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Comment Why is years-old data available online? (Score 2) 14

There should be some "friction" in accessing records more than a year or two old.

Whether that friction involves putting the older data in "nearline" storage requiring a robot to mount a disk or tape to access it, or whether it stays online but there's only a "skinny pipe" between it an the internet, an adversary shouldn't be able to transfer the entire database in less than a few weeks, more than long enough for tripwires to activate and a human to investigate.

Comment Technical details please (Score 2) 122

Show your cards. Show the world the source code and related information needed so independent experts can tell the lay public what is really going on.

Yes, you may have to reveal trade secrets, but that is the price you have to pay when your product looks like it is up to no good.

Comment Re:Unpossible!11! (Score 4, Informative) 132

And yet it's Iran who can't get any oil out while other countries export millions of barrels a day.

They don't have to. They get $2 Million for each ship that crosses the Strait of Hormuz.

Is that also why they have more inflation per week that America has per year?

They had that inflation since more than a decade, and they did not crumble. Inflation is something a free market economy cares about, but a dictatorship does not have to.

Comment Re:Induced demand is BS (Score 1) 149

No, there is not. If you are not working in B and living in A, you are not generating demand for a daily commute between A and B. The demand only arises if you are actually moving to A and taking up a job in B. If for instance, house prices in A are too high for what a job pays in B, there is also no demand for a daily commute between A and B - completely independent how many lanes the highway between A and B has.

Comment Re:Just get a real camera already (Score 1) 41

I saw a video by a photographer and he points out that the quality of photos is not the reason to buy a dedicated camera. After all, you can buy a $2000 Ricoh that only takes black and white photos now; the iPhone will, in most circumstances, take 'better' photos, or at least more true-to-life photos.

But a dedicated camera focuses your attention. If you carry your camera, you're concerned with photography. You're not distracted by texts or whatever. And so your photography is likely to be better--you're paying attention to the task in a way that you rarely will with your phone.

Comment Re: Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score 3, Interesting) 95

A few rainy days and the economics go sideways.

It does not.

As Google did, you can also do the math. Duane Arnold had a net power output of 581 MW or 14 GWh output per day. To store 14 GWh of electricity right now, you have to pay about US$560 Mio (or $40 per kWh). With the 1.9 billion dollar grant, you could build enough capacity for four days of continuous rain. And differently than a nuclear power plant, this battery capacity could do power arbitrage, charging when electricity is cheap and provide it when prices are high, generating revenue and at the same time damping electricity price pikes and stabilizing the grid.

Comment Re:Induced demand is BS (Score 1) 149

This is not exactly true. Demand for traffic is not static and just sitting there, waiting to be fulfilled. Demand indeed can be induced by an offering. If you know that from point A to point B, commute times will be X, you think twice about moving to point A if you work at point B, or taking up a job at point B, if you are already living at point A. But if due to road construction and adding a new lane, traffic times will lower to X-t, suddenly living at A and working at B will become viable, people living in A will work at B, and traffic between A and B increases, and travel times will no longer be X-t, but increase, until they reach equilibrium again at X, which was the prior cutoff point.

The same happens to businesses. A business incorporated at A might think twice about offering services at B, if roundtrip times are X. But if an additional highway lowers the travel times to X-t, it becomes a business case, until the additional demand has eaten up the advantage, and we are back at X times.

Comment Re: I know its not an original idea (Score 1) 29

You can calculate the average size of the expected small density differences in the 3000 K hot plasma, and for each Dark Matter model, which vary for instance by amount of Dark Matter or properties of Dark Matter, you get a different distribution of those differences. The actual differences physicists measure fits a model, where there is five times as much Dark Matter than baryonic matter, and the Dark Matter does not interact with itself or normal matter.

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