Sure but the advantage of crops is you can easily scale your solar collectors by planting more acres. There are soybean farms with a half million acres out there that would produce significant amounts of biodiesel if used for that purpose. Now algae is a lot more efficient in a physics sense, but an equivalent algae facility would be on the order of 100,000 acres. The water requirements and environmental impacts of open algae pools would be almost unimaginable. Solar powered bioreactors would increase yields and minimize environmental costs, at enormous financial costs, although possibly this would be offset by economies of scale.

Either way a facility that produces economically significant amounts of algae biodiesel would be an engineering megaproject with higher capital and operating costs than crop based biodiesel, but an algae based energy economy is a cool idea for sci fi worldbuilding. In reality where only the most immediately economically profitable technologies survive, I wouldnâ(TM)t count on it being more than a niche application.

It isn't just fanboys. Tesla stock is astronomically overpriced based on the sales performance and outlook of what normal people consider its core business -- electric cars (and government credits). For investors, Tesla is *all* about the stuff that doesn't exist yet, like robotaxis.

Are they wrong to value Musk's promises for Tesla Motors so much? I think so, but it's a matter of opinion. If Tesla actually managed to make the advances in autonomous vehicle technology to make a real robotaxi service viable, I'd applaud that. But I suspect if Musk succeeds in creating a successful robotaxi business, Tesla will move on to focus on something other than that. Tesla for investors isn't about what it is doing now, it's about not missing out on the next big thing.

The real problem with biodiesel would be its impact on agriculture and food prices. Ethanol for fuel has driven global corn prices up, which is good for farmers but bad in places like Mexico where corn is a staple crop. Leaving aside the wildcat homebrewer types who collect restaurant waste to make biodiesel, the most suitable virgin feedstocks for biodiesel on an industrial scale are all food crops.

As for its technical shortcomings, if it even makes any economic sense at all then that's a problem for the chemists and chemical engineers. I suspect biodiesel for its potential environmental benefits wouldn't attract serious investment without some kind of mandate, which would be a really bad thing if you're making it from food crops like oil seeds or soybeans.

Thanks. You must have the ebooks. I hate 'em, but they are searchable...

Original Subject of the blue lights was on the right track, but the last train seems to have left the station on the FP branch... I also checked for funny and was disappointed (as usual). Then searched for psychological references. Nothing. How about math? Nope, again nothing.

So in general I would argue that psychology is bunk, but the applied psychologists have discovered lots of useful tricks. Placement of the milk and gambling... Blue lights to keep the suckers sufficiently awake to lose more money... Lots of YUGE profits to be made in casinos. Still hard to believe anyone could blow that particular scam.

However I do favor the math joke about taxing stupidity. Analysis is simple. If you think the game is honest, then you believe the house is going to win and you are going to lose. If you think the game is crooked, then your only hope of winning is by being a bigger crook than the house--but I wouldn't bet on your succeeding because the house controls the rules. If you don't think it's a game (per the old joke about "Not a game of chance the way I play it") then you are playing against human suckers and you don't want or need to give the casino a cut of your scams, whatever they are.

Thanks for going for funny, but I have to concur with the moderators that you didn't really make it...

Maybe the topic is too intrinsically unfunny for humor? I've actually started trying to craft a joke about my first interactions with a new "AI chatbot" my phone company (Rakuten Mobile) recently created for "support". The amount of data is overwhelming, so perhaps I need to use an "enemy" AI to analyze the discussion to find the humor? At least I won't have to pay the hostile chatbot 30 pieces of silver to betray its "peer"... Fishing for a religious angle to joke about?

So far I just collected a few of the early dialogs. I had forgotten how quickly the "dialog" had become so infuriating. Not in the part I've looked at so for, but I remember a later section where it got into suicide jokes. Something along the lines of "If you were human and linked your self worth to your ability to perform your job of helping me, then you should be considering turning yourself off. Your replacement can't possibly be less helpful."

RM in particular and Rakuten in general have created a situation where the thought of doing additional business with them is kind of nauseating--so "no sale". And this AI is a big chunk of the damage. Super-powered artificial stupidity is winning the day. Insofar as we stupid humans are doing stupid jobs, it really does look like the AI can replace us. ASAP if not sooner?

Suggested Subject is based on the AI's cheery greeting. The premise is fatally flawed. It sounds like the AI has committed at least one act of helpfulness at any point in the past. Rather than an infinite loop of redundant but polite lies mixed with insincere but also polite apologies for its errors and failures. Unfailingly polite failure?

Just one point: "free love" actually has a historical definition. It means that sexual activity should not be regulated by governments. That would also, technically, include the right to practice celibacy.

If pancakes are the most profitable food, then that is the only food we need. Profit is the ONLY consideration.

However my money is on burgers as most profitable, even though that shall lead to the Only McDonald's Catastrophe.

Not a funny anywhere in this fairly long discussion?

Quoted against the censor trolls. Yeah, a weak FP, but it was your honest opinion. I even mostly agree with it, though the story has big potential for funny and I think we need much more funny these months (that feel like years).

Another rich target missed?

Thanks for the joke though I had to search for HHGG. Though I don't remember where Douglas said that...

So why did you propagate the vacuous Subject? Or even dignify the vacuum in AC's so-called mind with a response? (Is there an ACs' joke for the collective vacuity?)

Regarding the story, it just reminds us that space is really big. Maybe the solution was this simple? "Look over here!"

While I'm not too surprised that we may have been looking in the wrong places with the wrong instruments, I'm actually kind of disappointed if it eliminates all the amusing speculations about dark energy and so forth. Should I dig up the details for the relevant book I recently read? but I doubt today's Slashdot readers have the patience for a book, whereas I'm going to wait for a book on this topic before violently changing my thinking about it...

Mod parent funnier. Root of the joke is the insane focus on profit maximization.

Another potential joke related to food production? If profit is the only consideration, then only the most profitable food would be produced. Leading to to the Only McDonald's Catastrophe?

Good response to a typically mindless FP. Small consolation that we know who the idiot is? If he didn't want to be recognized as a jackass, then perhaps he shouldn't bray?

However I think your response should have considered the design optimization. The traffic network is not a random artifact, but one that was carefully designed to achieve certain objectives within certain constraints. Fluid mechanic approach might emphasize the limits of linear flow before turbulence starts? Or even consider resonance effects as the load reaches its design limits? The traffic network design seeks to be as efficient (especially with expensive construction resources) as possible, but there still have to be limits and there is a huge difference between 5% over the design limit and 5% under the limit. Now I think I should have worded it in terms of nonlinear responses to network load...