gerikson
Nuclear has been a running sore in Swedish politics since the late 70s. Opposition to it represented the reaction to the classic employer-employee class detente in place since the 1930s where both the dominant Social Democrats and the opposition on the right were broadly in agreement that economic growth == good, and nuclear was a part of that. There was a referendum in the early 80s where the alternatives were classical Swedish: Yes, No, and "No, but we wait a few years".
Decades have passed, and now being pro-nuclear is very right-coded, and while secretly the current Social Democrats are probably happy that we're supposed to get more electrical power, there's political hay to make opposing the racist shitheads. Add to that that financing this shit actually would mean more expensive electricity I doubt it will remain popular.
Here's a blog post I found via HN:
Physics Grifters: Eric Weinstein, Sabine Hossenfelder, and a Crisis of Credibility
Author works on ML for DeepMind but doesn't seem to be an out and out promptfondler.
So state-owned power company Vattenfall here in Sweden are gonna investigate building "small modular reactors" as a response to government's planned buildout of nuclear.
Either Rolls-Royce or GE Vernova are in the running.
Note that this is entirely dependent on the government guaranteeing a certain level of revenue ("risk sharing"), and of course that that level survives an eventual new government.
Deep cut, I love it!
TIL some rats have started a literal monastery to try to defeat the robot god with good ole religion (well, Zen buddhism)
here's a mildly critical view that apparently still believes the approach has legs
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ENCNHyNEgvz9oo9rr/briefly-on-maple-and-the-broader-community
I note in passing that there seems to be a mild upsurge in religious-friendly posts on LW lately.
Michael Hiltzik in LATimes: "Say farewell to the AI bubble, and get ready for the crash"
Fun quote:
The rest of [AI 2027], mapping a course to late 2027 when an AI agent “finally understands its own cognition,” is so loopily over the top that I wondered whether it wasn’t meant as a parody of excessive AI hype. I asked its creators if that was so, but haven’t received a reply.
He seems to state that after the abolition of slavery, less of the profits from a unit time of labor accrued to the owners of the land in question. The reasons for this is of course a mystery.
Granted, I played a bit fast and loose with the term ancient. "Long-running" is better.
This is in the running for most LW comment ever.
Someone mispelled "painfully triangulated center" as "left".
Even if quantum computing isn't snake oil, I have a hard time seeing how pushing it can be as large a market as social media. Web3/NFTs and LLMs are riding on that particular bizmodel coattail. Investors can see "oh yeah 200M monthly subscribers for ChatGPT" and map that to FB and come up with numbers that translate to VC money. I fail to see how quantum fits into that