I think there is great value in having the military interface with the general public. Especially in an all voluntary military situation. It's an opportunity for the public to see how servicemen/women are living, the sacrifices they are making compared to the civilians, and how tax dollars are being spent. I am fortunate that annually the Navy comes to town and offers tours of the vessels they've docked. It super interesting to see the level of sophistication / lack of sophistication on these ships. The morale and conduct of the enlisted and officers. It's just a weekend but provides excellent insight, to my a civie. You also tend to get a little of the 'real' from jokes and side comments the service people present.

I also am a super-fan of air shows, displaying the speed, precision, and sheer power directed to making that 20k kg aircraft burn through the sky. It's the kid in me, but that's awesome. Likewise with a slow, and low flyby of the bigger planes. Helos the whole deal.

BUT what Heggie and the like are pursuing is much more related to the desire of a-holes like Putin, Xi, Kim Jong Un, Gaddafi, and other dear leader types. I feel certain if they could swing it, they would put on one of those military parades with the pointy missiles on trucks and scores of troops with heavy boots walking in lock-step. No. Not in the United States of America please and thank you. More, planned, organized interactive events between military...less show of power nonsense. RPMs of founding fathers within sarcophagi increasing with every passing day

More like 99.99%. Maybe need some more nines in there. Large C codebases without regular critical CVEs are basically nonexistent.

What bankruptcy-prevention actions are they asking for?

15-25 kWh drawn by the utility is quite a bit! I hope they're paying him well for that.

They're bringing outside scrutiny into their processes; that's going to slow them down, too.

Not "at the same time". You're conflating what AI can do now with what it will likely be able to do in a year or five, or 20.

Amodei and others are worried about what AI that doesn't yet exist may do, not about what current-generation AI can do. AI is getting better, very quickly, and unless there's some blocking obstacle that no one has been able to identify will at some point become far, far smarter than humans, individually or collectively. So before that happens, we need to figure out how to make sure that superintelligent AI wants to help us, and wants to do it in the right way.

A solid 25% of my electricity bill goes to wildfire costs and that's up from 13% in 2023. Keep in mind that this is 'revenue requirement' money which means the cost also includes "and includes an opportunity for the utility to earn a fair return on its investments." That fair return was apparently helpful in buying Xavier Becerra the governorship

My question is why aren't these costs amortized over 20, 30, 50 years since the benefits of such measures presumably will endure over that period of time? Or put another way, why should rate payers in 2023-2033 bear the entire cost?

Also insurance situation in California is badly . The top job, Insurance Commissioner is a port of call for legislators who have termed out. And bad ones at that. They skew the insurance rates, not accurately reflecting the risks nor costs. It's a veritable giveaway with a typical CA politician thought that these costly benefits will come for free. Nope. Homeowner insurance rates are rising through the roof, if you are lucky and not having your policy cancelled.

Keeping watch over this mess for the past 8 years? This guy:

Ricardo Lara - Straight from college to being a staffer in the statehouse. Then elected to State Assembly (2010–2012) and State Senate (2012–2018) before becoming Insurance Commissioner.

Wikipedia: "After the election, Lara faced significant criticism in which he admitted to receiving donations from the insurance industry he regulates despite pledging not to do so during his campaign.[23][24][25][26][27]

Since assuming office in 2019, Lara has missed nearly all key Senate Insurance Committee hearings, few of which were held each year, often due to international and cross-country travel. Public records revealed at least 46 such trips, including a minimum of 11 taxpayer-funded international excursions to destinations like Bogotá, Paris, Bermuda, Toronto, and the United Kingdom. In many cases, the Department of Insurance has been unable to provide clear documentation of the business purpose of these trips."

W T A F

Is this actually a substantial amount of energy? I'm in Utah (Rocky Mountain Power) and RMP also pays me to use my batteries... but the amount of energy they draw is tiny. 8-10 times per week they draw on my batteries, but it's like 4 kW peak draw (my batteries can sustain 20 kW), and generally for less than 30 seconds, so in any given week I'm only contributing like 0.2 kWh. As I understand it, this is because RMP uses my batteries not really to "serve loads", per se, but just as grid stabilization; brief backfill to keep the voltage from sagging.

Obviously my batteries do serve *my* loads, which reduces the load on the grid, but that's not what RMP pays me for.

Does CA make heavier use of residential batteries to feed the grid?

I got this link from a Slashdot poster years ago and have been fascinated with it ever since.

https://www.gridstatus.io/live...

California is CAISO as noted by parent post. There are frequently days where the sun is shining but temps are not too high or for wind where it is windy, but again temps not so high. In both cases there is a certain amount of electricity that simply cannot be added to the grid because there is no demand. The operators basically turn those off** and that is called curtailment. There can be 1, 9, higher GWh of electricity that could be generated but is not. There is still lotsa battery room to grow to capture this. Indeed we are still in an era of negative (wholesale) electricity pricing for parts of the day until storage meets that curtailment load.

Also, also some consumer + business demand balancing like avoiding running the dryer between 4-9p; figuring out when to charge your elec vehicle etc.

tldr; it's coming along. I can legit see that carbon-ish neutral generating coming soon. If only [expletive] PG&E didn't rob us *** on the transmission and delivery costs we could ..we should have lower elec prices. Instead our retail prices are highest in the nation.

**That's also why some wind turbines aren't turning on windy days. They're not broken, just told not to produce so they feather the props
*** Complicit with the corrupt and inept political apparatchiks.

Link to the CAISO data above as well as all the other independent system operators (ISO) around the country. I got this link from a Slashdot poster years ago and have been fascinated with it ever since.

https://www.gridstatus.io/live...

California is CAISO as noted by parent post.

As I write this late morning PDT, that's 73% renewables. Add on another 7% nuclear and that's 80% elec from not burning dead dinos. Nat gas is 8%, imports from other states is 6% (have to assume those imports are nat gas)

Solar 67%
Wind 2%
Geothermal 2%
Hydro 2%

And JD Vance called him Hitler. Trump accepts changes of heart as long as they include sufficient groveling and self-humiliation. SBF's problem is he doesn't currently have any money, and doesn't have a lot of friends to put up cash for him either. If SCOTUS will overturn his fine on a technicality and he can get some or all of that money back, then he'll have the cash to buy a pardon. Obviously he needs to get it done in the next 2 years, four months.

The Waymo's , Zoox, and now Telsa Cybertaxis are a real thing in my city. They drive everywhere a human can and are everywhere. There are dozens on any road I drive. And I'm talking congested weird urban streets with hills, twisty roads...delivery trucks double parked, cyclists weaving, everything. And yeah they self park just fine.
Self driving taxis is a done deal. Proof of concept is complete. Now they are just working on reducing the costs of the vehicles and sensor + and gpu hardware. And dealing with the various city agencies that (rightfully) want to slow the roll to protect jobs. And if you pull up YouTube you can see that China has no such compunction and they basically caught up in a few years time...no doubt by "borrowing" the tech Waymo, Zoox, etc developed and honed.

The fact that you're unwilling to pay the incredibly low price of attaching even a pseudonym to your statement speaks volumes. Not even by mentioning it in your AC post.

While letting Russia sell it's oil at nearly twice the price.

Fortunately the Ukrainians have long range sanctions with real teeth