no one’s certain this will be cost-effective either

One of the great sins of nuclear energy programs implemented during the 50s, 60s, and 70s was that it was too cost effective. Very difficult to turn a profit on electricity when you’re practically giving it away. Nuclear energy functions great as a kind-of loss-leader, a spur to your economy in the form of ultra-low-cost utilities that can incentivize high-energy consumption activities (like steel manufacturing and bulk shipping and commercial grade city-wide climate control). But its miserable as a profit center, because you can’t easily regulate the rate of power generation to gouge the market during periods of relatively high demand. Nuclear has enormous up-front costs and a long payoff window. It can take over a decade to break even on operation, assuming you’re operating at market rates.

By contrast, natural gas generators are perfect for profit-maximzing. Turning the electric generation on or off is not much more difficult than operating a gas stove. You can form a cartel with your friends, then wait for electric price-demand to peak, and command thousands of dollars a MWh to fill the sudden acute need for electricity. Natural gas plants can pay for themselves in a matter of months, under ideal conditions.

So I wouldn’t say the problem is that we don’t know their cost-efficiency. I’d say the problem is that we do know. And for consumer electricity, nuclear doesn’t make investment sense. But for internally consumed electricity on the scale of industrial data centers, it is exactly what a profit-motivated power consumer wants.

So seven “small” reactors over the next eleven years ……

Is more than we’ve built in the last 40. And, assuming energy demands continue to accelerate, I doubt they’ll be the last seven reactors these companies construct.

I don’t think they’re even building many.

You might want to read the article.

Generally speaking renewables + storage are the cheapest way of generating non-polluting power.

At variable scale, based on time of year and weather. Nuclear is much better for base-load, particularly at the scale of GWs. You know exactly how much electricity you’re going to get 24/7, and the fuel costs aren’t exposed to a market that can vary by 150-300% annually.

Crazy how quickly we’ve gone from “Nuclear is a dead technology, it can’t work and its simply too expensive to build more of. Y’all have to use fossil fuels instead” to “We’re building nuclear plants as quickly as our contractors can draft them, but only for doing experiments in high end algorithmic brute-forcing”.

Would be nice if some of that dirt-cheap, low-emission, industrial capacity electricity was available for the rest of us.

I don’t think Iran will need to wait that long. This looks like the US/Israel are planning a joint operation counterattack on Iranian facilities. Which will trigger a retaliation in turn as Iran escalates in kind. Etc, etc.

The big difference now is that the US military will officially be getting its hands dirty in the region, much like we did in Desert Shield / Storm and in Libya. Very possible that the ghost of John McCain finally gets its long-sought-after bomb bomb Iran.

How big are your packets at that point? Seems like you’re steadily clogging up your web traffic and setting yourself up for disruption vulnerability down the line if your only response is to inflate the size of every message.

It’s not enough to simply have your data be secure. You need it to be reliable. And larger packets require more bandwidth which means more robust hardware and more reliable transmission equipment. Also cuts into the viability of stealthy communications if you know the minimum transmission size of your adversary.

You know the FBI is supposed to be PREVENTING fraud, right?

And they’ve been doing a helluva job.

nearly unlimited spending

The great thing about currency is that it can change hands an infinite number of times and function the same as it did on day one.

Just keep moving around fake money

Laughing at my credit card company

How can I owe you dollars when they’re all worthless?! Idiots!

For every teenage boy you catch looking at porn, there are a hundred you missed.

there are only a few cryptocurrencies I would call worthy of note or respect.

The difference between a theist and an atheist is believing in one fewer God.

I just like calling it “the kill shot”, as though GOG is about to take all of Steam’s market share some time next week.

Even if they got someone to pay the subscription the entire time, that’s like 5% of the value of the car, spread over a length of time that makes it almost worthless.

It’s a revenue stream you can collect after the vehicle is sold. Continuous cash flow means long term revenue stability for the business.

And its the introduction of a model that can scale. Once you’ve got someone’s account information, you can sell them more shit (or just sell their data to advertisers). This is just the tip of the spear. Tesla, BMW, and Mercedes are all experimenting with Vehicle as a Service product models.

Investors love the possibility of revenue growth, and these programs promise the possibility of high margin after market sales for the life of the vehicle.

harmful to the brand image and customer loyalty

Not when everyone is doing it

I’m forever fated to receive unsolicited junk mail for this feature that I have to unceremoniously dump in the recycling bin every couple weeks.

Imagining a future in which I have to tell my YouTube integrated car company that I don’t want to sign up for their music service every time I start my car.

Nobody likes these

Shareholders love them

The soundtrack for this game is incredible.

Sunny Beach has such a good energy

A big part of the “Cheney family endorses Harris” push has been corporate flacks racking up favors with the Dem side of the aisle so Harris can replace her cabinet with people who are more business-friendly in the next term.

They’re playing both sides. This isn’t just “Trump Wins: Things Get Worse” / “Harris Wins: Things Stay The Same Amount of Bad”.

Considering

Investigating

Discussing

Will put forward a possibility of

Listen, its this government or we go with the GOP version where its just the MOVE bombing every couple of weeks, while the DOJ issues briefs about busting open a child’s testicles to get information out of his father.

Do Nothing or Do Something Awful. Those are your choices.

Why do people buy stuff from a creepy company like that?

Because its the biggest and most visible one that everyone uses. And because so many Amazon shoppers are Prime Members anyway, as the cost of not being a Prime Member makes it functionally a requirement.

Couldn’t you just stop by at the local whatever shop on your way home?

How much would I pay not to spend an extra 30-60min fighting traffic and waiting in long lines? In that sense, Prime is a steal.

Dueling sanctions.