How is this different from the Sun Modular Datacenter from 2007? Dell was talking about building an entire data center, which was just a "central spine" with a bunch of similar containers attached. Dunno how many of those were ever built but the containers full of computer hardware were, most definitely, built.

Oh, it's got a bunch of GPGPUs in it, not just standard rackmount servers. Well, it's been nearly 2 decades, so I guess they're hoping the people at the patent office don't remember that.

First point: just because you can measure it, doesn't mean it is useful. The truly useful metrics typically require some significant analysis, which tends to make it much easier to "game" the numbers.

Case in point: unemployment rate. It's only people who unemployed and are actively looking for employment. If you've managed to get on disability, you are no longer looking, so you don't count against that metric. Many states were, at one point (are?), seeking to get their unemployed people on federally-paid disability so they wouldn't qualify as "unemployed" anymore, so the state wouldn't have to pay unemployment benefits. Yes, that's states getting people on the federal dole so they won't have to be on the state dole. And we wonder why Social Security is so badly under-funded. If you've gotten discouraged and you've given up looking, you don't count. There are a lot of single-income families where another of the household members would love to have an income but they haven't been able to find work, so they've settled into being a full-time housewife or Mr Mom. And there are plenty of people who genuinely need full-time employment, with benefits, but are only able to find part-time work (no benes). They may be "underemployed" but they aren't "unemployed." And there are no official "underemployment" metrics.

Second point: we are, too frequently, chasing the wrong metrics.

Case in point: GDP per capita. That doesn't really tell you anything, especially if the 1% and 0.1% are skewing the hell out of the averages. If the vast majority of people are earning jack, but a handful are really raking it in, it makes it look like everyone is doing ok.

A metric we genuinely need: ratio of median income to median living expense. Medians are less-likely to be skewed by outliers, so median not mean / average. How much do people earn, in the median? How much does it cost to live, in the median? If the first divided by the second is < 1.0, people genuinely cannot afford to live there. Compute that metric for the USA, each state, each major metro, etc. Publish the numbers. If this area has a ratio that's > 1.0 (people CAN actually afford to live there) but that area has a ratio < 1.0, people need to be moving.

In the last election, the Democrats kept talking about how the economy is doing well, based on averages (means), while Biden was in the White House. They lost because the majority of the USA is experiencing the medians, not the means, and the vast majority of the US population is seeing things getting worse, not holding steady or getting better. If we had more metrics like this, it would be plainly obvious when the economy is going the wrong direction.

I suspect that, for the vast majority of the USA, the ratio is < 1.0. And people are feeling it. Which is why, when Democrats talked about how well the economy was doing (the 1% and 0.1% are doing really well, skewing the averages, while everyone else is getting a very-raw deal), the vast majority looked at that and asked "what the hell world are you living in? it sure as hell isn't the world I'm in!" And voted for the opposite.

I have an old copy of GReader running on my tablet. It pulls from Feedly. The vast majority of what it pulls get skimmed but all of my in-depth tech articles / news comes through there.

I've been wishing, for some time, for a new RSS tool. Something which can use regex to categorize stuff, or possibly using some kind of Bayesian filtering for same. Something which can group articles, based on said categorization; if I'm in the mood to read about DiMethyl Ether R&D, having a category for that and perusing multiple articles from same would be nice.

Something which can detect if these two articles, from different sources, are referencing the same source article and find some way of amalgamating them. Something which can detect when two sub-channels from a given source have cross-posted the same story and only show me one of them.

Something which can detect when this article is part 1 of a series, and this other one is part 2, etc. and categorize them together, such that it's easy to "binge-read" the entire series.

If someone knows of apps which do these things, please spill.

Another, related problem is that, even if you can read the software, can you find hardware which will run it?

There is an answer to that.

How long can you expect various types of media to last?

Here's a recent video about exactly that.

While he doesn't get too far into the weeds, how many of us have an old flash drive sitting around, or an SD card, which could have bit rot?

This is simply false. The link in the opening gives the actual text of the proposed law:

" Article 19. Speed Limiter Technology

28170. As used in this article, “intelligent speed limiter system” means an integrated vehicle system that uses, at minimum, the GPS location of the vehicle compared with a database of posted speed limits, to determine the speed limit, and electronically limits the speed of the vehicle to prevent the driver from exceeding the speed limit by more than 10 miles per hour."

1) They've said that date before. They set dates for stuff all the time which are far away. I wouldn't put too much into it.
2) Says the current government which has an election in like a year. There are a lot of elections between now and 2035. All it takes is one, and those new "regulations" are toast.
3) I'd expect that will be only on the sale of "NEW" cars in Canada. However there will be millions of used cars in Canada that will still need to be driven, bought, and sold for decades to come. Should be a nice used car market. No doubt there will be speculators buying up cars as 2035 approaches lol
4) Exemptions upon exemptions, upon exemptions. Expect them. Government? Military? Corporate? Business? Agriculture? Etc...
5) Imports... Currently can import cars 25 years out of date, a nice cheater might be to quietly lower that threshold...

