Slashdot Mirror

"So what's the long term plan to store the heavy metals and the byproducts from solar panel production?
Those byproducts don't exist, moron."

Perhaps you should bother to educate yourself before spouting off like a fool.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/m...

https://www.cleanenergywire.or...

https://principia-scientific.o...

https://spectrum.ieee.org/gree...

Or alternatively, something like these --

Do You See What I See? Detecting Hidden Streaming Cameras Through Similarity of Simultaneous Observation
Detecting Wireless Spy Cameras Via Stimulating and Probing
Detecting Spies in IoT Systems using Cyber-Physical Correlation
DeWiCam: Detecting Hidden Wireless Cameras via Smartphones

I'd like to see the power requirements.

Indeed: the power requirements for supercomputers have been getting crazy, and the forecasts for exascale computing are worse. Interestingly, the power required for the computation isn't all that bad; what really kills you is the power burned in moving data around, and the power required to keep everything cool. The DoE's exascale computing research has a goal of a machine in the early 2020s that only requires 20-30 MW.

It is a few years old, but IEEE Spectrum provided a good overview of the challenges of exascale computing. Power is a big one, as described in this Spectrum article. Other problems include cosmic rays, dirty power, and bad solder, as described here.

I'd like to see the power requirements.

Indeed: the power requirements for supercomputers have been getting crazy, and the forecasts for exascale computing are worse. Interestingly, the power required for the computation isn't all that bad; what really kills you is the power burned in moving data around, and the power required to keep everything cool. The DoE's exascale computing research has a goal of a machine in the early 2020s that only requires 20-30 MW.

It is a few years old, but IEEE Spectrum provided a good overview of the challenges of exascale computing. Power is a big one, as described in this Spectrum article. Other problems include cosmic rays, dirty power, and bad solder, as described here.

I'd like to see the power requirements.

Indeed: the power requirements for supercomputers have been getting crazy, and the forecasts for exascale computing are worse. Interestingly, the power required for the computation isn't all that bad; what really kills you is the power burned in moving data around, and the power required to keep everything cool. The DoE's exascale computing research has a goal of a machine in the early 2020s that only requires 20-30 MW.

It is a few years old, but IEEE Spectrum provided a good overview of the challenges of exascale computing. Power is a big one, as described in this Spectrum article. Other problems include cosmic rays, dirty power, and bad solder, as described here.

Velodyne never promised a $50 LIDAR.

Velodyne Announces $50 Solid-State Lidar, Plans for a Solid-State Puck

Velodyne Says It's Got a "Breakthrough" in Solid State Lidar Design

You may post your apology below.

We have hard proof that the US has backdoors into hardware designed and made in the US. That's a fact, we know it with absolute certainty.

Citation needed.

Unlike you, I actually wanted such a citation, so I googled for "the US has backdoors into hardware designed and made in the US". I got back a pretty good hit but without citations, but it was from a story in 2013 so I appended 2013 to my search terms and found several good references. Also, let me take this opportunity to remind you to Never forget Qwest.

Maybe you're just terrible at googling, and need to work on that, but it seems more likely that your request for citations was disingenuous. If not, though, don't be so goddamned lazy.

You could wear THIS monster: https://spectrum.ieee.org/imag... in order, under ideal conditions, to generate "millivolts" :) I don't think that is going to work out for smart watches or most devices. Seems like just adding a solar element on the strap and bezel would work better in most cases. Still, kinda neat.

Maybe add that thermal stuff, plus solar, plus WiFi harvesting, plus a kinetic weight spinner and together it could give a 1/100th charge (and cost three times as much and weigh four times as much). I think I will just throw my wearable device on a wireless charger once a day for a short time.

Hey ass-hole:

"You wake up one morning to discover that your child is ill: His forehead feels hot to the touch, and his rapid breathing has a wheezing sound. You live in Malawi, where your health care options are few. When the local clinic opens, you wait for your turn with the solitary clinic worker. She’s not a doctor, but she’s been trained to identify and handle routine problems. "

"She puts on a stethoscope and presses its chest piece against your son’s front and back to carefully listen to his lungs. Through the windows, open in the heat of the day, come the sounds of people talking, the thrum of a generator, and the roar of a moped on the main road. The health worker strains to hear. " https://spectrum.ieee.org/biom...

