Comment Re:What!? (Score 1) 44
The top banner reduced my participation to this site. The glowing effect eats CPU, so I just de-activate javascript and use less the site.
Comment Re:Does anyone know who buys energy from Total Ene (Score 1) 328
If anyone knows who their customers are, please share.
A really large bunch of people and industries are their customers. They're world's #6 largest oil company, and world's overall #35 by revenue https://companiesmarketcap.com...
Comment Re: Your tax dollars at work (Score 1) 328
My guess is both are correct. Your government gave away a billion dollars in fees to lease land on your maritime domain; now moving to Texas they still need to lease or purchase land from someone to whatever is the current market price.
Comment Re:Your tax dollars at work (Score 1) 328
Are you ignoring the obvious fact that coal has to be mined constantly manually,
I am against burning coal and definitively want more windmills in my neighborhood. My point is only that this is not a case of "more taxes and creating more debt to have less infrastructure". They were more clever than that in the design of their evil plan.
Comment Re:Your tax dollars at work (Score 2) 328
Not that I like the decision, but it's cleverly done. The headline is misleading. the company will get reimbursed for their purchased licences for the offshore development, and build some natgas facility instead with the same money. It's money-neutral for everyone involved, and it develops some sort of energy infrastructure.
Of course it is only a dilatory move that has no perspective of enduring a change of political leadership, but that's not the issue today.
Can Private Space Companies Replace the ISS Before 2030? (cnn.com) 31
China's orbital outpost Tiangong was completed in 2022 and is hosting up to three astronauts at a time, reports CNN.
But meanwhile U.S. lawmakers are now signaling there's not time to develop and launch a replacement for the International Space Station — considered the signal most expensive object ever built — before its deorbiting in 2030. A recent Senate bill calls for the U.S. to continue funding it as late as 2032, but that bill still awaits approval from the U.S. Senate and the House.
But some private space companies are already building their alternatives: Private companies that are in the early design and mockup phase of developing these space stations are still waiting on NASA for guidance — and money... [NASA's "Requests for Proposals"] were delayed, in part because it took all of 2025 to cinch a confirmation for Trump's on-again-off-again pick for NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman [confirmed in December]... Similarly, 2025 saw a 45-day government shutdown, the longest in history — adding another hiccup in the space agency's plans to begin formally soliciting proposals from the private sector. Companies now expect that NASA will issue its Request for Proposals in late March or early April, one CEO told CNN...
Several commercial outfits have recently announced big funding influxes aimed at speeding up the development and launch of new orbiting outposts. Houston-based Axiom Space announced a $350 million funding round last month. Its California-based competitor Vast then notched a $500 million raise in early March. Vast is determined to launch a bare-bones station to orbit as soon as possible, with or without federal input, according to the company. "Our approach is to actually not wait for (NASA) and get going and build a minimum viable product, single-module space station called Haven-1, which we're launching into orbit next year," Vast CEO Max Haot told CNN in a phone interview earlier this month. Similarly, Axiom Space is working toward a 2028 launch date for a module that it plans to initially attach to the ISS before breaking off to orbit on its own. A spokesperson told CNN that it the company is "committed" to winning the NASA contract money and may continue pursing such goals even without contract awards.
Still, there's lingering doubt that any of the companies pursuing space stations will be able to stay afloat without securing a coveted NASA contract or at least cinching significant business from the public sector.
The article includes "Another complicating fact: Russia, the United States' primary partner on the ISS, has not pledged to keep operating its half of the space station past 2028." NASA will eventually evaluate proposals for an ISS alternative from Vast, Axiom Space, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, Max Space and several competitors including Voyager Technologies, CNN notes, ultimately handing out an estimated $1.5 billion in contracts between 2026 and 2031.
And while those companies may wait decades before a return on their investment, the article includes this quotes from the cofounder/general partner of Balerion Space Ventures, which led the fundraising for Vast. " What's obvious to us is you're going to have multiple vehicles with myriad companies go into space. You're going to have vehicles leaving from celestial bodies, like the moon. And we need a habitat."
But meanwhile U.S. lawmakers are now signaling there's not time to develop and launch a replacement for the International Space Station — considered the signal most expensive object ever built — before its deorbiting in 2030. A recent Senate bill calls for the U.S. to continue funding it as late as 2032, but that bill still awaits approval from the U.S. Senate and the House.
But some private space companies are already building their alternatives: Private companies that are in the early design and mockup phase of developing these space stations are still waiting on NASA for guidance — and money... [NASA's "Requests for Proposals"] were delayed, in part because it took all of 2025 to cinch a confirmation for Trump's on-again-off-again pick for NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman [confirmed in December]... Similarly, 2025 saw a 45-day government shutdown, the longest in history — adding another hiccup in the space agency's plans to begin formally soliciting proposals from the private sector. Companies now expect that NASA will issue its Request for Proposals in late March or early April, one CEO told CNN...
Several commercial outfits have recently announced big funding influxes aimed at speeding up the development and launch of new orbiting outposts. Houston-based Axiom Space announced a $350 million funding round last month. Its California-based competitor Vast then notched a $500 million raise in early March. Vast is determined to launch a bare-bones station to orbit as soon as possible, with or without federal input, according to the company. "Our approach is to actually not wait for (NASA) and get going and build a minimum viable product, single-module space station called Haven-1, which we're launching into orbit next year," Vast CEO Max Haot told CNN in a phone interview earlier this month. Similarly, Axiom Space is working toward a 2028 launch date for a module that it plans to initially attach to the ISS before breaking off to orbit on its own. A spokesperson told CNN that it the company is "committed" to winning the NASA contract money and may continue pursing such goals even without contract awards.
