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Comment We used RPis in vertical farming commercially (Score 3, Informative) 45

I worked at a vertical (hydroponic) farming start up that raised a couple hundred million in funding, valued at over a billion, unicorn and all that. The controllers in the farms themselves were RPi class machines that talked to Google's IoT service. They were manufactured to order (no video ports, for example), always online via LTE modems, and they were stable and did their jobs well.

Submission + - Crypto should 'die in a fire" 1

sdinfoserv writes: One of the leading experts in computer security is UC Berkeley Professor Nicholas Weaver. https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu... . Professor Weaver's lecture on Cryptocurrencies for CS 161 class https://www.youtube.com/watch?... breaks down crypto, block chain, and several other technologies and definitively explains why it doesn't work, and it should "die in fire"

Submission + - European scientists claim nuclear fusion breakthrough (bbc.com)

tomhath writes: The UK-based JET laboratory has smashed its own world record for the amount of energy it can extract by squeezing together two forms of hydrogen...The experiments produced 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds (11 megawatts of power)...This is more than double what was achieved in similar tests back in 1997.

It's not a massive energy output — only enough to boil about 60 kettles' worth of water. But the significance is that it validates design choices that have been made for an even bigger fusion reactor now being constructed in France.

"The JET experiments put us a step closer to fusion power," said Dr Joe Milnes, the head of operations at the reactor lab. "We've demonstrated that we can create a mini star inside of our machine and hold it there for five seconds and get high performance, which really takes us into a new realm."

Comment Re:I don't understand. (Score 2) 115

its working, back in the old days it was called Palladium and was widely rejected as the experts knew what their endgame was, 20 years later with a rebrand into TPM with enforcement baked in and its a resounding success, any hacker knows if it has Trust in the product name its anything but trustworthy.

Submission + - SPAM: NASA Seeks Ideas For a Nuclear Reactor On the Moon

An anonymous reader writes: NASA and the nation's top federal nuclear research lab on Friday put out a request for proposals for a fission surface power system. NASA is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory to establish a sun-independent power source for missions to the moon by the end of the decade. If successful in supporting a sustained human presence on the moon, the next objective would be Mars. NASA says fission surface power could provide sustained, abundant power no matter the environmental conditions on the moon or Mars. The reactor would be built on Earth and then sent to the moon.

Submitted plans for the fission surface power system should include a uranium-fueled reactor core, a system to convert the nuclear power into usable energy, a thermal management system to keep the reactor cool, and a distribution system providing no less than 40 kilowatts of continuous electric power for 10 years in the lunar environment. Some other requirements include that it be capable of turning itself off and on without human help, that it be able to operate from the deck of a lunar lander, and that it can be removed from the lander and run on a mobile system and be transported to a different lunar site for operation. Additionally, when launched from Earth to the moon, it should fit inside a 12-foot (4-meter) diameter cylinder that's 18 feet (6 meters) long. It should not weigh more than 13,200 pounds (6,000 kilograms). The proposal requests are for an initial system design and must be submitted by Feb. 19.

Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: CDC Panel Unanimously Endorses Pfizer and Moderna Covid Boosters For All Adults

An anonymous reader writes: The CDC’s independent panel of vaccine scientists unanimously endorsed Pfizer and Moderna’s boosters for all adults, one of the final regulatory steps before the U.S. can officially start distributing the doses. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to recommend the shots. The Food and Drug Administration authorized both company’s vaccine boosters for everyone 18 and over earlier on Friday, and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky is expected to clear the doses soon after. The panel’s recommendation would open up eligibility to everyone 18 and over in the U.S., but the group more strongly endorsed shots for older Americans by saying everyone 50 and over should get a booster. It previously said people over 65 and some other high-risk people should get a third shot. Once Walensky signs off, tens of millions of Americans who’ve received their two initial shots at least six months ago will be eligible to get a third shot as soon as early as this weekend.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: SpaceX Will 'Hopefully' Launch First Orbital Starship Flight In January

An anonymous reader writes: Elon Musk on Wednesday said SpaceX is “hoping” to launch the first orbital flight test of its mammoth Starship rocket in January, a schedule that depends on testing and regulatory approval. “We’ll do a bunch of tests in December and hopefully launch in January,” Musk said, speaking at a meeting of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Space Studies Board.

The company’s next major step in developing Starship is launching to orbit. First, the company needs a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration for the mission, with the regulator expecting to complete a key environmental assessment by the end of this year. Musk noted that he wasn’t sure if Starship would successfully reach orbit on the first try, but emphasized that he is “confident” that the rocket will get to space in 2022. “We intend to have a high flight rate next year,” Musk said.