This is not remotely the problem anywhere else. So in 3rd world countries were people who are not doctors treat people in noisy conditions, this would help.

Do you fucking understand now. Take your fucking head out of your ass.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-...

According to the research paper describing the new thermoelectric generator, it resulted from a joint effort among researchers at the University of Osaka, the Technical University of Denmark, and E-ThermoGentek Co., Ltd.

These researchers deserve the IEEE Junichi Nishizawa Medal

Now handling cash is also not for free but at least with bigger shops it is not 2-5%. Anyone has an idea how much does the cash handling and transfers cost?

Here is the relevant link:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/geek...

The article is only one page long, but the skinny is:
Around 3% por small businesses and businesses which deal with little cash, and between 0,5 to 1% for big businesses which can better amortize the costs.

If you were a good nerd in a "News for nerds and stuff that matters" site, you would be a member of IEEE, and would already know this. ;-)

Plug: For all our fellow nerds and geeks: This is a great time in the year to become an IEEE member. Either if you are in EE like me, or a computer scientist. There are plenty or societies to chose from, among them the computer society, the communications society and many other. This unlocks a wealth of info and networking opportunities, and many other benefits.

Idiot reporters. Can't be bothered to try to understand a new technology, so they report on it using the only metric they already understand - speed. It's not about max speeds. That's kinda pointless as at 1.2 Gbps you'd blow through a 5 GB data cap in 30 seconds. Even at 140 Mbps you'd blow through 5 GB in less than 5 minutes.

5G isn't about improving your speed in the best case (though that can happen). It's about improving your speed in the worst case - when lots of people are trying to pull data from a tower simultaneously. The higher speed means each person's data download gets completed faster, meaning the tower is handling fewer simultaneous requests, meaning each individual request gets more bandwidth.

In addition, 5G adds MIMO. Rather than using one antenna to transmit and receive omnidirectionally, it uses multiple antennas and software to "aim" the antenna array like a phased array radar. Adding directionality means you can transmit to multiple devices over the same frequencies without the signals interfering because direction of the signal now matters, not just the presence of a signal. It's like communicating with point-to-point lasers instead of a sensor which just detects the total amount of light coming from all directions. Light signals being sent to other devices interfere with the latter, but not with the former.

What that boils down to is that 5G will minimize the impact of other people's use of the tower on the speeds you get. The max speed you experience may not be a substantial improvement over 4G. But the minimum speed you experience when the tower cell is crowded should be substantially better. You remember the iPhone demo which failed because there were too many WiFi users in the room? That's the kind of situation 5G solves.

While over-the-air bandwidth is bound by Shannon's limit, that only applies to shared channels. The MU-MIMO found on most 802.11ac implementations gets around this limitation by making the channels directional. It's basically a simplified form of phased array radar, where you can "point" the antenna via software rather than have to physically move it. For a visual analogy, 802.11a/b/g/n is like turning the room light on and off, and the device receive the light signal by measuring the overall brightness of the room. MIMO is like the sender shining a laser pointer at the receiver, and the receiver using a tube to reject light from any direction other than the sender's direction. Whereas the room light affects and interferes with all other light-based communication in the room (the channel is shared), the laser pointer only interferes if you happen to be in the same line as the sender to recipient. Since the information channel is no longer shared, the Shannon limit no longer applies, and everyone is able to use the full bandwidth of the airwaves simultaneously.

5G includes MIMO, enabling it to communicate with individual devices simultaneously over the same frequencies without interference. So going forward, I expect the Shannon limit to be less and less relevant to wireless communications.

As I've been saying, 5G doesn't really benefit you in the best-case scenarios people usually use for comparisons (nobody except you is using the cell tower for data). It benefits you in the worst-case scenario (lots of other people are competing with you for bandwidth to a cell tower).

