It's against the law for it to be in the wild. And the temperature range in which it can survive is quite narrow, it would probably die sometime this year if left alone.
Solar is nice and all - it's is cleaner than fossil fuels, but requires a bunch of inputs. Geothermal really needs to be pushed for more; after the initial investment, requires basically no inputs and has no toxic byproducts or disposal problems.
"The full technical potential of next-generation geothermal systems to generate electricity is second only to solar PV among renewable technologies and sufficient to meet global electricity demand 140-times over."
Inputs for solar? Do you mean the sun? That's a new complaint I've never heard anybody state.
But agreed, advanced geothermal is likely to have a ton of deployment. It's fun to follow all the startups making great progress right now. The big thing to watch will be the degradation in heat levels over 10-20 years; depletion of heat faster than the ability of the surround rock to conduct it is the biggest threat to the technology as a whole right now. But early pilots are showing no fall in output temperature so far, so that's great.
> Inputs for solar? Do you mean the sun? That's a new complaint I've never heard anybody state.
Well more precisely, the inputs for making the solar panels compared to the inputs for making geothermal plants. The best of solar last 30 years atm and the best of geothermal atm last 100+ years. Not to mention you don't need any rare imported minerals to make geothermal plants.
I do not believe anyone will be running 100 year old turbines in a geothermal plant. Those things have fairly serious lifetime maintenance requirements.
It depends on what you're doing. Steam turbines are absolutely full of exotic alloys. But I tend to agree that large-scale geothermal would be an important component of our all-of-the-above energy policy, which would profit from our existing expertise in punching holes in the ground.
> If humanity goes extinct in the next few years because of unaligned superintelligence,
I've seen people claiming that this could happen, but I've yet to read any plausible scenario where this might be the case. Maybe I lack the imagination, could you enlighten me?
That "etc" in "robots, factories, etc" is doing a lot of work here.
Factories, even fully robotic ones, heavily rely on humans to set up and maintain them. Moreover, the safety culture means there are tons of "disable" controls which can be triggered by any human and no machine can override.
Robots look impressive, but they cannot function without the humans either. Military kill-bots are likely the worst, but machines cannot repair or refuel them.
None of this is going to change in the "next few years".
Robots can't function without humans because they're not super-intelligent. We already see quite capable humanoid robots. Those factories that rely on humans - they'll be converted to be operated by humanoid robots. By the super intelligence.
That's the hand wavy story. It's hard to dive into details in an HN comment but I'm happy to try and develop some of those details. You're saying that something much smarter than humans isn't going to be able to bridge the gap to the physical world. I'm not so sure.
EDIT: Another way to think about it is that if a god-like infinitely capable being took control of all our online digital systems including I donno Teslas, factory automation, power grid, any form of connected robot in the world, nuclear weapons launch systems, airplanes, whatnot, do they have any path to a sustainable "existence" without relying on humans. Or at least with us unable to detect and stop that. If the answer is no then we're probably safe. It's kind of hard to convince ourselves of that. Keep in mind that humans can also be manipulated to do work for this god just like spies/saboteurs e.g. are recruited online today and paid bitcoin to do some random master's bidding.
> Another way to think about it is that if a god-like infinitely capable being took control of all our online digital systems including I donno Teslas, factory automation, power grid, any form of connected robot in the world, nuclear weapons launch systems, airplanes, whatnot, do they have any path to a sustainable "existence" without relying on humans
ha ha ha no. Teslas run of energy and cannot refuel, a circuit breaker in factory pops and no robot can reach it (or maybe a roof leaks), and "any forms of connected robot" _either_ cannot walk the stairs or can maybe run for a hundred miles before running out of battery.
The "humans can be manipulated" is the only thing to worry about, and you don't need robots for that, other humans have been trying hardest to do it just fine for millennia. I guess it's up to you if you want to be afraid or not, but I am not seeing anything super special so far.
I've yet to read any plausible scenario where stockfish defeats me, all the scenarios my friends come up with have obvious holes in the plays they suggest stockfish could make.
I love the aesthetic of the playdate, the educational outreach, and how easy the whole platform is. It’s just so well designed all around. But the only way I am able to play it is by casting the screen to my computer, the screen is so tiny. Otherwise, I love it.
“One sort of optional thing you might do is realize that there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are depressed so much of the time. I mean, spring doesn’t feel like spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for autumn, and so on. Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June. What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves? Next comes the season called Locking. November and December aren’t winter. They’re Locking. Next comes winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold! What comes next? Not spring. ‘Unlocking’ comes next. What else could cruel March and only slightly less cruel April be? March and April are not spring. They’re Unlocking.”
The non descriptive names are better because they can be consistent across different countries not depending climate
July in Croatian - Srpanj
August in Czech/Polish - Srpen/Sierpen
because for obvious reasons harvest time in Croatia is one month earlier than in Czechia
though your example for April in Polish makes no sense
April in Polish - Kwiecien
May in Czech - Kveten
I'm pretty sure flowers are blooming (it's not about flowers, but about blooming) in Czechia earlier than in Poland, so the names should be reversed
though even English/German/Slovak months are not without their issues, October should be eight, November ninth, December tenth based on their Latin names, this video makes fun about it, but honestly I seriously like the proposed system:
The French Republican calendar used a few years after the revolution was also in this spirit. However these names do not export well across the world, notably a problem when as a colonial power like France you export your language and customs.
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