SpaceX aims to launch as many as a dozen Starship test flights next year, he said, to complete the “test flight program” and move to launching “real payloads in 2023.” He stressed that creating a mass production line for Starship is crucial to the program’s long-term goals, noting that the current “biggest constraint” on rocket manufacturing is how fast the company can build the Raptor engines needed for Starship. “I think, in order for life to become multiplanetary, we’ll need maybe 1,000 ships or something like that,” Musk said. “The overarching goal of SpaceX has been to advance space technology such that humanity can become a multi-planet species and, ultimately, a spacefaring civilization.”

Link to Original Source

Submission + - Iodine instead of Xenon for Ion Drives (newscientist.com)

Tesseractic writes: Chen Ly over at New Scientist reports on a Nature article on ion drives:

https://www.nature.com/article...

Dmytro Rafalskyi at ThrustMe, a space technology company based in France, and his colleagues have developed an electric propulsion system that uses iodine. They operated a small satellite and performed successful manoeuvres using the drive.

Submission + - SPAM: BlockFi Faces SEC Scrutiny Over High-Yield Crypto Accounts

An anonymous reader writes: BlockFi is being scrutinized by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over its popular product that pays customers high interest rates for lending out their digital tokens, a development that significantly ratchets up the fast-growing crypto firm’s legal woes. The SEC review focuses on whether the BlockFi accounts are akin to securities that should be registered with the regulator, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The Jersey City, New Jersey-based firm touts annual yields as high as 9.5% on its website — a figure that dwarfs the 0.06% average interest rate for bank savings accounts.

States including New Jersey and Texas have already taken action against BlockFi, questioning whether it’s marketing illicit financial products that lack bedrock consumer protections. BlockFi and other firms are able to pay high interest rates because they can charge institutional investors that want access to coins even more. The market is one of the hottest corners of crypto, with companies saying they’ve collected more than $40 billion in deposits. [...] A key concern is that unlike bank deposits, the crypto accounts aren’t insured by the federal government. If a firm goes bust, customers could lose their funds.

Link to Original Source

Submission + - Bill Gates' TerraPower Will Set Up a $4 Billion Nuclear Plant in Wyoming (interestingengineering.com) 1

Hmmmmmm writes: Founded by Bill Gates, TerraPower, a company that plans to use nuclear energy to deliver power in a sustainable manner, has selected Kremmer, Wyoming as a suitable site to demonstrate its advanced nuclear reactor, Natrium. The decision was made after extensive evaluation of the site and consultations with the local community, the company said in a press release.

Last year, the Department of Energy (DOE) had awarded TerraPower a grant of $80 million to demonstrate its technology. The advanced nuclear reactor that is being developed by the company in association with General Electric-Hitachi, uses a sodium-cooled fast reactor that works with a molten salt-based energy storage system. Earlier in June, the company had decided to set up its demonstration plant in Wyoming and has recently sealed the decision by selecting the site of a coal-fired power plant that is scheduled for a shut down by 2025, the press release said.

The demonstration plant where the company plans to set up a 345 MW reactor will be used to validate the design, construction, and operation of TerraPower's technology. Natrium technology uses uranium enriched to up to 20 percent, far higher than what is used by other nuclear reactors. However, nuclear energy supporters say that the technology creates lesser nuclear waste, Reuters reported.

The energy storage system to be used in the plant is also designed to work with renewable sources of energy. TerraPower plans to utilize this capability and boost its output to up to 500 MW, enough to power 400,000 homes, the company said.

Comment Re: The gift that keeps on giving (Score 1) 193

not that easy pal, you have to follow the rabbit, Win10 has multiple watchdogs that periodically check to see if WindowsUpdates services or any parts of the update system are disabled/broken/corrupt, if it finds issues the watchdog processes will re-enable/repair updates, the reason being is many malware apps used to disable updates so now a watchdog checks.
It is possible to disable it but long gone are the days that simply disabling WindowsUpdate in services.msc would stop it.

Comment Re: Law enfiorcement as a revenue stream (Score 1) 138

Americans are like the guy or girl who was hot growing up. They never realized how much good-will they had gotten from past generations and some amazing PR. How much economic power they derived not from their economy, but the US dollar being the world's de facto cross-border currency. Even from their position in the Cold War, a bastion of self-styled freedom against Communism's oppressive totalitarian fist.

Now they're pissing it away for nothing. China is building soft power throughout Africa. Europe is cutting itself off from them. There's a trade war with China of some sort, which is hilarious when you consider a large part of the products imported from China are literally not made in the US.

All to pad a few billionaires' pockets, to make a few people even richer.

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