In the spirit of, "never say never," a practical quantum computer is at least 100 years away.

I wouldn't even go that far. I'm not convinced that a useful quantum computer will ever be constructed. For example, here is an interesting quote from another recent article, The Case Against Quantum Computing :

"Experts estimate that the number of qubits needed for a useful quantum computer, one that could compete with your laptop in solving certain kinds of interesting problems, is between 1,000 and 100,000. So the number of continuous parameters describing the state of such a useful quantum computer at any given moment must be at least 2^1,000, which is to say about 10^300. That’s a very big number indeed. How big? It is much, much greater than the number of subatomic particles in the observable universe.

To repeat: A useful quantum computer needs to process a set of continuous parameters that is larger than the number of subatomic particles in the observable universe."

I'm of the opinion that practical quantum computing is impossible (see link below for the argument). Start believing this too, and you will have one fewer things to be worried about!

https://spectrum.ieee.org/comp...

I hope someone or many someones out there are working on reversible computing. It sounds like the only long-term way forward. https://spectrum.ieee.org/comp...

I'm just going to leave this here:
The case against quantum computing

Exactly. Look at "quantum computers."

While I believe that such experimental research is beneficial and may lead to a better understanding of complicated quantum systems, I’m skeptical that these efforts will ever result in a practical quantum computer. Such a computer would have to be able to manipulate—on a microscopic level and with enormous precision—a physical system characterized by an unimaginably huge set of parameters, each of which can take on a continuous range of values. Could we ever learn to control the more than 10^300 continuously variable parameters defining the quantum state of such a system?

My answer is simple. No, never.

Already been done: https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars...

It'll be fine, you just update it every time, and account for the variances (that'll make it more secure...), I'm sure no major changes will ever happen to your brain.
After all it's just three properly located sensors you need to attach to your head,

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/do...
Interesting considering the fc article says 32 sensors, the paper says 30 and one of the authors of the paper also helped write the article...

The total duration of the experiment was approximately 1.5 hours,
including 0.5 hour for electrode placement and variable time
in the breaks between blocks

30 mins to attach them (I assume that's the 30 sensor, but it also seems like the 3 sensor test would take longer to do the actual testing), and I didn't bother looking too hard to see how long it'd take for the "password".

Fourth, all data analyzed here were collected in a single session,
meaning that the question of the biometric permanence
of the CEREBRE protocol is still an open one. Addressing
this question will require asking participants to repeat the
protocol multiple times with temporal delay between sessions-
acquisition of this data is currently ongoing in the lab

You could just look at what Engineers say on the topic:
Why the Future of Data Storage is (Still) Magnetic Tape

It can get complicated, but Scientists have known for years that there is a price to be paid, somewhere, for the apparent benefits of "free energy".

It is virtually impossible to calculate ALL the costs in providing wind and solar power.Do you start with the costs of mining the materials needed to produce the components of a wind generator? Wait! How about starting with the costs of producing the machinery that mine those elements? No, that doesn't take into account the lab time and personnel needed to come up with the idea in the first place...etc., etc. I found the articles on the IEEE Spectrum page very interesting. the articles have rotated off the page but are still searchable. There are many smaller articles in the series. Here's one: https://spectrum.ieee.org/ener...

DNS manipulation has also been used against prostitution websites, such as "packpage.com", and the command-and-control services of botnets. Monitoring of DNS queries has long been a security problem. There's is good summary of the problem at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/do...

Except.... that's an oversimplified view of it.
Look at a full list of 802.11 standards and amendments.
Yes, your average consumer knows their alphabet, and can probably figure out that 802.11ac is better than 802.11n. But it isn't clear or concise, and the other IEEE 802.11 standards could get in the way. 'Oh, I heard about 802.11ad, WiGig - isn't that faster and newer?'
If these versions functionally act as the yearly rollup meta-standards as well (for example, IEEE 802.11-2016 rolls up ae, aa, ad, ac, and af), then this makes a lot of sense.
Also, throw in 802.11bb - Light-based wireless data communication aka LiFi - and it breaks the 'bigger letters are better and backwards-compatible' scheme entirely.