Anyway we'll see, but I expect a lot of the above. Be interesting to look at whichever Nordic country did it not too long ago, might have been Finland or perhaps Norway can't remember (Sweden?), anyway to see how the EV roll out and oil burner ban was done and how it worked(ing) out...

Assuming, of course, that you can make an axial motor which fits his idea, at the price he's quoting, there are still a couple problems with this.

Vehicles have sprung weight and unsprung weight. Sprung weight is weight which is insulated from the road by the springs and other suspension elements. Your engine and vehicle body are part of the sprung weight. Your wheels and brakes are part of the unsprung weight (no springs isolating them from the road).

For a smooth ride, you want your ratio of sprung : unsprung to be as high as possible. That way, the weight of the vehicle keeps the wheels stuck to the road and the wheels bouncing up and down on the road transmit less motion through the suspension to the body. Adding a motor to each hub is going to boost the unsprung weight, meaning you vehicle will have a rougher ride. That's problem #1.

You want as few moving parts, as possible, as part of the unsprung weight because they take a genuine beating driving over the road. Putting the motors in the unsprung weight means the motors will take a beating, which means they're going to have a shorter lifespan than you might hope. That's problem #2.

If you could remove a vehicle's differential and replace that with one containing one or more electric motors, such that the motors are part of the sprung weight, that would help to fix both issues. That, however, would add considerably to the weight and price tag, especially when you consider most front-wheel-drive vehicles already have a very crowded engine bay.

I admire his thought about retrofitting existing vehicles and turning them into Plug-In Hybrid Vehicles (PHEVs). I agree that, if 90+% of your daily driving could be done on electricity, you would seriously diminish the amount of fossil fuels needed. I agree that, if you are only adding 20 miles or so of range, you don't need such a large battery. I agree that retrofitting an existing vehicle into a PHEV, without spending 5 figures doing it, could go a LONG way toward diminishing fuel usage (mod your existing vehicle, rather than acquiring a completely different one). I agree with his motivations, and I've pondered what he suggests, some time ago. Unfortunately, I just don't see such an easy way to reach the goal.

Study involved math.
But can they write a poem?
'Nam's schools focus math.

I kid. No one cares... :)
But I did post as a haiku just for fun :)

Obviously my focus was also not the arts :p

If you live in a city and drive to work, and that is all you do, sure, get a short range EV that is all you need. For many people that is not how they drive. I'm planning an 1800km trip right now. I do it just about every year. Do I even like driving 1800km? Nope I sure don't, but the alternatives are even worse.

If I can only go in 400km spurts due to charging (assuming there is even charging available) that's like 4 or 5 days of driving EACH way (there and back again).

Sure I split that 1800km into 2 days (I have done it in one go before long ago, but I'm done with that), which means 4 days total driving, which means I need to take at least 8-9 days vacation to make it worth my while... With the EV example above, what's that? 20 days or something? lol, sure.

Sure you might rent a car. Have you looked at what that costs lately? 5 days is like 1.5-2k, so you looking at least 2-4k in car rental costs...
Sure you can fly. However with all the flight cancelations I see lately is it something I really want to bet my vacation on if I don't have to? Also once you get there, see rental prices above.
That leaves train, which is like the worst of all worlds, where it takes as long as driving, costs as much as flying, and you still need a car rental when you get there...

So yes, just because 90% of most drivers activity is short commutes doesn't really identify as 90% of the need. I don't drive to work, never have, I walk to work. I do own a car, but that is not what I use it for. So short work commute makes of 0% of my driving experience. Do I also use it for short commutes? Sure, I'll go to the grocery store, softball, etc whatever.

Anyway I'll never buy an EV until the range is at least something more reasonable. I'm sure it'll get there, but I'm not an early adopter on that one.

That said, as mentioned, I've no plans to do that 1800km straight ever again, so at 900km, call it 1000km wiggle room as to where you stop, works out to about 650 miles. Once EV's can consistently hit that mark (and not cost +100K), I'll look into it. Takes about 10h to drive that, and you really don't want to drive more than that anyway realistically.

For fun last year I did it in 3 days each way as opposed to 2 and stayed in a lot of hotels, but it does strain the vacation days (took about 2 weeks that time). Still works out to 5-7h driving time each day which I think is beyond EV's these days.

Pros: Has a range of 1200 miles
                  Can change in less than 10 minutes

Cons: Made of mostly dead babies
                    Converts to 20kt nuke when exposed to air

I'd be happy with a plug-in hybrid but precious few of them are on the US market.

