I'll believe it when I see it here.

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

I drive oil, but it's catalytically cracked veg oil.

The heating process for dewatering and then distilling excess Methanol off afterwards takes a fair bit of energy (16kWh) but over the course of a year and making 2500 litres it adds up to less in electricity costs than running a home server 24/7 (50W).

So I'm firmly in the 500-999kWh range.

Hand your movie buff card back - Tremors; that can only mean snakeoids about to pour from beneath the very dirt itself!

Less deeply cool if the mirror control software locks up and you burn a line/spot into your retina.

Trying, plasma TV style, to run noise/wipes material through it to reduce retina burn-in would not be fun.

On the other hand, nice to see another step towards the Snow Crash universe. Just need a depleted uranium hypervelocity railgun and people will finally start listening to Reason.

That's lovely. Where's my patented copper nail?

So if there was no commercial benefit, then it is OK?

How does tripadvisor get away with it then?

A quick google fails to reveal any detail about how it works, and TFA's explanatory diagram says very little (a drawing of a brain and some boxes - oh so that's how it works?)

We can only assume this stems from Qualcomm's partnership with Brain Corp http://www.braincorporation.com/

Perhaps an urban legend (I can't find a reference), but didn't operators of nuclear reactors used to sit on one legged chairs, so they couldn't nap at the controls?

In all fairness nothing is likely to go wrong unless a reactor is being experimented on, or an unusual catastrophic event/mechanical failure occurs (even a fully staffed reactor doesn't necessarily mean they'll be avoided). Lack of staffing should be the least of our worries!

Ironically racing is probably a better defined operating environment so easier to successfully automate.

I can't see everyday driving being automated because there will always be a scenario that isn't covered, an odd bug that no-one expected, or mechanical failure that the computer can't compensate for in a sensible way.

Commercial flight systems on aircraft must be so thoroughly tested, yet we still have pilots to take over if the machine fails. How would that work with cars? If you have to be there paying close attention in case you need to take over, doesn't that negate the purpose of the automated system in the first place?

Exhaustive Testing is Impossible.

Mine is updated by a cron job that randomly abuses my neighbours by name.

MPEG2 lingers because it costs a lot to replace millions of existing set-top boxes, however that's only for video delivery to the home. A lot of backhaul/contribution/distribution is H264 which then gets transcoded at the edge of the broadcaster's networks. All the modern delivery over the internet systems are H264 because there's no legacy technology to replace and bandwidth is at a premium. HEVC will both get adopted both within broadcaster systems, and also for new domestic systems (4k being the obvious one).

Ultimately video over IP (which sounds like a bad plan to start off with) is all about the connection - modern broadcasters use adaptive streaming - the same video is encoded at a variety of bitrates and resolutions and made available to playback clients. The client assesses live buffer fill and decides between low bitrate and poor quality and high bitrate/quality dynamically depending on how the link is performing, fetching small/large files off the server as appropriate. It works very well and the user is left completely unaware that it's happening.

Curiously enough the H264 standard was very forward thinking in this respect and there are lots of clever ways to dynamically control streaming - none of which anyone uses as it's complicated to implement compared to just encoding the same thing at different bitrates.

H265/HEVC is the logical progression in computational complexity vs compression efficiency - definitely here to stay in the video compression industry.

I've run a server at home 24/7 for coming up on a decade. It does all our e-mail, runs a web server, runs a CCTV system and is a filtering proxy for the kids. For a long time it was one of only two Alien Arena master servers. And actually the uptime has been better than the shared hosting we used to have before we went for home serving. There is no additional cost when it comes to adding more web domains (running it as a virtual host), and it can be an ssh tunnelled proxy for when you're away from home.

The downsides?

If it goes down when you're on holiday, it stays down. You'd need someone to have keys to the house to go reset it.

If the hardware fails, it's you that has to fix it. If you run any moderately successful sites from it then you start getting calls. This added pressure can be stressful.

You're solely responsible for keeping it secure, so you'll have to stay on top of that, and keep monitoring it for intrusion. Heaven forbid you accidentally set up an open mail relay. Your ISP would crucify you :)

Most DSL is asymmetric which isn't ideal for servers, as most of the content is outbound. Plus it's easy to hit your maximum DSL monthly bandwidth allowance (vnstat is your friend!). If you don't think you have one, you may well discover in short order that actually, you do ;) Then you end up hunting around for deals that give greater bandwidth allowances. All more hassle!

Then there is the leccy cost, so you'll need a nice lightweight server (and unplug everything from it that isn't a hard drive, CPU or memory). Really this is the least of your worries considering everything else above.

All of that said, I wouldn't be without mine. It's far too useful.