, we can continue to make ever better use of the same spectrum--or at least we could if legislation didn't actively prevent it.
In essence, it comes down to building more towers, and I'm not aware of any unsurmountable barriers to a company with the will and cash. Of course, it is easier to just prop up the model of artificial scarcity with prices to match.
Rather than clinging to the outdated concept of a scarce spectrum, regulatory agencies should start giving it back to the public, and encourage the proper use of it. Highly dense, low-power, ultra wide-band communications. It is the natural evolution of wifi: per-home micro-cells attached to home fibre, running open Internet protocols. We could easily have extremely high-performance ubiquitous wireless networking, if massive corporations weren't so busy propping up artificial scarcity and walling everything off.
The obvious "home use" would be holography. The next use (at home) is inside of a holographic optical storage device. IIRC, this 1W green laser is the very component that is keeping these devices from the mass market.
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Uhm, no. We *already* have plenty of safe "free" energy.
* wave (Why do you think our planet even has a moon in the first place!)
* geothermal
* solar
The problem is collecting that energy, which invariably requires massive amounts of land and resources.
The problem with wind and most energy solutions is NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard).
Yes, and so it would be far preferable to use technologies which have a very small environmental footprint, and which can be placed anywhere. Conventional nuclear has the same problem, though arguably on a smaller scale, and it is still intractable.
Nuclear is too high-maintenance and the negative risks FAR out weight ALL the other alternatives. How many more Chernobyl and Fukushima "incidents" before we learn that we are not smart enough to safely run nuclear reactors.
An objective view does not support this conclusion. That aside, conventional nuclear does have scalability and cost issues. Our failing is not in designing safe reactors, but embracing the technology, which looks nothing like today's reactors. Long ago, Alvin Weinberg showed us a safer nuclear, with molten salt reactors like the LFTR. Those solve all of the aforementioned problems, among many others. All we need is the will to commercially develop an already proven technology.
Theoretically there's plenty of wind power.
Theoretically there's plenty of solar power.
Theoretically there's plenty of geothermal power.
Theoretically there's plenty of power in the vacuum of space.
It's that niggling practicality of GETTING and USING that energy that confounds us.
Arguably, I'd say the only one that's really proven itself over the long term is solar; as the Earth is essentially a closed system with only solar energy as an input, it's proven that there is amply "enough" input solar energy falling on half of the globe at any given time to drive that system.
You are right that while sufficient, harvesting those energy sources efficiently is the crux of the problem, and that is unlikely to change. Their diffuse nature inherently requires massive areas and resources to be consumed for their capture. All except the third one: geothermal; though not in the way you might expect.
Fundamentally, geothermal is actually nuclear, as the heat comes from the natural decay of thorium and uranium in the earth, which incidentally, will outlast the sun itself. In that sense, it is even more sustainable. The energy contained in the nucleus is incredibly dense, and in the right machine, we can harvest it very efficiently, safely, cheaply, and with virtually no impact on the environment.
That machine is the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, a proven technology which is not only fundamentally superior to conventional nuclear reactors, but also lower impact than any of the other "green" energy sources. Furthermore, it solves the nuclear waste issue, as it can also consume existing waste and weapons materials, while producing virtually no waste of its own. (There is no spent fuel at all--only fission products, most of which are stable within 10 years, and many of which are highly valuable themselves.)
You may be interested in Flattr.
NASA's (mis-)management aside, congress added an extra $2.2B to the cost by disregarding the review panel's findings and not funding the project in a timely manner. Read more about it here, courtesy of an earlier slashdot article: How the Webb Space Telescope Got So Expensive.
See The fanless heatsink: Silent, dust-immune, and almost ready for prime time, and an interview with the inventor.
Disbelief of the dust-immune property of this cooler is addressed in the first question of the interview:
Jeff Koplow: I did not mean to imply that there is literally no dust fouling; some dust accumulation eventually becomes visible to the naked eye on the very leading edge of the blades. The point is that dust fouling is reduced to such a large extent that we are unable to detect any degradation of cooling performance operating the device in a relatively dirty environment over an extended period of time. Thus for all intents and purposes the dust fouling problem has been taken off the table. In contrast, with conventional CPU coolers, eventually the entire heat exchanger surface becomes entombed in dust. I suppose there are some applications in which computers are operated in extremely dusty environments that might be too much for the heat-sink-impeller. This is common sense. In trying to figure out a way around the longstanding problem of CPU cooler dust fouling, I was thinking in terms of residential and commercial environments where the vast majority of PCs are found.
