My GP was ahead of her time. Many years ago she used to tell me, "Climb ten flights of stairs over the course of each day, don't worry about your heart."

The particular bridge at issue is the Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge, used for the Sound Transit rail link across Lake Washington, and also used for I-90.

Sound Transit could not suffer the same fate as the SF Hydro in Norway, simply because that was a ferry, and the Sound Transit rail link is a bridge.

While the Murrow Bridge did sink in the past, that was in 1990 in the middle of a reconstruction project. The bridge was closed to traffic at the time. The sinking was due to a number of human errors that resulted in the watertight doors of the bridge pontoons getting removed, combined with a big storm that hit the area that Thanksgiving weekend, which proceeded to fill those open pontoons with rain and lake water.

Provided no one repeats that particular bit of idiocy (opening up the pontoons), the bridge is unlikely to sink a second time.

For details on the bridge sinking, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacey_V._Murrow_Memorial_Bridge#1990_disaster.

I checked at the web site, and like all the other AI chip designers, actual fabrication is by TSMC at 5nm and 4nm. My understanding is that TSMC's fab complex in Arizona can do 5nm parts, and will be able to do 4nm relatively soon. Also that they are at Arizona's capacity for those nodes doing work for Apple and AMD. So FuriosaAI's parts will be made in Taiwan.

The US AI stock bubble is hideously dependent on a few fabs in Taiwan.

...I remember when companies wanted to accelerate depreciation, so they could take the write-off sooner.

I also remember the days when the tax laws made me a depreciable asset in my role doing tech research. I never quite worked up enough nerve to call the accountants and ask what happened after they had depreciated away my full value :^)

I work in localization. Technical writing is often easier for machine-translation systems, because the writing is (ideally) deliberately clear, concise, and structured.

The terminology issue you mention can be addressed at least partially by feeding any such machine-translation system a list of words and phrases to keep as-is in the target text.

Fiction, meanwhile, often involves complicated and subtle wordplay, which no AI system is going to handle very well.

Already thrilled to learn what erotic literature..

.. will read like, after it has been dragged through the automatic translation process. Even the automatically translated descriptions of sex toys on Aliexpress are hilarious, and those are really short and not sophisticated.

I can see it now:

"I put on my robe and wizard hat..."

How about giving the choice for an analog control and taking the wasted extra money spent on computer chips + design + digital display and making the motor last longer?

I would love it if some manufacturer would produce tried-and-true analog designs without all the extra add-on, planned-obsolescence, enshittified bullshit. I suspect this approach would do quite well in the market, at least in certain product categories -- blenders, ovens, washing machines, etc.

Actually, this reminds me to take a look at Lehman's catalog, see what they're getting up to these days. I bumped into them quite by accident ages ago when a relative was living in Amish country. Poking around their website just now, I see things like ovens and hand-cranked mixers. A bit pricey, but no "ET phone home" rubbish and solid workmanship.

• https://www.lehmans.com/

(Crikey, slashcode still doesn't render bulleted lists correctly. How stupidly embarrassing.)

The Fort St. Vrain commercial reactor in Colorado was gas-cooled and ran on a Th232-to-U233 fuel cycle. Fissile U235 was used to get started, but almost all of the energy output was from fissioning U233 produced in the reactor.

That's going to be expensive as hell.

I thought that was the entire point of consumer IoT goods? Rent-seeking by manufacturers?

(Serious question, not just snark.)

Current iron-air batteries have efficiencies around 50%. That is, put 2 kWh in, get 1 kWh back out. That ruins the economics of a lot of potential applications.

PhbGPT

Oo, oo, I know, I know! "What is Bill the Cat?" :D

the phones are NOT selling for $5,000

iPhones can go for around ¥5,000 (US$700)

Oofda, that was some brainfart-induced whiplash. I'm used to seeing ¥ used for Japanese yen, not Chinese yuan / Renminbi, and at first I was gobsmacked at what had happened to the exchange rate. Then in my foggy morning brain, I rediscovered this thing called "Context" and realized I was tuned into the wrong channel.

JPY ¥5,000 ~ USD $32.91, at ¥1 ~ $0.0066 (two-thirds of a penny)

RMB ¥5,000 ~ USD $702.02, at ¥1 ~ $0.14

... I should go get some coffee.

Wyoming is an interesting case. Data centers that have big NG-fired backup generation can connect to the grid only if they turn dispatch of those backup generators over to the grid operator. In high-demand intervals, the operator runs the backup generators rather than bringing in high-cost power from distant generators. Or runs them for frequency control if that's necessary.

There's been at least one case of a data center that signed the contract to allow the operator to run their NG-fired generation. When it turned out they had never actually implemented the control interface, the local utility cut them off cold. Want to buy a data center building with its own substation, the cooling infrastructure, etc? It's sitting idle just outside Cheyenne, with the current owners banned from connecting to the grid.

Did they also ban the use of Latin, abbreviations, and Latin abbreviations?

Back in July the 8th Circuit Court overturned the FTC's "one-click" rule which required that it be as easy to unsubscribe as to subscribe. This case is based on different misbehavior, in particular collecting billing information before revealing terms of service.