The RBMK from 1980s Chernobyl is hardly a "modern" reactor. That's from ancient history. Even the RBMK reactors that were operating in the 1990s are hardly like those operating in the 1980s, after the Chernobyl incident the remaining RBMK reactors were decommissioned or updated with new safety systems.

Does anyone claim that a Tesla car could explode because of reports of exploding Fords and Chevys from decades ago? Does anyone claim that an electric car can't go more than 80 miles on a charge because that's all the GM EV1 could do? While I know someone will want to point this out as yet another bad car analogy but given the huge gains in safety, efficiency, and more in cars in only 30 years, and compare that to gains in nuclear power technology over the same time there's many parallels.

It's mind boggling that you believe a 40 year old meltdown in the USSR is somehow relevant to nuclear power safety in the USA today.

Who is listening to this BS any more? What makes anyone believe that the meltdown at Chernobyl is any kind of argument against building next generation nuclear power today?

I'm seeing huge shifts in the public attitude on nuclear fission power in the last decade or so, with perhaps the most notable shift around about 2020 when Andrew Yang was advocating for new nuclear power plants during his campaign for POTUS in 2019/2020. Yang obviously didn't win the election but he did force Democrats running against him to comment on the issue. Those outright opposed to nuclear power dropped out first. Those that supported nuclear power hung on a bit longer. The last to hold out were those that offered stupid "split the baby" options like keeping old nuclear power plants running but not building any new plants.

It's thinking like that that created the fear of nuclear power from Fukushima. TEPCO had new reactor units 7 & 8 planned at Fukushima to replace the older units 1, 2, & 3, the units that self destructed after being hit with a tsunami. Had those units been closed as originally scheduled, and units 4, 5, & 6 been in a maintenance shutdown as they were at the time of the earthquake and tsunami, then we could have expected units 7 & 8 to keep operating through the event as they were designed to hold up to such an event. People opposed to nuclear power like @phantomfive are creating the safety problems in nuclear power that scare them so much.

We aren't going to close down nuclear power in the USA any time soon because it produces nearly 20%, or about 100 GW, of the electricity in the USA and there's no quick and easy path to replacing that. KEPCO built about 5.5 GW of new nuclear power capacity in UAE over about 12 years, not including the planning time before that. What would it take for renewable energy construction companie to produce similar amounts of electrical output in the same time period?

What's your plan for generating electricity, or energy more generally, for the future? More of the same with wind and solar? I see more nuclear fission power in our future, or more energy shortages and the rising energy costs that come with those shortages.

That's not relevant unless the pollution and other problems of other options are also considered. Someone could give some kind of volume, mass, or cost for mitigation on the waste and pollution produced from nuclear power but that would be meaningless. We'd have to consider how much of this downside is produced when compared to upside (such as the watt-hours or dollar value of energy produced) then compare that to other options like solar, wind, hydro, or simply doing without this energy.

Most any thing can "potentially" happen. What we have now is over 50 years of experience with 2nd generation nuclear power, something like 30 years of experience with 3rd generation nuclear power, which means we can apply that experience to produce 4th generation and "3-1/2" generation nuclear power for even greater safety, efficiency, and reduced costs.

I watched some YouTube videos in the last week that laid out how new rules from the US NRC should reduce costs of future nuclear power beyond just that achieved with new technology, this is because a large part of nuclear power costs are from regulation than that from materials and labor. Current rules on nuclear safety are from a time when there were very high standards on safety because the real risks of nuclear power were not understood as well as they are now. We benefit from this somewhat today because the over engineered reactors built at the time can now be expected to run for 80, 100, or possibly more years with exceptional safety margins remaining. Spreading out the cost of construction over this amount of time means we are likely to enjoy very low energy costs in the future, we need only use the new proposed rules based on evidence and science than the old rules based on speculation and superstition.

It's been clear to me for some time that the majority of people that frequent Slashdot are deeply opposed to new nuclear power. They maintain this opposition by believing that future nuclear power will be something like Chernobyl, Fukushima, or Three Mile Island. While most people will claim that the RBMK reactors at Chernobyl wee 2nd generation I could make an argument that it was instead a late 1st generation plant. Chernobyl lacked the containment dome that is nearly the definition of 2nd generation. The RBMK, as designed at the time, was a "dual use" reactor built with the intent for producing weapon grade plutonium than produce power, and such dual use ability was a defining feature of 1st generation reactors. The failed reactors at TMI and Fukushima were 2nd generation reactors built at about the same time as the RBMK at Chernobyl and so lacked so many safety features that would have come later on, such as a number of passive systems that when combined would make what we consider 3rd generation. Nobody has built a 2nd generation nuclear power plant for some time. We've yet to see a 3rd generation power plant produce anything close to the kind of safety issues that 2nd generation has produced. Anything new would be built to the higher safety standards of 3-1/2 or 4th generation nuclear power.

No currently operating civilian nuclear power reactor is capable of a "China Syndrome" as posed in popular culture, or a rapid steam explosion as seen in the RBMK. Nobody would dare build such a reactor today since no such design would be licensed, or if somehow some people could build a reactor without some kind of government oversight they'd not be built simply because that puts the reactor at risk of self destruction when well documented designs that avoid these risks can be built with no real added costs in construction. We know how to build better reactors now, fears of repeats of events from 40 years ago are unfounded. Fear of nuclear power today would be like fear of buying a new Tesla car because of reports of gasoline explosions from Ford cars and Chevy trucks from decades ago. Because of new technology, and a better understanding of radiation safety, we need new rules. It appears we are finally getting new rules, and from that I expect lower costs and higher safety. It's not like nuclear power was "unsafe" before, it is merely that we better understand the risks and so can provide higher safety with lower costs because we are putting our money and efforts into places where it counts than waste it on places where it does not.