Once again, it is disappointing how many people so yearn for the status quo, when presented with clearly superior technologies. Not that they always pan out, but it is disheartening to see such hostility toward progress.
It is a convenient hack which allows Apple to move forward without solving the real problems. We see that they are very fond of this approach with filesystems as well, and it is disgraceful that a company with their resources doesn't focus more effort on proper solutions. Hiding problems behind a pretty veneer only works so well, and for so long.
A true resolution independent interface is needed as much today as ever. Not for high-DPI support, but for accessibility. Doubling pixel dimensions does no good to address that problem; user eyesight varies, and we need to be able to scale the interface appropriately. It is as simple as that really, and a solution to that problem is long overdue.
This is total nonsense. While overheating and fire is a risk with fuel freshly removed from an operating reactor--after it has been sitting this long, nothing catastrophic will happen. The fuel rods will get a bit hotter than usual, though nothing will burn.
That said, fuel should be moved to dry cask storage or further reprocessed in a timely manner. Stockpiling huge quantities of spent fuel in pools is not a good idea, as every time you add hot fuel, that does introduce a window of danger for about six months. Outside of that window though, the pools could be drained without consequence.
We do not want, and should not aim for an Internet which is 100% full. Inevitable network congestion issues aside, the Internet only has real value when there is significant room for growth. It is disturbing to see the concept of "efficiency" increasingly applied in this manner, as it is indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the Internet, and to pursue it, is to deliberately damage the Internet.
The only "efficiency" here is in how efficiently existing infrastructure is monetized, and how thoroughly startups and other newcomers can be squeezed out by the large incumbents. Metering removes any incentives to actually grow the Internet. The problem is a fundamental disconnect between what is sold and what is provided; by metering data, the relationship is entirely arbitrary, and lacking the most crucial parameter: time.
Data, which is measured in bits, is not an actual consumable, and there is no fair way to attach a price to it. What is consumed is bandwidth on the Internet links the data traverses at the time of usage; both of which are time-dependent. Needless to say, it would be insane, both technically and otherwise, to try to bill in this way. Furthermore, there still remains no incentive to actually grow the Internet, in the absence of competition.
Rather than data based metering, ISPs could be required to sell connections based on minimum guaranteed bandwidth to customers, at regulated prices. This is not the only fair scheme, but regardless, there needs to be a correlation between what is sold, and what is provided. If people want to purchase more, there must be an incentive to build out the networks, rather than to adopt a model of artificial scarcity, and bill accordingly.
Of course, selling connections fairly in this way also has technical difficulties, and it would be far simpler and cheaper if they just dispensed with all of this nonsense, and reverted to the way it used to be. Sell connections based on bandwidth, and build out the networks until there are no significant congestion issues. Other countries have proven that this model is still economically viable, even while providing people with gigabit connections. The only thing preventing it here is the lack of competition and associated stagnation of infrastructure and gouging. Let's not adopt new models of pricing which encourage more of that.
That's nice if you have a selected Intel chip, but many sold today lack such modern extensions, including the i3 you mention.
For the rest, it would great if SSH supported high-speed software crypto like Salsa20 or the improved ChaCha variant. Even on my ancient Athlon 64 fileserver, Salsa20/8 and ChaCha8 would give me perfectly usable crypto at < 5 cycles/byte. That is roughly 400MB/s, and modern chips get closer to 2 cycles/byte and at twice the clock rate with more cores. At this point, aggregate crypto performance is several GB/s, and hardware AES is basically unnecessary.
Unfortunately, I'm stuck with AES which is slow as hell. Or AES-XTS on disk, which is even worse. The Salsa20 key/iv setup is virtually free, and while it is not suited to generic block crypto, it would be perfect for an encrypting filesystem. (XSalsa20 affords 24 bytes of nonce within which to put a transaction# + disk ID + block# avoiding all the expense of a mode like XTS.)
Your claim is fucking ridiculous. There are 25 PB of data. It's nearly impossible for there not to be significant amounts of legitimate data on there.
Moreover, unless you are using MAFIAA math to calculate "damages", it is absolutely certain that shutting down the site has caused far more damage to legitimate users. It is outrageous that the US government is being used as a tool for private industry at the people's expense, and without any consideration for collateral damage.
