For me it’s Open Source AGI not controlled by the enshittifying power of capital

  • gregorum@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    Well, that was mostly right— until we actually built one. Now we’ve built 3 fusion reactors. It’s no longer theoretical.

    Now comes the phase of overcoming certain limitations wrt scaling up the tech to make commercially-viable reactors, and estimating that at about another 15-20 years (considering the rapid advances of the last few years) isn’t unrealistic.

    Before it was a question of, “can we even do this?” We’re finally past that milestone. Now it just a matter of the very achievable goal of scaling up the reactors. The timeline for that is much more predictable.

    • davidgro@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Those scaling issues have always been the issues. We’ve had working reactors for over 65 years.

      “The first experiment to achieve controlled thermonuclear fusion was accomplished using Scylla at LANL in 1958.”

      And don’t think that the NIF ignition results are the kind of breakthrough that headlines make it out to be - that project is weapons research, and is not designed to produce power, nor is it anywhere close to doing so when the power to the lasers is measured and not just what the pellet absorbs.

      However, what’s new in the last few years is commercial investment in fusion, and I do think that it will make the difference that the last 65 years haven’t. Maybe even in the next 20 years™

        • davidgro@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          You’ve been taken in by intentionally deceptive headlines.
          The energy absorbed by the pellet (what they are measuring as the “input”) is something like 1/20th or worse of the energy used to power the lasers. The output is greater than that “input” by a little, but again, nowhere near the actual energy used, and it won’t ever be at that experiment because it’s not designed for it, it’s designed so we can simulate H-bombs without setting off real ones.

    • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      The next major goal is still overall energy-positive output, right? We’ve only breached the threshold of output > input naively, without considering any external energy costs. I hope we get there though, it would be very neat!