The article argues that AI replaces the workflow that the SAAS implemented with customizable workflows. That is certainly the case for certain types of ad hoc workflows, but isn’t a big part of the value proposition of software based workflows precisely that they’re not ad hoc? A consistent software workflow that replaces errorprone manual work? That harmonizes across departments? AI might help in creating the software that formalizes workflows, but I don’t think it should replace most of them directly.
The experiments that lead to the invention of quantum theory are relatively simple and involve objects you can touch with your bare hands without damaging them. Some are done in high school, eg the photoelectric effect.
Whereas I did hedge my point regarding macroscopic quantum phenomena, I think that the quantum nature of the photoelectric effect would have been harder to discern without modern access to pure wavelength lighting. But you could still rely on precise optics to purify mixed light I suppose. But without even optics it should be even harder.
All the 19th century experiments that desired monochromatic light, including those that have characterized the photoelectric effect, used dispersive prisms, which separated the light from the Sun or from a candle into its monochromatic components. These are simple components, easily available.
This allowed experiments where the frequency of light was varied continuously, by rotating the prism.
Moreover, already during the first half of the 19th century, it became known that using gas-discharge lamps with various gases or by heating certain substances in a flame you can obtain monochromatic light corresponding to certain spectral lines specific to each substance. This allowed experiments where the wavelength of the light used in them was known with high accuracy.
Already in 1827, Jacques Babinet proposed the replacement of the platinum meter standard with the wavelength of some spectral line, as the base for the unit of length. This proposal has been developed and refined later by Maxwell, in 1870, who proposed to use both the wavelength and the period of some spectral line for the units of length and time. The proposal of Babinet has been adopted in SI in 1960, 133 years later, while the proposal of Maxwell has been adopted in SI in 1983, 113 years later.
So there were no serious difficulties in the 19th century for using monochromatic light. The most important difficulty was that their sources of monochromatic light had very low intensities, in comparison with the lasers that are available today. The low intensity problem was aggravated when coherent light was needed, as that could be obtained only by splitting the already weak light beam that was available. Lasers also provide coherent light, not only light with high intensity, thus they greatly simplify experiments.
I care less about poor people in poor countries in far away lands, and far away times, than I do my fellow citizens in my relatively wealthy country.
And my fellow citizens, especially the low income folk, are affected everyday by high energy costs. High energy costs result in higher costs of everything.
Whereas the effects of climate change, to the extent that they’re distinguishable from extreme weather events at all, are largely tolerated by even the poorest here in Australia.
High energy costs makes extreme weather events less tolerable.
It is good then that renewable energy is cheap. There are a million things countries can do to help poor people. Burning fossil fuels is very far down the list.
There is what? Approximately nowhere with high renewables penetration and cheap retail energy prices.
Australia has so much coal and gas we could have electricity plans similar to data plans: all you can reasonably consume for $80 a month, and it would still make approximately zero difference to global anthropogenic carbon emissions.
We’re plenty happy for everyone else to burn our LNG and coal. Our LNG is cheap the Japanese even resell it a profit.[1]
Instead, we have high renewables penetration and electricity prices that have increased at a rate three times higher than general inflation.
Do you accept that wholesale electricity prices in Australia can be wildly disconnected from residential retail prices?
Do you accept I am an Australian resident retail customer telling you I am not seeing any change in my $/kWh price, nor any offers from my any providers offering lower prices and higher solar input price than the plan I’m on now.
It doesn’t matter if wholesale prices are zero unless energy retailers are willing to compete to drive prices lower.
And they’re not. It’s a regulated market here in Australia.
Energy retailers in Australia are literally just a billing interface and a poor excuse for a call centre.
They’re not really adding value in the same way a farm & associated agribusiness > harvest > global storage and distribution > mill > commercial scale bakery > distribution > retail outlet does.
This reminds me of an amusing comment I read or heard the other day: eggs are now more expensive than chickens. Somethings not right there. And it’s mostly higher costs of energy, and extremely stupid egg production regulations.
> The cost of coal and gas to the Australian market could effectively be covered by royalties collected from exporters of same.
Or you could do the same with Solar and have more money left over. Having a subsidy rarely works out well, but subsidizing an inefficient system is making two different mistakes.
No residential retail customer in my country qualifies for any high-usage discount, as far as I’m aware.
Only big industrial users do, and even the largest industrial users I’ve worked for, or adjacent to, in my state don’t come close to amount of electricity used by the aluminium smelter.
Yes, because solar is now the most cost-effective form of energy generation. That’s why grid-scale solar is being deployed on a massive scale world wide.
Yep. Traditionalists hate renewables and facts. Here in Texas, there's been an absolute boom in solar post snowpocalypse. I'd gladly vote for shifting corn and soy subsidies to renewables, especially as grants for 1-300 MW solar/wind facilities for municipal co-operatives. And for solid state and sodium municipal and infrastructure energy backup and v2g.
And, I think we should heavily tax data centers federally because they're electricity, water, and land extractive and sound pollution vampires hostile to communities they invade (often to the chagrin of locals because of NDA backroom deals with corrupt politicians).. they're tantamount to giant petrochem facilities in "sacrifice zones". The rich people can cry about leaving, as did FDR's friends did, but it's always an empty threat.
I'm not convinced the data center numbers, especially water, are meaningful compared to absurdly wasteful agriculture like the corn for ethanol mentioned here, almonds in California, and cattle.
Let alone the likes of Nestlé's water stealing and golf courses in hot, dry climates.
Happy to be proven wrong by someone who has the numbers. For now like what this comment section is about with "the space needed for solar is nothing compared to what we're already doing", it seems like the water needed for data centers is nothing compared to how much we're already throwing away.
I did a napkin calculation once for building wind turbines next to a city with a construction and a maintenance tax. A big initial bill (lone) and a sizable ration per citizen. In stead of a power bill you pay installments. When you sell the house the next owner will also have to pay for it.
Thinking about it now, i have one more stupid idea, people have no faith in government, perhaps it is possible to contract a private insurance company. They can get paid to keep an eye on our bureaucrats. Make it a contract with teeth.
Except transporting it over the grid usually doesn't make sense, and is neither easy nor simple nor cheap. So solar only really makes sense if you have a use for it nearby or even onsite. So for companies/factories/datacenters/... absolutely. To keep cities powered? Less so.
You just need ultra high voltage transition lines and a grid that can real-time redistribute load + generation.
Ultra high voltage towers are all over Texas. If they can make them work there (with the extreme heat, tornados and absurdly long distances involved in that state), they can work most places.
Companies want to shut down coal plants despite subsidies but are being forced to keep them running. The government forcing private businesses to keep running in a certain way, doesn't get more state-directed than that, straight out of communism.
It's really China with none of the upsides and all of the downsides.
Having prompts be information deficient is the whole point of LLMs. The only complete description of a typical programming problem is the final code or an equivalent formal specification.