Though, the US government is increasingly engaged in morally outrageous acts these days, so it isn't that surprising.
...and what accessory provides stylus support? Those artificial fingers that Apple appologists point out every time don't count. A pen is a perfectly natural input device for most everyone, and it is a gaping hole in the feature set of any tablet that lacks one.
A pen is not a specialty item, and singling out Artists as the only ones who might want one is daft. Think students, or anyone else who needs to take notes or annotate something. Natural input of Chinese/Japanese or other unicode characters not found on a keyboard. Mathematical and technical symbols. A pen also allows for far more efficient text input with systems such as ShapeWriter.
Precisely. As an aside, the Uranium and Thorium present in seawater can be extracted for use in nuclear reactors. Not that we would run out of land-based resources for many thousands of years, but it is interesting that nuclear fuel is so energy dense that this is even economically viable. It could also be economically recovered from coal ash, and there is no shortage of that either.
Ultimately, cheap energy is at the foundation of prosperity. While the US is wasting trillions on wars to keep the oil flowing, and inviting terrorism which we must then defend against, China is investing heavily in securing a cheap source of energy. Not only are they building out conventional nuclear as fast as they can, they are also investing heavily in next generation reactors. Before long, Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors will provide them with a rapidly scalable energy source that is cheaper than coal, and allow the massive Chinese population a true chance at prosperity.
While it is only a hope for the Chinese, the possibilities are endless. Meanwhile, the US is truly headed right off the cliff, and before long we will probably be looking upon the now pitiable working class in China with envy. Even our vaunted freedoms and liberties are disappearing rapidly, and it looks like we have a 1984-esque security any surveillance state to look forward to. With a prison state producing slave labor, populated by infractions of laws which shouldn't exist, such as growing a plant or sharing a file.
The lives of most Chinese today may be miserable, but they will have a hope for their children. Our leaders have staked our entire future on intellectual monopoly and war, and there is no hope there whatsoever. The US cannot survive on litigation and banking alone; we desperately need to be investing in a manufacturing base and energy supply. In critical infrastructure, such as transportation and networking. In the people themselves through education. Together we could prosper, but individually the greedy sociopaths running our nation have resorted to cannibalizing the shrinking wealth, rather than investing in the future.
Our government has been complicit, but large corporations like Apple are at fault. They have pushed nearly everything of value out of the country in pursuit of obscene profits, and actively lobby at every turn to thwart any meaningful progress.
NAT provides only the illusion of privacy; the problem isn't the addressing, but rather the huge centralized systems that we have come to depend upon and which are controlled by only a handful of entities.
Meaningful privacy assurances require effort, and must be addressed at the application layer. This is best served by crypto and peer-to-peer communications, and keeping third parties out of the loop. IPv6 offers the possibility of restoring the most important and fundamental property of the Internet: the end-to-end principle. (If you haven't already, please read this.) IPv6 provides the basic foundation for applications of the future, allowing one to build in as much security, privacy, and anonymity as they may want. To communicate freely and on your own terms.
The only lemmings I am worried about are the ones who needlessly cling to NAT, and would willingly cripple their own IPv6 networks with similar restrictions. The primary value of the Internet, is that it allows everyone connected to be an equal participant. Once you hoist a NAT (or overly zealous firewall) in front of your connection, you are turning yourself into a mere client, subject to the whims and abuses of some service provider.
Not if the mermen militarise the plutonium and use it against the land people.
They're vicious SOBs down there.
This may be a joke, but it is worth pointing out that the Plutonium used in RTGs is not fissile, and can't be used to make bombs. Pu-238 is only useful for RTGs. The isotope used in bombs is Pu-239, which is a common product of Uranium based reactors.
Producing Pu-238 is actually very difficult, as described in the above link. Unfortunately, the worlds supply is dwindling, and this endangers many upcoming space missions. One attractive option for creating more is to use Liquid fluoride thorium reactors, where Pu-238 is one of many useful products created.
Conventional maglevs are very expensive, yes. An Inductrack based system would be far cheaper though, and may be cost competitive with the proposed high speed rail. The ECCO cargo maglev proposal estimated an Inductrack maglev to be competitive with highways based on throughput. (It would require an 8-lane highway to provide the same throughput, and that isn't cheap either. See page 116.) Obviously, this is not directly comparable, but the point is that maglev isn't necessarily as outrageously expensive as most people assume.
