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Comment Re:Supply side tomfoolery (Score 1) 477

Carpooling is a pain because you don't have the car with you during the day. If something unexpected happens and it isn't you driving that day, you are in trouble. With driverless cabs this problem disappears -- you will most likely have to accept a delay when you request an unscheduled cab and possibly a higher price, but you are not stuck.

Comment Re:What an Embarrassingly Vapid Article (Score 1) 477

I doubt the parking bit. Many people will choose to use a driverless cab instead of their own car for the commute (to save money). For the average commute, rush hour is spread out enough to allow the cab to do perhaps 3 journeys, saving 2 parking spots, and it can even park away from town during the day.

Even more parking can be saved if you seat more than one person in the cab of course. I bet we will see cabs with multiple entirely separated passenger cabins so the only inconvenience from sharing them is the possible detour for the other person.

Comment Slippery slope (Score 5, Insightful) 362

First they invented SecureBoot, but that was OK, because you could turn it off.

Then they prevented disabling it, but that was OK, because several non-Windows bootloaders are signed.

Next up will be refusing to sign the boot loaders which simply disable SecureBoot and load Linux/*BSD. That will be OK, because Ubuntu is properly signed including the kernel (I think).

After that it will only be certain commercial vendors who can get a certificate, but that will be OK, because Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 will run, only allowing signed kernel modules.

Yes I hate slippery slope arguments too.

Comment Re:I don't see it as a "miss" at all (Score 1) 205

In Denmark, several muxes are run pretty much the same way any cable TV operator would, except the build-out costs per subscriber are obviously lower because no cables need to go into the ground. Broadcasts are encrypted and people buy cards which unlock the channel packages they decide to pay for. Just like cable, but with somewhat fewer channels.

It seems like you would be able to cover the majority of the residents of Saskatoon with a single antenna mast. That should be plenty to make it economically viable. Particularly if the mast is already there with power and everything available, just waiting for equipment.

Comment Re: Because you're an idiot? (Score 1) 93

If you block-level deduplicate a file on an HDD, and even a small fraction of the blocks from an otherwise sequential file are replaced by pointers, you have completely destroyed read performance for that file. Block-level deduplication is not a viable technology on hard drives except for very specific use patterns.

In contrast, almost no workloads suffer when doing block-level deduplication on an SSD.

Comment Re:Relative terms. (Score 1) 311

Insults do not help your arguments.

If you don't use nuclear power (once the power station is built) you lose it. Exactly the same as solar and wind. You can turn solar and wind off if you want, exactly the same as nuclear power, but economic reasons make it infeasible to do so very often, again exactly the same as nuclear power.

Nuclear power is notoriously difficult to integrate into the grid; you need a lot of fossil fuel or hydro plants to handle the peak load that nuclear cannot handle economically.

Comment Re:Not really changed (Score 1) 309

Norway is hydro limited by how much water they can store from spring and summer for the winter heating needs. Wind power in Scandinavia produces most power in winter, right when hydro reservoirs are closest to running dry. If Canada is similar, it can integrate amazing amounts of wind power into the hydro system.

Comment Re:About time. (Score 1) 309

The cost of nuclear is paid for up front. Fuel is effectively free. If you have a nuclear power plant and do not run it at full capacity at all times, you are throwing away free money.

If you only run your nuclear reactor at 33% output on average, your price per kWh has tripled. This would not matter if nuclear power was cheap, of course.

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