What's really baffling is that camera sensors are measured in MP (how many million pixels). But for some reason we decided to measure screens by number of vertical lines. For reference, 1080p is about 2 MP. 4k or 2160p is about 8 MP.

I dislike terms like HD, FHD, and UHD because I've been using computers since the CGA days. VGA, SVGA, and XGA were tolerable. But after that it just became an alphabet soup that you can't distinguish without looking it up. That defeats the whole purpose of using an abbreviation. Just list the numerical resolution in the specs instead of forcing people to look it up on some chart.

Don't chase the rabbit down the sequential speed hole. Storage benchmarks are measured in MB/s for one reason - to make you want to buy newer stuff. Your perception of speed isn't MB/s. It's wait time, or sec/MB. As in "I need to read or write x MB of stuff. How long do I have to wait?" Being the inverse of MB/s means the bigger MB/s becomes, the less difference it makes.

Once you understand this, you realize that fast sequential speeds are pretty meaningless (unless you're regularly working with huge files, like copying large videos back and forth). They're already so fast that the time to read or write a large file is over before you can notice it. Consider reading a 250 MB file.

• 125 MB/s HDD = 2 sec
• 250 MB/s SATA 2 SSD = 1 sec (1 sec faster)
• 500 MB/s SATA 3 SSD = 0.5 sec (0.5 sec faster)
• Early 1 GB/s PCIe SSD = 0.25 sec (0.25 sec faster)
• Previous-gen 2 GB/s NVMe SSD = 0.125 sec (0.125 sec faster)
• Modern 4 GB/s NVMe SSD = 0.06 sec (0.06 sec faster)
• Future 8 GB/s SSD = 0.03 sec (0.03 sec faster)

Notice how every time the MB/s figure doubles, the time saved is half the previous jump. In other words, the bigger MB/s becomes, the less difference it makes in wait time. Unless you're regularly working with multi-GB files, you're not gonna notice the difference between 4 GB/s and 8 GB/s. Both are going to virtually be indistinguishable from instantaneous. Heck, the vast majority of the time people can't even tell the difference between a SATA and NVMe SSD in their system.

The more mathematically astute among you may also recognize that this is a converging series. So the 1 sec of time you save in the first halving - switching from a HDD to a SATA 2 SSD - is equal to the time you'd save by switching from a SATA 2 SSD to instantaneously fast storage. i.e. Even if you switched from the SATA 2 SSD to something with a million TB/s speeds, it will never reduce the wait time by more than the 1 sec you saved switching from a HDD to SATA 2.

So the fastest speed (sequential read/writes) doesn't really matter. What actually matters is making sure the slowest speed is fast. For SSDs, that's 4k (small file) read/writes. Imagine you're giving a task which requires reading 1 GB of sequential data, and 200 MB of 4k data. Which do you think will complete it faster? a NVMe SSD with 4 GB/s sequential speeds and 30 MB/s 4k speeds, or a SATA SSD with 500 MB/s sequential speeds and 45 MB/s 4k speeds? Well, there's 5x as much sequential data to read, and the NVMe drive is 8x faster at sequential reads, while only being 1.5 slower at 4k reads. So obviously the NVMe SSD will be faster, right?

• NVMe: 1000 MB / 4000 MB/s = 0.25 sec. 200 MB / 30 MB/s = 6.7 sec. Total = 6.9 sec
• SATA: 1000 MB / 500 MB/s = 2 sec. 200 MB / 45 MB/s = 4.4 sec. Total = 6.4 sec

Surprise! the SATA SSD is faster. That's because the bigger MB/s becomes, the less difference it makes. You'll notice that despite there being only 1/5 as much 4k data, both drives spent more time (a lot more for the NVMe SSD) working on the 4k data. That's because (repeat one more time), the bigger MB/s becomes, the less difference it makes. And it's the small MB/s operations which consume the most time.

tl;dr - If you want a fast SSD, the #1 spec you should be looking at are its 4k speeds. You want to make its slowest operation as fast as possible, which for SSDs are the 4k speeds. The sequential speeds only matter if you're gonna work with lots of big files. If you're only gonna sling a large video around about once a month, you can just ignore the sequential speeds entirely.

She was let off on only 4 charges. The jury deadlocked on 3 charges, which gives the prosecution the option to try her again on just those 3 charges. I hear the 4 guilty charges have a max sentence of 20 years each, so they may be enough to put her away for life, making retrying the last 3 charges a moot point. (For comparison, Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years despite forgoing a trial and pleading guilty.)

