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Yup, made me think about Altered Carbon "stacks" too. Stacks in the world of Altered Carbon are effectively bio-mechanical hard drives that store a real time updating copy of your consciousness. If you "die" you can always be put in a new body as long as the Stack is in tact. Effectively creating near, perceived immortality. Life expectancy in this world is hundreds of years rather than 60-80. Technically your organic brain still ceases if you die or are killed. No consciousness transfer is happening here, but to any other person "you" still carries on because all memories and feelings up till the moment of death are preserved in the Stack.

In typical dystopian fashion, the world is depicted as being horrifically capitalist with no social safety nets or help for the less fortunate. New bodies to have your Stack put into become products and what kind of body your Stack may get put into depends on your wealth and class. The poor get put into unwanted, ailment afflicted, elderly, disabled, etc, bodies. While the rich can afford the best bodies that are more geared toward youth and physical strength/prowess, and the uber wealthy can afford to clone and print their own bodies.

Any life extending or life re-starting tech will always go this way long as our society is how it is. So it's kind of tough to be excited about or be hopeful about it (which sucks because as a lover of sci-fi, i love this stuff as concepts in a vacuum).

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Im betting trash cans. I can't see anyone playing Crysis 13 on a wormhole computer.

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Why not both? Store the farts, use them later as fuel. Incredible efficiency.

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For trying to steal their anal probe work.

Is this similar idea to the Transcension Hypothesis?

There is a paper written by John M Smart close to this, where the ultimate form of an advanced civilization is to get smaller and smaller allowing for instantaneous computing power. Being near black holes, or that the civilization itself is the blackhole.

It’s a good read.

Yeah it’s a start, Sacramento is getting 2GWh worth of them. But data from this is going to be important projects.

Wait till someone has an actual 1 year lab setup returning verifyable results. Energy breaking news is full of scams.

Something vaguely similar happens in the 1976 novel A World Out of Time.

A wealthy guy with cancer pays for cryo. When they thaw him out centuries later, it's because they are looking for indentured servants to work as space-truckers: if he refuses, they'll kill him and try their luck with the next popsicle.

He agrees and is promptly subjected to some intense and uncomfortable training and conditioning for his new "job."

You don’t understand politics. America has enough oil reserves to power the country for a very long time. Do you think America would not be bothered if OPAC cut them off from oil?

I’m really hoping the batteries work out. Although 75 kWh isn’t very large - I guess that’s why it’s a demo.

No they don't.

Exactly lol.

Thanks! Makes sense, appreciate the answer

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Outside of the whole process involving proof of concepts, this idea is less logical than it seems.

Evaporation does not take that much water away from California's water system, especially when it's put into context with how much water is being used.

Solar panels are also not highly desirable in California at the moment. Right now, the state is investing heavily into energy storage options, such as these batteries. The reason being is because the state suffers an energy crunch in the evening hours when solar panels aren't generating any power.

So the dilemma becomes a question of alternatives. Why spend money on solar panels when there are cheaper methods to counter evaporation? Why not instead invest into storage options which can be charged by the surplus of energy that the state gets during the noon hours?

Great. Then there is no reason for them to be bothered by being cut off from western chips.

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What's the difference between the brine/solid leftovers and sea salt you buy at the store? I tried googling but not finding much.

I'd assume that people working on this are looking for alternative uses for the leftover material both for ecological reasons but also to help generate more money from the process.

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In many ways we haven't really consciously decided what is at the core of being human. We've been willing to automate a lot and we're seeing limits.

We have largely used technology to ease our lives, and later automate things. We're more efficient at transportation, farming, manufacturing and communicating with each other. That has made things faster, helped us produce more, and create abundance.

Here's where we see limits.

If our communications are automated with avatars/AI, what's the purpose of f2f communication? Turns out, avoiding depression and having the ability to resolve conflict.

If our entertainment is entirely solitary due to hyper personalization, what's the point of shared events and experiences? Turns out, building real relationships and social connections

If our economy is mostly automatic, what's the purpose of jobs that produce things? Turns out, teaching, coaching, therapy and other human experiences are the things we can uniquely produce.

So to me, technologies will try to commercialize automating everything. They will hit these limits, create shitty consequences, and guardrails will arise.

But history tells us that we need to see the shitty side of things to care and establish the guardrails.

Imagine an AI that not only talks to you but reports any activity it believes the government wouldn't like. An AI that starts asking you questions.

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