From your link, ~1.6% is the average for the year. Dec 2014 was: 0.76% hence my "these days"

Actually, these days 1.4% is probably higher than current inflation.
And it's too low given the differential risks to 4% inflation vs 0% or 0.5% deflation.

In the long run, everything will be fine.

Of course in the long run we'll all be dead.

I'd actually read the article before it hit slashdot.
Interestingly, why have they only patched it on recent hardware, when a software update (IIRC) could roll it out to most/all hardware?

If you're in the airport and you're using a wireless keyboard, you're a wanker...

You just stop option ROMs from loading when you're patching the firmware.

Only if they (Apple) patch it before the machine is rooted.

You should do presentations in nicer places, so they don't want to get out of the travel :-)

Only if you're crazy enough to live where the temps fall below freezing!

(Sent from sunny CA :-)

"low-ID"? WTF are you talking about?

Well, there was a google paper about drive failures a few years back, but I don't think they named names...

There is. Free/Cheap energy in the form of fusion, or very cheap solar panels.
With that, you could desalinate sea water.

http://robots-everywhere.com/r...
I'd guess

I read that somewhere.

I wrote it down, then I read it.

Partly it depends on whether you care about being able to write a certain amount of data, or rewrite the blocks the same number of times...

Most consumers of hard-drive services care about how much data they can safely store and retrieve and the speed & cost of the device, not how many times they can rewrite a flash block before it fails...