Fusing atoms together in a controlled way releases nearly four million times more energy than a chemical reaction such as the burning of coal, oil or gas and four times more than nuclear fission.

I'm pretty sure that's per mass of reactant. So while fusion may yield 4x as much energy per mass than fission, because your reactants are super-light hydrogen (about 11 grams per liter at STP) vs super-dense uranium (about 19 kg per liter, or over a thousand times denser), the volumetric energy density of fission is still a lot higher than for fusion.

Some quick searching says EAST generates about 7.5 MW thermal, with the highest power output tokomak thus far being JET in England at 16 MW. ITER's target is 500 MW thermal for a few minutes at a time. For comparison, a large fission reactor generates 3-4 GW of thermal power continuously. So we are still very much in the baby steps stage of fusion. (The volumetric energy generation (W/m^3) by fusion inside the sun's core is even worse. It's about the same as a compost heap - a bit less than 300 Watts/m^3. Yup, that pile of dead leaves in your backyard generates as much heat per volume as the sun's core.

Electrical grids and outlets were invented in the U.S. so Americans became the unwitting first adopters. This means we got stuck with a standard whose deficiencies didn't become apparent until after the standard was too widespread to change.

Those of you in other countries got to learn from our mistakes, and developed outlet standards which avoided these problems. Your outlets are safer because Americans suffered (and continue to suffer) as first adopters. You're welcome.

(The reverse can happen too, though not always for the better. The U.S. was first to develop an analog cellular network, so was slower to transition to digital. Digital cellular networks were rolled out in Asia and Europe first. The frequency used to signal a phone to ring for an incoming call, had a lot of unused bandwidth. So they were brainstorming ideas to use that extra bandwidth, and came up with SMS - text messaging. SMS turned out to be the killer feature of digital cellular networks. Because it was added as an afterthought to European and Asian networks on bandwidth which otherwise would've sat idle, you got it for free. The U.S. cellular carriers saw its popularity overseas, and immediately conspired together to cash in on it by charging people anywhere from 5-40 cents per SMS.)

If there are bandwidth caps that can be exploded in a couple minutes using 4G, what is the purpose of upgrading 5G to the point where it can obliterate a bandwidth cap in less than 10 seconds?

You're looking at the wrong end of the spectrum. 5G isn't intended to improve your cellular data speeds when there's no congestion. As you point out, the speeds are already so fast in that case that there's almost no benefit for making them faster (which makes the median download speed benchmark used in TFA pointless).

5G is intended to decrease the number of times when you suffer lag, delays, or slow speed due to congestion. MIMO allows multiple phones to transmit simultaneously at the same frequencies with less interference, And higher throughput allows data requests to be completed more quickly, clearing the airwaves for the next data request.

If any journalist actually understood this and wanted to test it, they'd take a couple dozen phones, and have them each simultaneously request like 100 MB of data from the same tower. Then measure how long it takes for all phones to complete the request on average, and how long it takes the slowest phone. Compare on 4G vs 5G networks.

The median download speed can sort of act as a proxy for this - if you can guarantee nobody else is using the tower at the time of your tests. If you can't guarantee this, then the data is suspect. The UK and South Korea may have higher 5G speeds because they have faster networks. Or maybe because they have fewer people with 5G phones, so their 5G towers have less average utilization. No way to tell from the data that Ookla gets.

and is only gone because we put intense effort into the eradication project.

That is what worries me. All our vaccination efforts may be tilting at windmills. Smallpox and polio are the only two diseases we've eradicated because they only infect humans. Once all humans were vaccinated or infected and recovered, these viruses had nowhere to go and died.

I've read numerous stories of COVID-19 being detected in dogs, cats, hamsters, pigs, bats, monkeys, ferrets, otters, mink, deer, etc. If COVID-19 jumps between species this easily, then vaccinating humans isn't enough. We'd need to vaccinate all those animals as well if we want to eradicate it. Which is virtually impossible. Even if we manage to vaccinate all humans, it will mutate in animals into a strain which can bypass existing vaccines, and jump back into humans.

I'm increasingly doubtful we'll vaccinate our way out of this. And it's not because of the anti-vaxxers.

Plastics (hydrocarbons in general) sit pretty high in the chemical potential energy scale (Gibbs free energy). That's why plastic and hydrocarbons burn so readily when you set them on fire.