Still, there's lingering doubt that any of the companies pursuing space stations will be able to stay afloat without securing a coveted NASA contract or at least cinching significant business from the public sector.
The article includes "Another complicating fact: Russia, the United States' primary partner on the ISS, has not pledged to keep operating its half of the space station past 2028." NASA will eventually evaluate proposals for an ISS alternative from Vast, Axiom Space, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, Max Space and several competitors including Voyager Technologies, CNN notes, ultimately handing out an estimated $1.5 billion in contracts between 2026 and 2031.
And while those companies may wait decades before a return on their investment, the article includes this quotes from the cofounder/general partner of Balerion Space Ventures, which led the fundraising for Vast. " What's obvious to us is you're going to have multiple vehicles with myriad companies go into space. You're going to have vehicles leaving from celestial bodies, like the moon. And we need a habitat."
Comment Re:Free unbiased and privacy (Score 1) 108
I mean the model owner controls the bias related to the selection of the dataset. I have to assume that OpenAI/DeepSeek/... will select whatever dataset will make their government happy, for example do not include books that present a version of History that isn't popular around them. In the context is "nationalized, public AI", a Canadian agency would perform the training, to be used by other Canadian agencies (and citizen). It could be that the resulting model still is biased, but at least the Canadian government users would be free from the voluntary effort of foreign governments in biasing their models.
Comment Re:Free unbiased and privacy (Score 1) 108
But will the training data of a nationalized AI be unbiased?
At the very minimum, it will not be biased toward the interests of Canada's rivals, which makes it usable in applications where there the absence of foreign interference is a criterion, such as for school, government and defence.
If you're a simple citizen it's a different scenario. Your experiments tend to demonstrate the biases weren't introduced at the level of the training dataset, but there is no guarantee this remains the same in the future.
Comment Re:Most people don't know how they work (Score 1) 120
The "grid-forming" part is sold to consumers as an add-on, for example "Huawei backup box B0/B1". It provides isolation from the grid and powers a few chosen sockets to keep essential equipment during an outage.
Though a backup box isn't so expensive (~800 €), I guess it's not worth the additional cost for balcony PV, which are low power (~400-800 W) to remain below regulatory thresholds. Anyone can buy one from the local store, place it on a rented apartment balcony and and plug it to a wall socket, no paperwork, no changes to electrical system.
Comment Re:Ridiculous (Score 1) 67
The summary says it was used as a stressor. Wikipedia: "y-cruncher can also be used for stress-tests, as performed computations are sensitive to RAM errors and the program can automatically detect such errors.[1][2]; "The technical challenge does not (any longer) lie in the calculation itself, but in providing an environment that enables a comparatively efficient execution.[11]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Also about the previous record from Google: "This achievement is a testament to how much faster Google Cloud infrastructure gets, year in, year out. " https://cloud.google.com/blog/...
Comment Re:Is it actually PI? (Score 1) 67
The summary mentions "intermediate checkpoints" implying they have done some verification.
Comment Re:Not surprised (Score 2) 125
Within the previously existing Israel-Iran conflict, there was no immediate reason for the bombings to spread to Qatar. With Iran directly at war with a larger power, and kills on their highest leaders, the Iranian regime has nothing more to lose, so they make the war spread and as painful as possible.
Comment Re:Not surprised (Score 5, Insightful) 125
that's totally self inflicted "zero inventory" manufacturing BS that financial engineers choose to engage in.
Today I'll make an exception and defend the beancounters.
For the past decades, the world operated under the assumption that the major leaders wanted peace, and took competent advice on geopolitics. Supporting Israel to remain a sizeable regional power was enough to "keep Iran from doing something stupid". Iran bombing critical Qatari facilities was therefore a low risk, and industries calculated their needs based on that. This is part of what got us the incredibly inexpensive electronics we had just yesterday.
The rationale and the calculations only changed now that "the US doing something stupid" became a possibility. It's easy to ask, why not 1 month or 2 months of storage of critical materials. The thing is there are way too many critical materials in complex industries to store. It's only feasible for industries whose costs are protected, like defence. In a market pushed by consumer goods where people click on the cheapest deal, it isn't feasible.
Or you need strong regulations to oblige companies to do so. But while you can compel Western companies e.g. "Intel" to increase their costs and take stocks, you can't reach foreign competitors; you're just giving more advantage to the products made by the likes of Longsoon and MediaTek.
Comment Re:Euphemisms suck (Score 2) 114
The willingness on the part of so-called journalists
* The word "Iran conflict" is from the Slashdot Editor (not from a journalist).
* The word is linked to an URL, which is from Wikipedia (not from a journalist either).
* The Wikipedia article it links to is titled "2026 Iran war".
You can potentially complain about the Editor, but nobody else. Personally I find it fine. "Conflict" is just shorthand for "armed conflict", which is a war. Also, what happens in Iran can be worded as a war, a conflict, a situation. One does not have to use the most specific word everytime, when the context is obvious. It's not like Russia using "SMO" to avoid the word "war". The Slashdot Editor clearly linked to a Wikipedia article titled "War". We are allowed to use similar words for a variation.
Comment Re:Broken cat? (Score 4, Informative) 66
stretched like it didn't give a damn, and then ran off.
(Your friend is an ahole). Cats hide their pain so they don't signal themselves as an easy prey. If the cat had been taken up and down normally without pain, it would not have felt the need to run off.
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