LIDAR is not a new invention. What would differentiate this device from other LIDAR devices already on the market would be cost. If this is substantially cheaper than other LIDAR implementations, it is relevant. If it is the same price, then nobody cares. There are two LIDAR arrays promised under $50 and one under $100.

What is the cost per device anticipated to be? That is literally the only relevant factor.

...then this is great, right?

One would hope that this would actually be something the Left and Right could unify on, as nuclear power is the only extant technology that is truly green.

- We have the tech to completely avoid meltdowns (well, as long as there's gravity).
- There are many, many tech advancement opportunities as much of civilian nuclear tech development in the US has basically stopped since the 1970s. Fortunately the world has continued.
- nuclear continues to need FAR too many subsidies to develop/operate.

Unfortunately, a segment of our political leadership likes to INSIST that wind/solar are 'competitive' with previous techs including nuclear which is basically a baldfaced lie - it's competitive BECAUSE IT'S BEING MASSIVELY SUBSIDIZED.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ener...

Comparing subsidies per MWh produced is not a flawless comparison - it ignores, for example, massive sunk costs in coal, oil (mainly in gov't land subsidies) and nuclear (long since invested large capital projects).

But coming out of the lines right now, nuclear is the sole "greenest" tech. If Global Climate Change is CO2 driven and is the critical, urgent issue it's presented to be, nuclear is the only solution.

“Second wave of RA'S today in Costa Mesa. Multiple products are being transferred to India. We are training our replacements.”

The transition began years and years ago. There can be no "class action lawsuit", because IBM has no legal duty to employ Americans, and in fact it is doing so less and less all the time because they are expensive.

Everyone does the same. People buy the $8 shirt made in Indonesia, not the $58 shirt made in the US.

See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/do... for details on the scheme and comments on prior solutions.

Oops.. missing link

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech...

What are the security implications of letting web sites run arbitrary code on your GPU?

I bet they're more significant than you're expecting.

https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi...

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/st...

Where are you getting your information. Waymo handles emergency vehicles and at least claims to handle rain and fog.

So is this an internal coup, or did the board just find out about something this guy has done which will cause problems for the company? Either way, there's no meat with these potatoes. Show me this meal again when it's complete.

As far as bidirectional vehicles go, they only make sense for delivery vehicles. They make zero sense for passenger vehicles, because passengers want to face forward. For deliveries, though, there are a handful of compelling reasons to use them, which I've posted about before. The primary reason is to deal with tight driveways. They don't make sense unless your sensors are very cheap, though, since you need twice as many of them. If Velodyne comes through on their promise of $50 LIDAR then maybe it's feasible.

Ok here are some links:

A Lightweight Video Storage File System for IP Camera-Based Surveillance Applications:
https://link.springer.com/chap...

Liquid Virtual File System:
https://github.com/LiquidFM/lv...

LVFS: A scalable big data scientific storage system:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/do...

etc. etc.

So I expected LVFS to mean yet another some flavor of an LV file system. I guess what I find confusing is a four letter acronym ending with "FS" but then again, nobody should have exclusivity. I probably would have chosen another acronym although to make that "LVFS" name more specific and meaningful.

Oh no, not this shit again.

(facepalm)

Here's the methodology: https://spectrum.ieee.org/stat...

Basically they do a google search for "X programming" (where X is the name of a language) and count the number of hits. That's it.

All that means is that Python is the most "talked about" language.

It may be that Python has more hits because it causes more problems and more people go looking for answers. Who knows? Certainly not the people who do that survey.

So if ObjectPasal is go great, why isn't it on this list?

https://spectrum.ieee.org/static/interactive-the-top-programming-languages-2018

Maybe they should start by making computing reversible. https://spectrum.ieee.org/comp... If they don't, then they'll run into temperature problems, regardless of the IC creation method.

