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Comment Defy FUD, Meet Expectations (Score 5, Insightful) 110

I don't know what expectations these are defying unless they're from those created by anti-EV FUD. I thought it was pretty clear that EV batteries usually last longer than the cars themselves. If 250K is exceeding expectations, then the expectations are wrong and haven't been supported by the data for a long time.

Medicine

Non-Invasive Stimulation of the Brain Ended Opioid Addiction, Cigarette Craving (jpost.com) 37

The Jerusalem Post reports that doctors at Haifa's Rambam Health Care Campus "have successfully treated their first Israeli opioid addiction patient using an experimental noninvasive brain technology, easing him through withdrawal in just 20 minutes..." [T]he team of specialists at the Haifa medical center intervened in the electrical activity of an area of the patient's brain called the nucleus accumbens, the core of the brain system responsible for feelings of satisfaction, pleasure, and reward. The treatment, based on technology from the Israeli company Insightec, is similar to the one used to treat symptoms of essential tremor and Parkinsonian tremor, under MRI control. In this case, the treatment was carried out with the help of a new technology that performs noninvasive neuromodulation, without heating or burning tissue, and allows stimulation in the same area of the brain to increase or suppress activity...

"Tests carried out a week later produced negative results for opioids and other substances," [said Dr. Lior Lev-Tov, director of the functional neurosurgery unit in Rambam's neurosurgery division and the one leading the new study at the medical center.] "The patient himself reported a craving score of zero out of 10 for using the drug, and even another side effect, a drastic drop in the desire for cigarettes, from three packs a day to just a few cigarettes, and with no urge to use alcohol. In other words, in a treatment that lasted about 20 minutes net, our patient was completely freed from an extreme dependence that had accompanied him every day for years. This is nothing less than a medical and therapeutic revolution."

Dr. Lev-Tov added that "This experience opens doors for us to treat a wide range of very serious illnesses such as PTSD, OCD, eating disorders, other addictions, severe depression, severe pain disorders, and I hope we will also be able to reach cognitive areas and treat attention deficit disorders, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and more."

Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.
Space

Blue Origin Rocket Exploded Thursday Night During Hot-Fire Test (cbsnews.com) 73

Spaceflight Now shared their video of the explosion, which the Orlando Sentinel describes as showing Blue Origin's rocket "become engulfed in flames. The fireball expands out and covers the entire launch pad as the fuselage of the rocket can be seen crumbling into the flames."

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said on X.com "It's too early to know the root cause but we're already working to find it. Very rough day, but we'll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It's worth it." (SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted "Sorry to see this, I hope you recover quickly.")

It's unclear how this will impact future launches. "The rocket was destroyed," reports CBS News, "and as the smoke cleared, there was no sign of the erector-gantry used to move the New Glenn from its hangar to the pad and to raise it from horizontal to vertical. Likewise, one of two tall lightning towers was no longer visible." It was the first such on-pad explosion at the Cape since a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blew up on nearby pad 40 on Sept. 1, 2016... Blue Origin only has one New Glenn pad, the one that was damaged in the Thursday test. The New Glenn, which has launched three times, is a heavy lift rocket designed to compete head-to-head with SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. During New Glenn's most recent flight in April, an upper stage malfunction prevented a commercial internet satellite from reaching its planned orbit...

The New Glenn destroyed Thursday was to send 48 Leo internet satellites owned by Amazon into space [which were not on board for the hot-fire test]

Blue Origin posted on X.com that "Debris from our recent hotfire anomaly may wash ashore in the coming days/weeks. If you encounter any debris, do not touch or approach it for your safety."

"Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult..." NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman posted on X.com. "âWe will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader symbolset for sharing the news.

Comment Self-Hosting (Vaultwarden) (Score 1) 70

I love that I can self-host Bitwarden, and I do it with Vaultwarden, which is open source, so I have no fear of it going away. But if the company got really obnoxious and blocked self-hosted servers from the browser plugins, then I would be in big trouble. I don't think the changes listed suggest that they're going to do that anytime soon, but it's something I want to keep an eye out for.

Comment Virtual Power Plant (Score 2) 59

I have Powerwalls, and also happen to live in Massachusetts. I participate in the virtual power plant program, where the batteries dump to the grid for an hour or two during peak demand in the summer (typically 5-7pm on hot days). I get paid nearly $1000/year for each Powerwall. Car batteries are much larger. I would love to be able to have my EVs participate in this, as well, but our cars don't support bidirectional charging. If they did, we would love to be part of this, assuming the terms are similar.

Science

Scientists Found a Way To Cool Quantum Computers Using Noise (sciencedaily.com) 7

Slashdot reader alternative_right writes: Quantum computers need extreme cold to work, but the very systems that keep them cold also create noise that can destroy fragile quantum information. Scientists in Sweden have now flipped that problem on its head by building a tiny quantum refrigerator that actually uses noise to drive cooling instead of fighting it. By carefully steering heat at unimaginably small scales, the device can act as a refrigerator, heat engine, or energy amplifier inside quantum circuits.

Comment Samsung DEX (Score 1) 24

How does this compare with Samsung DEX that has been on Android for years to provide a desktop experience? I played with it a bit when work started requiring us to be in-office but without assigned cubes and static equipment, as I could, at least in theory, do everything I needed with a keyboard, mouse, screen and my phone driving it all with a VNC app to do my real work on a Linux server.

I rather liked it, but it had some glitches where it wouldn't always recognize the monitor from the docking station, and it couldn't make use of a second monitor.

With so many workers now in this situation, and phones having so much processing power, this seems like an obvious solution.

Comment Star Wars for $4B was a gift (Score 1) 109

When Lucas sold Star Wars for $4B, it sounded like a ridiculously low number. Even without the rights to make new content, that was worth well over $1B. If he were shopping around instead of giving it to Disney, it probably was worth closer to $10B. With honest accounting, that's probably in the range of value Disney has received, and that's with having produced the worst possible sequels.

Comment Mergers Have to Merge (Score 2) 75

Dell has made lots of acquisitions over the years, and each one had their own systems. Dell acquired me at one point (I'm sure that was their intent, and they just got EMC thrown in with the deal), so I've certainly seen this. It took a long time to really merge the companies, and I'm sure they still have many separate systems. Eventually it makes sense to move everything to the same enterprise management system; at least everything that they aren't keeping separate for an easy future spinoff.

While the obvious answer is to move everything to Dell's existing system, or possibly EMC's, they may well have realized that none of the existing systems were adequate, so it was time for a new one. Might as well rip the bandaid off quickly all at once and be done with it.

Comment Re:I remember the last time they tried that (Score 1) 75

Catalyst was the project name.

Or was Catalyst the replacement for the one that failed?

As I recall, the failed one customized everything for how EMC did things. The replacement changed how EMC did things to match the default, as it was easier to change the company than customizes the software. The only pain point I remember on the engineering side was all the part numbers changing to match the new standardized format.

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