Being high in energy makes them an energy source, which makes them attractive to biology. You either have to get your energy from sunlight (photosynthesis), or from consuming chemicals (usually sugars). So anything which can consume plastic for energy ends up with a competitive advantage. It's just difficult because the molecules in plastic are extremely long chains. Same problem which affects wood (cellulose is essentially really long chains of sugar molecules). Only a few bacteria have evolved to be able to break cellulose apart, and animals which can digest plants have these bacteria in their gut.

Likewise, chemical compounds which are low in Gibbs free energy end up being resistant to biology. Bacteria and animals have little use for them, since they're essentially a waste product. They can only be used as a raw material if you have an alternate energy source (like plants can use sunlight to break apart CO2). So they end up sticking around in the environment for a really long time. Most POPs (persistent organic pollutants) fall into this category.

Eventually someone is gonna invent plastic-like polymers which are low in Gibbs free energy, which will "solve" the problem of long-lived artificial materials again. But likewise it will create a sequel to the problem of non-degradable plastic garbage. Except there will be much less incentive for anything to evolve to break down these substances (they'd need an external energy source). If/when that happens, we need to be sure not to repeat the same mistake we made with plastics, which got used for all sorts of stupid stuff (why the hell would you use something which will last in the environment for thousands of years for single-use package wrapping, forks, and straws?). I've had to lug a battery-powered shop vac to the local park three times to vacuum up plastic confetti from the grass. Some company seems to be using this stuff in pinatas and party poppers, instead of paper (which is biodegradable).

I don't watch the ESPN channels either (or sports channels is general). But financially, sports channels are the biggest driver for subscriptions to live TV services like cable, satellite, and specialized streaming. It's not a big deal for you and me, but it's a big deal for the industry and a huge portion of the customer base.

That's also the reason why the "Disney-free plan for $15 less" option won't fly either. The customer demand for these channels is large enough that it gives Disney enough negotiating leverage to require their channels be included in all plans. (Or rather, they can require payment based on total number of subscribers, instead of number of subscribers who want their channels.)

That study tracked more than 843,000 Israelis who had received the full two-dose series of the Pfizer vaccine and were eligible to get a booster. Around 758,000 people from that group actually got the booster.

There were 65 people in the booster group who died during the study period, compared with 137 in the non-booster group. The study ran through August and September, when Delta was the predominant COVID variant.

65 deaths in the boosted group works out to a probability of death p = 0.000008575
137 deaths in the non-boosted groups works out to a probability of death p = 0.000161

Plugging into the 95% confidence interval margin of error calculation err = 1.96 * sqrt[ p*(1-p) / n ] and normalizing for 1 million population gives:

expected number of deaths in boosted group = 85.8 +/- 20.8 (that is, between 65-107 deaths per million)
expected number of deaths in unboosted group = 1612 +/- 270 (between 1342-1881 deaths per million)

Since there's no overlap in these ranges, it's statistically significant to a 95% confidence interval. In fact the ranges differ so much that there's less than a 1 in a trillion chance that this difference is due to random variability (the boosted group getting lucky and the unboosted group getting unlocky). So either the effect is real, or there are other unknown factors causing the difference (e.g. maybe older people, who have a higher death rate from COVID-19, were less likely to get the booster for some reason).

Most of the upcoming drops work as a miotic (make your pupils shrink). But two of them are lens-softening agents. One of those (Novartis UNR844-CL/Dioptin) is in phase 2 trials (there are 3 phases).

The risk with hydrogen is that it could be rolled out before sufficient green hydrogen is available. Most hydrogen at the moment is manufactured from fossil fuels

Why is that a risk? We've done the exact same thing with EVs - rolled them out before sufficient green electricity is available.Most electricity at the moment is manufactured from fossil fuels.Adding a bunch of EVs to the power grid forces power companies to have to burn more fossil fuels to generate the electricity needed to charge those EVs.

The proper order to do this is to research electric and hydrogen vehicle technologies, to advance their state of the art. Simultaneously roll out green power generation sources. Once our power generation is mostly carbon-free (doesn't have to revert to burning fossil fuels to handle an increase in demand), only then roll out to the mass market the end products which will use electricity or hydrogen.

But we're doing it backwards with EVs. And confoundingly, the people promoting doing it backwards with EVs are the same ones opposed to doing it backwards with hydrogen.