What I'd rather see is a trailer with a gasoline engine and a generator, such that I could use a lower-range EV around town but still hook up a trailer (rented, not owned) when I needed to do a road trip which was well beyond the range of my batteries.

And me without mod points today. Mod this up!

At a prior gig, I introduced the IT manager to a wiki. It was free software which ran on a Windows server (they were an MS shop). At first, he didn't see the value in it. I started putting stuff in there. He'd come ask me something. Have you checked the wiki? Uhh ... oh ... yeah ... there's that info. He quickly saw the value in it and started using it as well.

Fast forward a few months. We hired some more IT folks. We quickly discovered what was poorly- and well-organized. It became a rite of passage for new folks to hit the wiki to find stuff and, if something wasn't there, someone with more experience would help them write it up. New folks quickly came to see the value in it and contribute to it. Stuff got doc'ed, widely, and well-used.

Fast forward a few years. I'm at a new gig. I'm trying to learn my way around the infrastructure and the coding standards. Oh, go ask so-and-so about that. Are there no docs? Nah, just go ask that super-busy person who is juggling the jobs of three people.

We had a wiki (mediawiki, no less) but it wasn't getting used. I used it. I wrote stuff up. More new hires, interns, etc. They're being told "oh, check his wiki page; he's got a ton of stuff linked from there." They start doing the same. It's become a running joke. Can anyone tell me how to do such-and-such? Yeah, I have a page about that; try not to act surprised. After about a month, they're not surprised; they're laughing along with everyone else.

If only one person in the organization knows how to do that task, that task has Bus Factor = 1 (only one person needs to get hit by a bus, or otherwise rendered unavailable, before your organization suffers). A good wiki, where it's easy to write clear docs, and search them 'cuz plain text, can quickly take any task to Bus Factor = infinite. If you want your organization to thrive, you need the Bus Factor as high as possible on everything.

Anytime I have to wrestle with how to do something, I doc it on the wiki. If I need to do it again, next week, I might remember how to do it. After a couple months, it's good thing I doc'ed it. Eagleson's Law says that any code you wrote, but haven't touched for at least 6 months, might as well be written by someone else. It's been flushed from your short-term memory. If you have a mortgage and car payments, cut that number in half. If you have a significant other, cut it in half. For each kid, cut it in half. Pretty soon, you're lucky if you can keep stuff in short-term memory for a week at a time. Spending 5 minutes putting it on a wiki page, which you can find when you need it, will save you a lot of "wrestling."

I assume they depend on an actual investment group to make these kinds of decisions. It isn't like teachers themselves are making these decisions. Still the optics look pretty bad (i.e. stupid teachers). That said they would likely have some board or something have to approve something like this, which also doesn't speak well. They certainly have egg on their faces as this was *international* news, and not something that an Ontario Pension Fund wears well.

As to the vocal crypto boys you find everywhere hyping, that is pretty easily understood. It's called bias. They own the crypto, the more fools (greater fool theory) they can get to join, they more money they can make. It also makes more voices clamoring for more fools, ad nauseam.

Then again this is nothing new, happens with stocks all the time. In the old timey days when folks depending on media for this information, those people giving said advice would have to be honest about their bias (i.e. I own said stock I am promoting, or I don't), or face jail. Now with social media it's more of a free for all. Though I see that some celebrities got in some hot water when promoting Crypto on TV and elsewhere while not disclosing they own it (or in some cases paid with it).

Anyway plenty of people made money in Crypto, but a lot more lost. For those following it from the beginning, it was a fools errand from the start, and knew not to get involved. Everyone wants to get rich quick is the temptation. As the old saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't.

What's worse at least normal financial fraud (likely because of regulation) they will go though some sophisticated maneuverings to steal your money to the point where it's even hard for a layman to understand what even happened. Crypto seems a lot less finessed in fraud, I guess because they don't have to be.

For some time now (probably due to stock market distrust and low returns), housing has been used in many (if not most) cases as simply financial instruments.

It's a method in which investors leverage debt into a never ending cycle of development (which is unsustainable). Whereby you build a bunch of really expensive housing (borrowing the money to do so), then have it evaluated at X, go the the bank and say I've got X as collateral, loan me Y, use that to build more expensive housing, have it evaluated at Z, go to bank say I've got Z as collateral, loan me... etc... Sure you sell and or rent to make some money on the side, but basically you use the ever crazy increasing housing valuations, to leverage more loans, acquire more debt etc... At some point it may all come crashing down (and already has for those too leveraged with rising costs of debt due to increasing interest rates), but in the meantime living large...

Don't trust propaganda coming out of China? Gasp. What propaganda is coming out of China? Probably most of it to some degree or another.

Not exactly newsworthy.

More concerning is the role in which China plays within the international organization of WHO, and the manipulation of that organizations findings causing real concern over the legitimacy and purpose of said organization.

In recent news you could say the same of Russia leading the UN security council... Lunacy.