That said, when you aren't moving bulk cargo, a PRT system like Skytran may be more attractive yet. Furthermore, the speed of a maglev is primarily limited by air resistance. Systems like ETT use evacuated tubes, and "proposed speeds are up to 350 mph (560 km/h) for in-state use and up to 4,000 mph (6,400 km/h) for cross country and global travel."
Way too many people to continue consumption of fossil fuels at current rates, but the planet will support considerably more if we adopt responsible technologies, such as the Liquid fluoride thorium reactor. Observe that developed countries do not experience exponential population growth; their growth is typically only slightly greater than the replacement rate. So, one we have an inexpensive and ubiquitous means of energy production, we can focus on raising the standard of lining for the rest of the world, and the problem will solve itself. (Along with many other social problems created by contention over energy resources.)
Beyond that, it is silly to be concerned about population problems; there is plenty of space off world.
You haven't addressed the most relevant point: cost. It is as prohibitive today as it was decades ago, and so will it be decades from now. There is simply no solution to the fundamental problems, and pretending that there is, is a dangerous fantasy which distracts from real and practical solutions. If molten salt reactor technology was pursued rather than set aside by politicians, we would be energy independent today, or close to it. Furthermore, we could be exporting these reactors throughout the world, where energy and clean water are desperately needed. We need to invest in technologies that have the potential to solve the very real problems facing us, both social and otherwise.
The energy density of renewables is simply too low and requires massive resources to harvest it, in terms of both materials and land, and also ongoing maintenance and replacement. The low capacity factor and remote locations will also require enormous growth of the distribution network, which is not economically viable when the infrastructure is idle 80% of the time, to say nothing of the completely intractable energy storage problems. Base load energy sources such as gas are still required, so don't forget to factor in that cost as well. When all is accounted for, the panels could be free and it still wouldn't make sense. Nuclear is also an option for base load, but then why bother with the renewables at all?
Neodymium aside, concrete and steel require considerable energy input to create in such quantities, primarily from fossil fuels. We talk about lost land to contamination from nuclear accidents, but that is nothing compared to the amount of land that would be permanently unusable due to wide scale renewables, to say nothing of natural habitat destruction. Even hydro is very destructive and land intensive.
Finally, solar and wind are labor intensive, and while that might create jobs, it is not a constructive use of human abilities, any more than having those people slaving away in coal mines would be. As we are better able to exploit the atom, we should have the luxury of working not only less time, but on more intellectual satisfying endeavors. The purpose of jobs programs should not be to keep people busy with mindless work.
The important thing, is that we get away from fossil fuels as soon as possible; their cost in terms of life (including resource wars) and environmental damage is simply too great. I would advocate conventional nuclear, but only as a stopgap measure until advanced reactors can be developed and deployed. Little could be worse though than maintaining the status quo, and preventing the replacement of aging reactors with newer and safer options.
God help us all if you ever receive that patent.
Innovation is nothing but the combination of existing ideas, which are very occasionally novel in some way. Even so, no innovation is deserving of monopolistic protections, which are inevitably harmful to all. The greatest of innovations, which are arguably most deserving, do the greatest harm by limiting or outright preventing widespread use of such ideas. Think of what would happen if key energy technology patents fell into the hands of a fossil fuel corporation? Even with a less hostile corporation, patents will inevitably impede progress, at a time in which the need is greatest. This has already happened with NiMH battery patents delaying electric cars. Also, the industrial revolution was basically postponed for 20 years on account of Watt's patent on the steam engine.
It will be bitterly ironic if the Chinese commercialize the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, and succeed in securing extensive monopoly protection on foundational innovations. All of the crusades of the US in exporting our draconion IP law, and for what? We will have locked ourselves out of our own energy future, for the sake of media cartel profits. No one deserves to profit at the expense of the rest of humanity.
Patents should not exist at all. In a world with billions of people, someone else would have thought of that "novel" idea anyway, and chances are, already has. It is not right to deprive the countless people arriving at the same ideas from also benefitting from their employment. It is unheard of for people to mine patents for ideas; they are the exclusive domain of litigators, and nothing but a damper on progress.
Nor do they want one. GE and the others in the nuclear industry won't touch the MSR--they make their money from expensive fuel manufacturing contracts, not plants. There is no fuel manufacturing with an MSR, so it kills their business model.
