It was the SCADA view right? A lot of SCADA software is basically running on top of windows, though you typically would never see the desktop. Ignition at least is cross platform, but that is because the server is Java and Jython. A big part of why things are running on windows is due to OPC, which was traditionally all DOM and .NET. It is basically a standard communications protocol and is what allows your HMI/SCADA to communicate with PLCs. Otherwise, you use proprietary drivers and native PLC specific protocols.

SCADA programming/design is kind of an art and is usually written by an either an overworked engineer or someone who had far too much time on their hands. You basically build screens using specialized software, hook up buttons and UI elements to PLC signals, and pass some signals from the UI to the PLC. They are all heading in the Edge/iot/cloud/web based/techno-babble direction these days...

Ignition, programming software is free!: https://inductiveautomation.com

Some other random ones I have seen or used in the past: https://www.siemens.com/global/en/products/automation/simatic-hmi/wincc-unified.html https://www.aveva.com/en/products/intouch-hmi/ https://www.rockwellautomation.com/en-us/products/software/factorytalk/operationsuite/view.html

That argument presupposes that the reactor would otherwise be brought back into operation, which I don't think is necessarily the case.

Microsoft would do it with or without the power plant. Make no mistake about that.

The same argument could be said if they made a 1GW solar farm, or any other form of power generation. Unless you have a way to legislatively prevent Microsoft from producing their own energy or prevent acquisition of decommissioned plants, I don't see how you can prevent waste.

Is it going to be started up again?

If M$ doesn’t invest into this for their own purposes, is it still going to be started up? Or is your position that M$ should be investing in a nuclear power plant for the good of the world?

Because while I can agree with the idea, we all know that would never happen. So if it was never going to be started up again, we are at 0 gain or loss no matter what they do with it.

And that’s ignoring the fact that they are apparently intending on using that energy anyway.

I see this as a good thing because they'll invest more on making energy efficient. That's something bound to trickle down and help poorer regions unless they die off first.

Nuclear safety and ~~penny-pinchers~~ capitalism don't make good bedfellows.

ftfy. Possibly ironically, nuclear safety and communism (or totalitarianism) don’t work either. It’s odd, innit.

My org's Microsoft reps gave a demo of their upcoming copilot 365 stuff. It can summarize an email chain, use the transcript of a teams meeting to write a report, generate a PowerPoint of the key parts of that report, and write python code that generates charts and whatnot in excel. Assuming it works as advertised, this is going to be really big in offices. All of that would save a ton of time.

On the other hand, if they ever admit the whole genAI thing doesn't work, they could just sell the electricity produced by the plant.

Every once in a while they get faced with a line on a chart somewhere so unbelievably vertical that they have no choice but to look beyond next quarter. Power consumption going 10x in 2 years is one of those times.

Yes in a research lab. Here we’re talking about Microsoft.

Have you ever used something they made? Did it meet your standard of being “good work”? No. It’s a greedy, soulless cash grab disguised as software that infects the entire organization and disables common sense.

M$ actually running a nuclear plant is a guaranteed disaster. Blue Screen of Death.

You know, that actually makes sense. Fusion is so energetic and probabilistic in nature, plus it's effectively "charged fluid dynamics" and there are an impossible number of variables to handle. That's literally the kind of shit AI is great at.

Fission though? Not so much