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Comment Re:Yay! (Score 1) 942

Actually the last polls showed a majority for staying in the EU. However, it's only the really vocal "get us out now!" people that you generally hear about because they are the ones making a noise. No-one really shouts "Let's keep the status quo because it's working reasonably well!". You can compare this with the Scottish Independence referendum where plenty of noise was generated by the Yes campaign but in the end the silent majority for No won the day.

Comment Re:Here's the interesting paragraph (Score 1) 375

It's a ruse by Salmond. He is goading the UK into saying "no" to a shared currency so that Scotland can't, by law, pick up a share of the national debt.

Instead what is likely to happen is that Sterling will be split into two: A British Pound and a Scottish Pound. Scotland will get its share of the Bank of England assets and the rest of the UK will get its share. Similarly the debt will be split so that Scotland takes their share of the debt and rest of UK takes its share. Currently the UK government is saying that it will back up all the debt to prevent the threat of independence causing a down rating of debt. It's highly likely that if independence goes ahead then they'll back track on that saying that the situation has changed and that borrowers will have their debt split between the two new nations. That or if Scotland say they don't want any of the debt then they won't get any of the assets either.

Comment Re:Hachette? (Score 1) 91

Hatchet's contract with Amazon expired in March. Amazon tried to open negotiations with Hatchet in January for a renewal, but Hatchet declined to respond. Hatchet have continued to drag their feet on a new contract ever since. I understand that some of the issues with delayed shipments is because there is no contract and Amazon do not therefore stock Hatchet books until there is an order and so they have to rely on their supply chain to supply the title - i.e. Hatchet and wholesalers. This also explains why they don't discount or offer pre-orders, they have decided to only source the books when there is an order and they know they can fulfil it from their own suppliers.
Science

Understanding the 2 Billion-Year-Old Natural Nuclear Reactor In W Africa 152

KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "In June 1972, nuclear scientists at the Pierrelatte uranium enrichment plant in south-east France noticed a strange deficit in the amount of uranium-235 they were processing. That's a serious problem in a uranium enrichment plant where every gram of fissionable material has to be carefully accounted for. The ensuing investigation found that the anomaly originated in the ore from the Oklo uranium mine in Gabon, which contained only 0.600% uranium-235 compared to 0.7202% for all other ore on the planet. It turned out that this ore was depleted because it had gone critical some 2 billion years earlier, creating a self-sustaining nuclear reaction that lasted for 300,000 years and using up the missing uranium-235 in the process. Since then, scientists have studied this natural reactor to better understand how buried nuclear waste spreads through the environment and also to discover whether the laws of physics that govern nuclear reactions may have changed in the 1.5 billion years since the reactor switched off. Now a review of the science that has come out of Oklo shows how important this work has become but also reveals that there is limited potential to gather more data. After an initial flurry of interest in Oklo, mining continued and the natural reactors--surely among the most extraordinary natural phenomena on the planet-- have all been mined out."

Comment Re:Here's how to secure your "Internet of things" (Score 1) 106

The point is not that the energy company will be able to cut off your refrigerator's function at a whim, but that you will be able to configure your refrigerator to operate based on the price of electricity to maximise your profit. You could do this off a clock, but as the gpp mentioned, we'll have variable generation based on amount of wind and sunshine that will mean that you can take advantage of flucuating prices as supply and demand vary throughout the day.

Comment Re:Good. (Score 2) 124

You can't get the full text of a copyrighted work from google, no matter how hard you try.

You may not be able to get the full text of the copyrighted work, but Google can and has. Google are profiting from an unauthorised copy made of a copyrighted work. If google are allowed to do it, why can't I? I only want to make one copy of each book from the library. I don't intended to sell that unauthorised copy to anyone, heck I don't even intend to let anyone else see even snippets of it. What's the difference? Why are Google allowed to make copies for their own purposes but I am not? Is it because they are a rich company who can afford lawyers to override copyright laws?

Personally, I believe copyright terms are far too long, but if you're going to have them then you should respect them in all cases. It can't be one law for the rich and one law for everyone else. If the term of copyright is too long and causes all these problems with orphaned works, or works being lost to the public domain because there are no copies left when the copyright term expires, then the problem is with the copyright term and we shouldn't allow exceptions for rich companies to circumvent the problems with the law.

Comment Re:unfortunately (Score 1) 282

Also at EU 20-28k, you can pay for decades of electricity usage, and that's not even taking into account maintenance. Waste of money.

Decades only at current prices. Prices having been increasing significantly over the last few years and that trend does not seem likely to change any time soon. If for EUR 20K you can lock in your energy prices for the life of the system (also measured in decades), then you are very likely to make significant savings over that time.

For example, according to UK Department of Energy and Climate Change figures, electricity prices have risen by 63% since 2005, and by over 250% since 1987 (considering 25 years being the typical life of a solar PV installation).

Comment Re:The econmoics don't make sense (Score 1) 389

Except that no-one is going to replace a perfectly good vehicle with an autonomous one unless there is a benefit to them. It will be that pepole just move to an autonomous one next time they replace their vehicle. More likely the trend will actually be more and more automation in "normal" vehicles each generation so that everntually the majority of vehicles are autonomous (or capable of being autonomous).

Alongside that will the people who actually see an economic benefit from an autonomous vehicle. If it means that they can spend more time with their family or doing things that are more productive during their commute/travel then they'll buy an autonomous vehicle.

So it's not just the saving from the purported reduction in accidents that makes the economic case for autonomous vehicles, it's the whole equation

Comment Re:What does the Self Driving Car do if? (Score 1) 389

The autonomous car would be able to quickly decide whether coming to halt in its current lane is safer or if manoeuvering into other spaces to avoid the child/dog is safer - and probably much more easerly than a human driver who can freeze in panic at an unexpected situation. Additionally the computer can potentially make the cold hearted decision that breaking but still hitting the obstacle, because there is not enough stopping distance, is ultimately the least bad thing to do - for example if there is heavy traffic in the on-coming lane and pedestrians besides the road.

It could also, for example, automatically sound the horn to alert people and perhaps enable the child/dog to notice and get out of the way. A human on the other hand is more likely to be still be evaluating the situation and reacting by slamming on the breaks and not have the foresight (or the co-ordination) to do this.

Comment Re:I like my A4 2T 6 speed (Score 5, Interesting) 389

When considering whether someone thinks they are better than average in driving skill you should look at this study

Svenson (1981) surveyed 161 students in Sweden and the United States, asking them to compare their driving safety and skill to the other people in the experiment. For driving skill, 93% of the US sample and 69% of the Swedish sample put themselves in the top 50% (above the median). For safety, 88% of the US group and 77% of the Swedish sample put themselves in the top 50%.

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