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Comment Re:No actual shortage (Score 1) 364

What's happening right now is all those crude oil tankers normally loading up in the Persian Gulf are now all heading to loading up from American ports, of all things! And some may head towards Venezuela, shiping heavier Venezuelan crude oil to European refineries equipped to process the denser crude.

Comment Availability will be quite limited, though. (Score 1) 31

I think when JR Central introduces these new modified 700S Series train sets, they will likely cater specifically to business passengers willing to pay for more comfortable seating. As such, trains will run on the "Nozomi" trains that run only between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka stations.

Submission + - Tracy Kidder, Author of "The Soul of a New Machine", has died.

wiredog writes: Tracy Kidder, author of "The Soul of a New Machine" has died at the age of 80.

"The Soul of a New Machine" is about the people who designed and built the Data General Nova, one of the 32 bit superminis that were released in the 1980's, just before the PC destroyed that industry. It was excerpted in The Atlantic.

"I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."

Comment Comcast is becoming an ISP anyway (Score 2) 102

Especially once they started to use DOCSIS technology to push faster Internet services. And they were able to keep up (mostly) with fiber Internet, They now offer symmetric 1.2 gigabit speed Internet with DOCSIS 4.0, which has started its national rollout. I expect Comcast once it achieves near-natonal coverage of DOCSIS 4.0 to push it to 4 gigabit symmetric access.

In short, I expect Comcast to be less in the cable TV business and more in the cable modem Internet business. And very likely they may widely offer a cloud storage DVR with effectively unlimited storage to save video from cable TV channels and streaming services for later viewing.

Comment Re:Stupid idea (Score 1) 79

The big issue is HOW to get the age verification. This isn't a cellphone where verification can be done by biometrics like reading a fingerprint or Apple's Face ID. Relatively few laptops out there can do biometric verification unless it's newer Apple MacBook models with Touch ID fingerprint verification.

Comment AI data centers in power-cheap locations (Score 1) 96

This is why I've always contended the majority of AI data centers will be located in countries where power is cheap and plentiful. China has a good number of them because they're probably located near one of the many coal-fired powerplants built in the last 35 years.

As such, I expect both Iceland and Norway to be major locations for AI data centers. Iceland because of its vast available geothermal power and Norway because of its vast available hydropower.

Submission + - AI found 12 New OpenSSL zero-days (lesswrong.com)

wiredog writes: "Our goal was to turn what used to be an elite, artisanal hacker craft into a repeatable industrial process. We do this to secure the software infrastructure of human civilization before strong AI systems become ubiquitous. Prosaically, we want to make sure we don't get hacked into oblivion the moment they come online."

Comment Re:Unlikely to get lead back in gasoline (Score 1) 61

Except aviation gasoline still uses tetraethyl lead so gasoline-fueled aviation engines can run at much higher compression than automobile engines. Getting rid of tetraethyl lead in aviation gasoline has been a very contentious issue in recent years because many engines on General Aviation airplanes may not be able to properly run even with 99 RON unleaded gasoline.

Comment Unlikely to get lead back in gasoline (Score 3, Informative) 61

Look, tetraethyl lead was a "cheap" way to get gasoline-fueled engines to run higher compression without pre-detonation (knocking) damaging the engine. The development of electronic fuel injection in the 1970's and 1980's pretty much eliminated the knocking problem by electronically adjusting the timing of spark plug ignition via knock sensors and a small computer, which meant modern gasoline-fueled engines for street-legal vehicles rarely suffer from this issue. Besides, modern refining technology makes it possible for gasoline RON octane ratings as high as 99 (circa 95 pump octane) in unleaded fuel, pretty much eliminating the need for tetraethyl lead.

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