Helium turbines are actually significantly smaller than steam turbines per unit power. Supercritical CO2 turbines are far smaller, though would need to be sited near water. From what I have read, the quantity of Helium required is just not significant enough to pose concerns on either cost or availability.
The LFTR coupled with an advanced gas turbine offers great potential cost reductions, due to the much smaller containment, reactors, and associated turbines. Initial plants should probably focus on proven steam turbines, but the potential is there, and realizing it is inevitable. This technology is simply not available to conventional low-temperature plants.
Well, the problem was not with the popular imagination, but the poor policy making. The US would be fully energy independent today, and nuclear would be a brilliant, thriving industry, if only it had proceeded in a different direction. Indeed, the entire world would be a very different place, with the proliferation of cheap, safe energy, and reduced friction over fossil fuel resources. Maybe not too cheap to meter, but energy cheaper than from coal is quite possible with Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors. So are synthetic fuels from nuclear heat cheaper than from oil. As an additional benefit over current reactors, water can be desalinated with the rejected heat. All of this, with unparalleled safety, while addressing all of the waste concerns of present reactors.
Instead of pursing the safer, cleaner, and immensely more efficient liquid thorium reactors. The government poured billions into funding the competing liquid metal fast breeder: a fundamentally inferior solid fueled design which requires an immensely greater amount of fissile material, as all fast reactors do. (Plutonium in this case). There are numerous other downsides, but it suffices to say that the molten salt reactor program was cancelled when Alvin Weinberg questioned the safety prospects of the prevailing light water reactors and the direction of the plutonium breeder program. (This is the very person who invented the prevailing reactor technology, so who is more qualified to make such judgements? Now that the politics have played out, and his fears have been realized, perhaps it is time to revisit the liquid thorium reactor.
Now we face energy scarcity, horrific pollution, and accelerating destruction of our environment on a global scale, not to mention the results of climate charge. Please take the time to increase awareness of this technology; it isn't merely some theoretical hope, they ran a reactor successfully for years. It was and still is a genuine solution to all of our energy ills, which requires nothing but the will to embrace it. Learn more at Energy From Thorium, and please take the time to contact your representatives.
That's just the thing--there is no "given bandwidth". The limit you refer to is relevant for a single channel over a wire, or a single transmitter. For the spectrum though, you are effectively allowed an infinite number of transmitters/receivers. By legislating exclusive use of nearly all frequencies, we are killing any potential growth in that direction.
Distinguishing the signals is very much the practical limiting factor, but the capacity is there, and technology will continue to improve. We have barely scratched the surface of what will become possible with phased array antennas. Based on typical usage, people assume that wireless is a shared medium, but it is not. It is fundamentally point to point. (Optical is easy; RF is much harder, and subject to antenna limitations. Sure, there are limitations, but the point holds.)
It wouldn't take a zillion dollars, but it would require a pervasive quality optical network for all of those tiny cells to attach to. We need that anyway though, and that suffers from much the same problem: the carriers are perfectly happy leaving the network to rot. We desperately need public ownership of the plant, and the resulting competition amongst ISPs. Likewise, we need public ownership of a sizable chunk of spectrum. Without that, there is nothing to drive innovation and improvement of the respective mediums--there will always be some corporation focused on protecting their monopoly position, not improving the network.
Photons don't interact with each other, and don't "fill up" anything. What is at issue, is our poor usage of the spectrum, and insistance on treating it like exclusive property. Any number of people can communicate on the very same frequencies, and in the very same space, just as long as there is a way to distinguish the communications. Fortunately, nature provides each device with a unique "address": its location in space. As technology improves, we can continue to make ever better use of the same spectrum--or at least we could if legislation didn't actively prevent it.
In essence, it comes down to building more towers, and I'm not aware of any unsurmountable barriers to a company with the will and cash. Of course, it is easier to just prop up the model of artificial scarcity with prices to match.
Rather than clinging to the outdated concept of a scarce spectrum, regulatory agencies should start giving it back to the public, and encourage the proper use of it. Highly dense, low-power, ultra wide-band communications. It is the natural evolution of wifi: per-home micro-cells attached to home fibre, running open Internet protocols. We could easily have extremely high-performance ubiquitous wireless networking, if massive corporations weren't so busy propping up artificial scarcity and walling everything off.
The obvious "home use" would be holography. The next use (at home) is inside of a holographic optical storage device. IIRC, this 1W green laser is the very component that is keeping these devices from the mass market.