The same problem exists for storage of renewables-generated electricity. Yes storage technologies should be researched. But it doesn't makes sense to store electricity until renewable + nuclear power generation exceeds 100% of demand. If generation from those sources doesn't exceed 100% of demand at a certain time of the day, then you're always burning fossil fuels to make up the shortfall. And it makes no sense to store the green electricity to time-shift its use. Since you're still always having to generate electricity from fossil fuels, all you'll accomplish is shifting the fossil fuel use opposite of your stored electricity use. Any time you store renewable electricity generated during the day, you increase the fossil fuel electricity that needs to be generated to meet demand by the same amount in the day. And when your stored electricity is used at night, it reduces the fossil fuel electricity that needs to be generated at night by the same amount.

Except that all power storage methods have efficiency losses. So the amount of electricity you get out of storage, is less than the amount you put into it. And using storage to time-shift your renewable electricity use just ends up causing more fossil fuels to be burned (the reduction in fossil fuel electricity at night is less than the increase in fossil fuel electricity in daytime). The only time this doesn't happen is if you store electricity when zero fossil fuels were being burned - i.e. when nuclear + renewable generation exceeds 100% of demand. That's the triggering threshold when electricity storage makes sense. But right now, if the PV panels on your home generate more electricity than you need during the day, it's better for the environment to sell it to the grid so someone else can use it immediately. Storing it in batteries so you can use it to charge your EV at night will cause a net increase in global fossil fuel consumption.

Sigh. Carbon sequestration is the only solution. Renewables don't solve global warming. They only prevent it from getting worse. That's because renewables do not remove CO2 from the atmosphere. All they can do is prevent more CO2 from being added. They can do nothing about all the CO2 that's accumulated from two centuries of industrialization.

In other words, if we switched completely to renewables tomorrow, it would halt additional global warming. But we'd still be stuck in our current state of elevated temperatures and wilder weather forever. The only way to roll back global warming and return us to an earlier state is carbon sequestration - removing CO2 from the atmosphere and locking up that carbon somewhere (preferably underground, since that's where it came from in the first place). The longer environmentalists oppose carbon sequestration, the longer we'll have to live with the consequences of global warming.

Think of it as a boat that is sinking. Renewables can plug the hole and prevent additional water from coming in. But they do nothing about the water that's already inside the boat. Carbon sequestration is necessary to pump out that excess water and get the boat seaworthy again.

The process is carbon neutral. They pull CO2 out of the air, combine it with water and convert it into hydrocrabon fuel (generally of the form (CH2O)n).

The reason why you'd want to do this is because the energy density of hydrocarbons is still two orders of magnitude (i.e. about 100x) greater than lithium batteries. That's why the airline industry is especially interested in this. Right now if you tried to create an electric airliner with anywhere close to the same range as existing airliners, the weight of the lithium batteries alone would exceed the plane's maximum takeoff weight (i.e. it couldn't fly, which is kind of a deal-breaking trait for an airplane).

It's amazing how many people have the misconception that electric batteries are some magical technology which store electricity. They don't store electricity. They use the electricity to drive a chemical reaction, converting electrical energy into chemical potential energy. The chemical is much more stable over long periods of time (electricity stored in a capacitor leaks out on the order of seconds to minutes). And when you need the electricity back, you run the reverse chemical reaction, converting that chemical potential energy back into electricity.

They're doing the same thing here, they're just using a hydrocarbon as the chemical battery to store the collected solar energy. It's a problem with fossil fuels because we're taking hydrocarbons which were created and buried underground for hundreds of millions of years, and reintroducing that carbon back into the atmosphere thus upsetting the balance current life is built to survive. But if you create the hydrocarbons by pulling CO2 out of the air, then it's not a problem. The carbon you release by burning/converting the hydrocarbon back into CO2, is balanced out by the CO2 removed from the air to create the hydrocarbon in the first place. Heck, you could modify the process to separate the H2O from the C, forming graphite. Then just store blocks of graphite in abandoned coal mines, thereby using this process to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester carbon back underground. Thus helping to restore atmospheric CO2 levels to pre-industrialization levels.

That works out to a data rate of about 230 kilobytes per second. At that point, it becomes feasible to fill one of the discs, which have an estimated capacity of 500TB. It would take about two months to write this much data, after which it cannot be changed.

500 terabytes / 230 kilobytes
= (500 * 1000^4 bytes) / (230 * 1024 bytes/s)
= 2.12296196 x 10^9 seconds
= 68.9 years