The people in your TV set

All are welcome.

I for one don't want to give Physics research a blank check to investigate some unobservable math fantasy.

Why not? And who exactly is asking for a "blank check"?

you must consult with Imagination before you change it.

Yes. And what happens then?

I haven't in general met many professors (or EEs) who understand much about intellectual property.

OK. Can we see your agreements, please? Because that did sound very much like trolling for additional intellectual property to add to your portfolio.

People who read this article have pointed out three open CPU designs in addition to the one that I remembered.

While your product might be "production ready", please keep in mind that open projects are very often written to a higher standard than commercial ones, and the researchers involved are no less professional than your own developers. And their projects come with fewer intellectual property issues than yours.

It's only "free" for academia.

Not even them. This is a lure for universities to create tech that they are not allowed to produce in hardware, but the company that provided the original tech can monetize.

The patent terms are whatever they want them to be. In general "reasonable" and "patent" don't happen together much. And "tiny", well I really doubt it.

Having a company provide funds for a research grant and then reap the patent royalties isn't in general a good thing for society. The student researchers get paid like slave labor (if they get paid at all) and put what may be the best idea of their lives in some company's pockets.

Methanol is part of the process. But it's not the end of the process.

Gasoline and diesel aren't good for you, if you get physical exposure to them. Methanol makes them look like water, by comparison. There's a reason why very, VERY few places use methanol as a fuel. It's a potent neurotoxin, very carcinogenic and exposure to the vapors from it can cause permanent blindness.

They create methanol, as an intermediate step in the process, but they process it further to make it into longer-hydrocarbon-chain fuels. The main component of diesel is one of them. Not as clean, but much safer.

I'm partial to DiMethyl Ether (DME). Chemically similar to propane/LPG, and equipment for storing/transporting LPG works fine for storing/transporting DME. Propane heaters, stoves, etc. run on DME without further modification. Cars which are converted to run on LPG run, with no further modification, on DME. It works well in diesel engines, too (better than propane/LPG; as with a spark-ignition engine, some conversion is necessary). And it's a good turbine fuel. Yes, you need propane-like tanks (DME needs about 5 bar pressure to liquify) but it burns really clean. Indeed, since it has no carbon chains (formula: CH3-O-CH3), diesel engines can burn this and have ZERO particulate emissions. Russia and Japan have been making it from Natural Gas for a couple decades, because both countries have significant "stranded" natural gas supplies and DME is easier to ship and store.

See OpenRISC, which IMO provides a better path for academia.

It's very common these days for companies to allow universities to use their technology at the cost of tying the company into the university's patent revenue. And of course this is often publicly-funded research, so not only is the taxpayer paying for the development of patents used to sue that same taxpayer, the patents go directly to a company from academia.

The net effect is to feed intellectual property centered companies at the expense of the technology sector in general and small technology companies in particular.

if everything is automated, there is no more poor or middle class

besides, a poor country like the philippines: everyone has a maid and a driver. even the maids have maids and drivers

having people work for you is not proof of being rich. it's a proof of overpopulation

Basically funded bogus studies and had a negative press campaign as they came out.

Sacharine-- it turns out-- is actually quite safe while aspartame is bad for some people regardless of how it is handled. Handled improperly (over 100 degrees) it breaks down into bad stuff... but also many people break it down into bad stuff anyway and get headaches from it.

Not really. Plant metabolism is usually < 10% efficient at turning sunlight, CO2 and water into useful biomass. And the process for turning useful biomass into hydrocarbon fuels is < 100% efficient, so solar -> fuel is very low.

In their case, they're using intermittent power, from wind and solar, to do a modified Sabatier reaction and make methanol, which then goes into an integrated Fischer-Tropsch process to make longer-chain hydrocarbons.

The resulting solar -> fuel conversion efficiency is HIGHER than going through biomass production.

Since most of the artists I listen to on streaming services are dead, should they be paying me?

if a disease can spread because it can find enough vectors since not enough vaccinate, you are also giving the disease time and space to tinker, and perhaps evolve a new strain that existing vaccines don't protect against

so: yup. but that's less superrich killing and more superstupid killing us

i always thought it would make a great conspiracy dystopian story where the superrich, with everything automated, don't need us anymore

so they simply kill us all off

the earth reduced to 700,000 souls from 7,000,000,000 in a matter of days (some sort of highly infectious agent?)