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Comment: Re:Well, he's not afraid his company might fire hi (Score 1) 485

by Fwipp (#43755749) Attached to: Larry Page: You Worry Too Much About Medical Privacy

Even $1,000 is hardly a burden compared to how much you might have to pay if you can't afford insurance. I have a friend who had to pay $2200 for one asthma attack that landed him in the ER, triggered by the cleaning agents his near-minimum-wage job mandated that he use.

Plus, I pay around $400 annually for basic medical insurance (just me), with a $500 deductible, my employer puts in another $600, and on top of that I still have to pay a percentage of costs. So, if I'm healthy, we're paying $1000 for zero product. It doesn't start to break even until after... I believe it was around $3000 in annual medical costs. And I'm a healthy non-smoking 20-something.

Really, any sort of predictable fixed cost is preferable to the "anti-lottery" our health care system is now.

Power

USB SuperSpeed Power Spec To Leap From 10W To 100W 242

Posted by samzenpus
from the power-up dept.
Lucas123 writes "While news stories have focused on the upcoming jump from 5Gbps to 10Gbps for USB SuperSpeed, less talked about has been the fact that it will also increase charging capabilities from 10W to 100W, meaning you'll be able to charge your laptop, monitor, even a television using a USB cord. Along with USB, the Thunderbolt peripheral interconnect will also be doubling it throughput thanks to a new controller chip, in its case from 10Gbps to 20Gbps. As with USB SuperSpeed, Thunderbolt's bandwidth increase is considered an evolutionary step, but the power transfer increase is being considered revolutionary, according to Jeff Ravencraft, president of the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF). 'This is going to change the way computers, peripheral devices and even HDTVs will not only consume but deliver power,' Ravencraft said. 'You can have an HDTV with a USB hub built into it where not only can you exchange data and audio/video, but you can charge all your devices from it.'"
Space

How Would an Astronaut Falling Into a Black Hole Die? 412

Posted by Soulskill
from the probably-heart-attack dept.
ananyo writes "According to the accepted account, an astronaut falling into a black hole would be ripped apart, and his remnants crushed as they plunged into the black hole's infinitely dense core. Calculations by Joseph Polchinski, a string theorist at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, California, though, point to a different end: quantum effects turn the event horizon into a seething maelstrom of particles and anyone who fell in would hit a wall of fire and be burned to a crisp in an instant. There's one problem with the firewall theory. If Polchinski is right, then either general relativity or quantum mechanics is wrong and his work has triggered a mini-crisis in theoretical physics."
Businesses

The Twighlight of Small In-House Data Centers 180

Posted by samzenpus
from the say-goodnight dept.
dcblogs writes "Virtualization, cloud services and software-as-a-service (SaaS) is making it much easier to shift IT infrastructure operations to service providers, and that is exactly what many users are doing. Of the new data center space being built in the U.S., service providers accounted for about 13% of it last year, but by 2017 they will be responsible for more than 30% of this new space, says IDC. 'We are definitely seeing a trend away from in-house data centers toward external data centers, external provisioning,' said Gartner analyst Jon Hardcastle. Among those planning for a transition is the University of Kentucky's CIO, who wants to reduce his data center footprint by half to two thirds. He expects in three to five years service provider pricing models 'will be very attractive to us and allow us to take most of our computing off of our data center.' IT managers says a big reason for the shift is IT pros don't want to work in data centers at small-to-mid size firms that can't offer them a career path. Hank Seader, managing principal of the Uptime Institute, said that it takes a 'certain set of legacy skills, a certain commitment to the less than glorious career fields to make data centers work, and it's hard to find people to do it.'"
Power

Laser Fusion's Brightest Hope 115

Posted by samzenpus
from the coming-together dept.
First time accepted submitter szotz writes "The National Ignition Facility has one foot in national defense and another in the future of commercial energy generation. That makes understanding the basic justification for the facility, which boasts the world's most powerful laser system, more than a little tricky. This article in IEEE Spectrum looks at NIF's recent missed deadline, what scientists think it will take for the facility to live up to its middle name, and all of the controversy and uncertainty that comes from a project that aspires to jumpstart commercial fusion energy but that also does a lot of classified work. NIF's national defense work is often glossed over in the press. This article pulls in some more detail and, in some cases, some very serious criticism. Physicist Richard Garwin, one of the designers of the hydrogen bomb, doesn't mince words. When it comes to nuclear weapons, he says in the article, '[NIF] has no relevance at all to primaries. It doesn't do a good job of mimicking secondaries...it validates the codes in regions that are not relevant to nuclear weapons.'"

Comment: Re:No they won't (Score 1) 205

by Fwipp (#43228327) Attached to: Google Launches 'Keep' To Rival Evernote

Yes, I "trusted" Google to maintain the list of RSS feeds I am interested in. And given that it took me less than two minutes to export the data into nice readable JSON and XML, I don't think I made a mistake using their free service for the past few years.

I think I can also "trust" Google Keep to hold onto those little things for when I need them, and let me export the important data when they're shutting the thing down in a few years. If I can't find a grocery list from 2 years ago, I think I'll be able to cope.

Comment: Re:Just hold on a minute there, cowboy. (Score 2) 126

by Fwipp (#43047619) Attached to: The Next Revolution In Medicine: Genome Scans For Everyone

Because if I have a 40% chance of getting leukemia, my insurance premiums will be through the roof. So even if I never got leukemia, I would have spent significantly more than Jane down the street.

(Really, this just continues to argue against private insurance and health care. But having expected/mandatory genetic tests will punish some individuals for things they have no control over.)

Comment: Re:It's not a matter of heavy metals (Score 1) 223

A high abortion rate is indicative of widespread poverty, which is correlated with violent crime. Abortions don't cause poverty.

For a proper comparison, you should compare identical cities before and after legalizing abortion - which, in fact, is what the book you disparage does.

For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz.

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