Translation: We're one of the leaders, let us keep our lead.

Even if they are serious, it's just not going to happen. The genie is out of the bottle - many groups are working on AI, and all of them want to improve their models faster than the competition. it's a bit late to get cold feet...

The only winning move (for either side) is the same as it was years ago: sincere diplomacy that works toward a permanent peace. The alternative is (essentially) a war of attrition, unless NATO is going to send a million troops to the front along with huge amounts of firepower, and if NATO was going to do that, it would have happened years ago. I suppose there is another alternative that is "unthinkable", but it's definitely there... *sigh*

After WW1, the big military powers thought they had learned their lessons - and they had. They went into WWII prepared to win WWI. After WWII, the bin military powers learned their lessons, and went into...various places, ready to win WWII all over again.

The big military powers are now discovering that they are once again prepared to re-fight the last war. Ukraine - out of sheer necessity - has developed new doctrines. Worldwide, the general staffs are left holding their multi-billion dollar assets that have suddenly become near worthless in this new kind of war. Using something like a Patriot to shoot down a suicide drone that cost 0.1% as much? Wars are ultimately decided by logistics, and that is how you lose a war.

There is a moral dilemma, though. Russia is...not a nice country. Their attack on Ukraine was not only unjust, it was also in direct violation of previous guarantees made to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine is deservedly known as the most corrupt country in Europe. Just as an example: where has all the money from the EU and other countries gone? Supposedly, all currently pending orders for new superyachts are for owners in the Ukraine. Maybe both countries can lose?

I have a student who is writing a paper about exactly this topic. Almost any large project nowadays uses dozens of external libraries, which in turn use dozens or hundreds more. This creates a huge, almost unknowable dependency tree. Any of those libraries may be updated at any time, and be pulled into a new release of your software. Any of those libraries may contain a security flaw that could be discovered and exploited. Any of those libraries may be deliberately compromised - and how would you know?

As a current example, consider the recently discovered flaw in Starlette, which the developer claims is downloaded 325 million times per week. Never heard of Starlette? That's because it is a fundamental building block buried deep in that dependency tree. Despite the title of the article, this flaw affects far more that just AI apps.

IMHO, the best solution - if you can afford it - is to write as much of your own code as you can. Sure, you may also have security flaws, but you are a far smaller and less interesting target. If there is a better solution, I don't know what it is...

The US government can compel any US company to release data that it holds, even if that data is stored outside the US. Pretending that any US company can comply with the GDPR is a fantasy.

This might, might be acceptable, if one could trust the US government. At latest after the Snowdon revelations, we all know that you cannot.

What is it with the addiction our governments have to mass surveillance? Were the police unable to do their jobs before the Internet? When correspondence was by physical mail instead of Email? When they had to get warrants before invading a person's privacy?

""These are speed holes. They make the car go faster."

That's an excellent write-up by curl. It shows that the entire reporting system needs revised, in the age of AI reports. Automatically assigned the highest scores to vague reports can no longer be justified.

This seems slow. Current radio technology exceeds that by 1 to 2 orders of magnitude. Plus, lasers tend to have problems with cloud cover.

What am I missing?

But they do. Congresspeople from both parties who sit in closed door committees regularly engage in trading in the very industries they're (ostensibly) regulating. They've publicly admitted as much, and have said "So what, big deal. We have the right to make investments." So the issue isn't *catching* them, it's completely changing the system so that they can't do it as a "matter of course" with total impunity, and (I'm not holding my breath) holding the POTUS and other high-level officials to that same standard when it comes to trading immediately before/after geopolitical/military maneuvers.

If they then want to play games with blind trusts and sharing inside information with the people in charge of those trusts, they're free to commit crimes, like anyone else, if they think they're worth the risk, but if the SEC and other bodies actually had any power (or at least willingness) to hold them accountable, I'd imagine they'd at least think twice. I think most of them probably don't even see what they're doing as criminal. In their minds, they're just using their privileged positions to "strategic advantage". In a much less insane world, such actions would be *easily* traceable and would, at worst, result in public disgrace for those involved, and at best, doing hard time.

I realize that this may (at this point at least) be a pipe dream, since the whole bloody thing is stacked in favor of the people making the rules. It's always been that way, but nowadays it's approaching totality.

AI claims that you can still buy AZW books and read them on one of these old Kindles. The claim is that if you buy from your PC account for the old Kindle it will be supplied as AZW, which will be readable on the device after transfer to it from the PC by USB.

The claim is that what has changed is that you can no longer buy directly from the Kindle, because purchases are now KFX only. But that you can still buy books for it over the web using your PC and they will be supplied as AZW.

If this is really true, the change is not only not a bad thing, its positively a good thing, because the account details on the old Kindles were stored very insecurely so it was a real security hazard wandering around with this very stealable device with all your Amazon credentials stored in open format.

Is it true? It was true before the latest change, but is it still?

Paying ransom ought to be criminal. Moreover, they have zero guarantee that the data is really gone, no copies anywhere.

The problem with this kind of trial is that it's all about personal motivation, and personal memories. Insight into motivations is difficult at the best of times, and there is little way to prove them.

Memory is worse. Human memory is fallible. Especially in cases of conflict, we unconsciously edit our memories to cast ourselves in the best light, and our adversaries in the worst light. As a personal example: We have a couple next to us who are a$$hole neighbors, who have (imho) deliberately sought conflict with us multiple times. At one point, i went back to the correspondence we had on one issue and...it was very different than what I had "remembered". They were still jerks, but my memories had morphed to make things far more black-and-white than they actually were.

So Musk saying what Altman wanted, and Altman saying what Musk wanted - you can believe as much of it as you want, but likely very little of it is accurate. Remember that there are three sides to every story: What person A remembers, what person B remembers, and what actually happened.