While the interconnects are certainly a very important part of a supercomptuer, they aren't the hardest part. Building a high performance CPU takes a shit ton of research and infrastructure. The barrier for entry is exceedingly high and takes a long time to spin up. You can see that with China's Longsoon processor which for all the hyped ended up being a license of a MIPS core, built on an old process technology. Building a ton end CPU is just tough stuff.

Of course then there's the other fact that there are plenty of interconnect makers that are not Chinese. The big names in high speed interconnects are Cray (US), IBM (US), and Infiniband (which is made by many companies like Intel and Mellanox). It's not like China has the high speed interconnect market cornered.

Finally there's the silliness of focusing on #1. Yes, they have the #1 computer at the linpack benchmark (which is not good at representing performance in all things). However the US has the #2, 3, 5, 8, and 10. In other words, half of the top 10. The idea that only the top spot matters is very, very silly.

Slashdot has been crying wolf since they are a geek site and geeks seem to like that kind of thing and also like new technology, no matter the cost and issues.

However there have been actual depletions of IPv4 space of various kinds. First it was that all available networks were allocated to regional registrars. Now some of those regional registrars are allocating all their remaining addresses.

That doesn't mean doomsday, of course, it means that for any additional allocation to go on, something would have to be reclaimed. That has happened in the past, organizations have given back part of their allocations so they could be reassigned. It may lead to IPs being worth more. Company A might want some IPs and Company B could cut their usage with renumbering, NAT, etc so they'll agree to sell them.

Since IPs aren't used up in the sens of being destroyed, there'll never be some doomsday where we just "run out" but as time goes on the available space vs demand will make things more difficult. As that difficulty increases, IPv6 makes more sense and we'll see more of it.

We are already getting there in many ways. You see a lot of US ISPs preparing to roll it out, despite having large IPv4 allocations themselves, because they are seeing the need for it.

Either states will decide you don't need insurance if you have a self driving car, or a company will spring up that will insure self driving cars for a lot less money.

It is one area where capitalism can work. Lets say all the existing insurance underwriters charge $100/month for normal insurance based on human drivers. At that rate they can cover the rate of claims and make a nice profit. Say $20/month ends up being net profit after their operations costs and payout are factored in, and operations are another $20/month.

Well lets say that self driving cars then have a 0.01% accident rate compared to human drivers (it may end up being lower than that). That will drop their payouts by a similar amount, so from $60/person/month to $0.60/person/month. Ok but they decide to keep the price the same, just make more money.

Thing is, they'd still be really profitable at $41/month, instead of $100. Someone else will realize that, and work to steal their business. They might not go that low, maybe $80/month, but it'll happen. Then they'll try to get it back and so on and so forth.

Remember that your costs aren't just based on your specifically, they are based on actuary data of accident likeness. Sure you've had no accidents, but there is a statistical probability that you will. You are in the lowest risk group likely, but it is there. If self driving cars are much lower, rates can again be much lower.

Also, have you checked around? My rates haven't gone up in a long time. Maybe your company is just screwing you because they can, and you'd save if you took your business elsewhere.

For comparison purposes I pay about $350/6 months for $200k/$500k liability insurance on an old, cheap, car.

Why isn't Africa progressing when so many other nations, often with much fewer resources and far less support, and coming from a much worse situation, managed to turn things around?

Far less support? Marshall Plan? You need to at least pull Europe from that list.

And we fundamentally broke Africa over generations, hundreds of years. We kind of broke Europe over the course of decades. Europe had decades to recover. Africa, we kind of let free a lot more recently than that.

I hope you're asking earnestly and not looking to point fingers. Real analysis of how things break and stay broken is hard, both to see the connections, and to push through people's initial perceptions. We need more people asking your question and trying to answer it.

https://puri.sm/pureos/

Though actually not a lot there.

So besides the mild irony of a Flash Video (and I'm sure Flash is not allowed on PureOS) the URL for the OS has both a typo AND a missing period. It's https://puri.sm/pureos/

And people have shown over and over that Free as in Speech takes a back seat to actually getting things done. I'm glad for the people releasing this, I hope they have fun, but it will be a small circle of people patting each other on the back as everyone else goes to mobile.

Free of apps.. free of distractingly being able to do something constructive on your computer...

You were doing well until you mentioned gluten-free. If you haven't heard of celiac by now, perhaps you should climb out from under your rock.

I don't know about building codes, but the UL is a private organization. There's no legal need, in general, for anything to be UL-certified in the US.

err, I have an Apple mighty mouse I use when logged onto unix machines. It not only has a right mouse, but a scroll wheel and some side click buttons.

Now, if you talk about a trackpad, they really should be tracking option or Command clicking.

Growing up, I lived in the same house for 30 years. I never knew most of my neighbors, never mind the families one or two streets over.

The idea that people would know who owns a drone is so beyond moronic that it's a wonder you could even form the thought.

Fahrenheit is just as easy to understand. Proof: Americans get it. If you, oh so superior European, have trouble, perhaps it's because you're a complete and utter moron.

It was a good post until you wrote "boxen". After that, my filter turned the rest of the words into "blah blah I'm an idiot". Please don't do that again.

I think most people will blame anything or anyone other than themselves when it comes to not understanding something. Sometimes they are right. Often, they aren't.

You must hate math too. It has symbols way more obscure than any of the more popular programming languages.

Programming languages should be designed for coders, just the same way X-ray machines are made for medical technicians. There is no need for me to understand all the settings of an X-ray machine just to get a pretty picture for my dentist. Similarly, there's no need for a manager or end-user to understand the code that produced the App he is using.