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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 23, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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There of course is an obvious solution to this, but I am not sure we're allowed yet to say it aloud.

This does seem to be the market the SMR folks were expecting. I hope it works out for them.

But even solar would be a start: it's not like cloud providers don't have expertise in dynamic billing rates. "Inference is cheaper when it's sunny in Nevada" is, uh, fine actually if most of your market is Bay Area tech bros during business hours. The "Claude is slow at certain hours" claims already exist. Maybe there is a market for "run this at some point tonight", too.

This does seem to be the market the SMR folks were expecting. I hope it works out for them.

As do I, but if there's one thing the green types hate more than AI data centers, it's nuclear power.

Believe it or not, Nuclear power has never been as disliked as datacenters currently are, never mind nuclear popularity right now.

Currently 61% of American are in favor of using nuclear power to generate electricity. 59% are in favor of building more plants.