Augmented reality has applications in production and is already being leveraged there [1] [2]. The commercial/industrial space is an easier sell because no one cares if you look like a dork or it's unwieldy (to a point) if it actually improves productivity. Retail sales are never going to take off until you don't look like a tool wearing one and they work in direct sunlight... at that point they'll sell like hotcakes (especially after I introduce my app that overlays everyone else on the subway with (or no one at all)).

Serious investment, but low operating costs(;-))

Brazil has used it for years, here's an IEEE story on the current status https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/do...

Marmora has a proposal for the same in Ontario, https://marmoraandlake.ca/pump...

This is by design so that every few years you have to buy new hardware. And this goes way back to when a Phoebus cartel decided that the light bulbs should have a limited life span instead of being able to be used for years at a time.

Never say never, people are clever and dedicated. The best current technique is a variation on current extruders used for veggie burgers. It utilizes shear force to cause muscle-like fibers to form:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/gree...

I love cash, but electronic money is more convenient, more versatile and great.

Just ask a non-bancarized guy in Kenya or Tanzania using M-Pesa about it... And trust me when I tell you that Safaricom and Vodafone did not implement this from the goodness of their hears, but for pure profit, and yet, it ended up raising the living standards of the people at large, and specialy of those non-bancarized.

Sources:
The economist Sept 26-oct 2, 2009
And IEEE Spectrum here:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/stat...

Yes, if we look at electronic money and a cashless society from the optic of a westener who has enough diposable income to aford a computer and knows what this "internet" thing is, is all doom and gloom.

But once we try to get ourselves in the whorn -out shoes of less fortunate people that make less than $1 a day (and for me, being in Venezuela, this is easier, as is not a tought experiemnt, but a reality I see everyday) we see that electronic money can be beneficial for everyone, warts and all...

So, I for one, welcome our e-money overlords... Yes, I wish there would still be cash, but... whatever benefits the many is ok by me...

Especially considering the PowerPC and SPARC part. They had register windows and register renaming, I would bet $100 they had speculative execution as well, because register renaming makes not much sense without it.

You'd be wrong about PowerPC (not until 1994) and SPARC (not until 1995), but you can rest easy in that you're merely reckless and untrustworthy rather than lying and untrustworthy.

I expect my $100 now.

Especially considering the PowerPC and SPARC part. They had register windows and register renaming, I would bet $100 they had speculative execution as well, because register renaming makes not much sense without it.

You'd be wrong about PowerPC (not until 1994) and SPARC (not until 1995), but you can rest easy in that you're merely reckless and untrustworthy rather than lying and untrustworthy.

I expect my $100 now.

Electric.

Not the GP, I don't believe nuclear power is an option, not even in a mix. We should learn from CO2: solve the waste problem *before* large scale deployment. But electric flying might actually be an option, coming from someone who would have laughed you out of the room for that 10 years ago.

I think nuclear, dependably rigid, lighter-than-air aircraft is possible. A small reactor for both warming the air for lifting and running the engines for propulsion. I think Greenpeace would be totally ok with that.

Electric.

Not the GP, I don't believe nuclear power is an option, not even in a mix. We should learn from CO2: solve the waste problem *before* large scale deployment. But electric flying might actually be an option, coming from someone who would have laughed you out of the room for that 10 years ago.

Bill Joy is getting into the act with polymer/solid state batteries.

See recent Slashdot submission titled Petroglyph Explanation Remains Ignored After 15 Years. This situation with Trump lacking a science advisor is not especially different in that the person making these petroglyph claims, Anthony Peratt, is a government scientist specializing in high-energy density plasmas and nuclear physics, and has even advised the US government on the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Submission ...

A government researcher in plasma and nuclear physics demonstrated in a 2003 paper that 40% of all petroglyph types could be correlated to unique forms witnessed for the first time just two years prior in classified government laboratories. A recent Joe Rogan Experience episode viewed by a million people and featuring Robert Schoch, a Ph.D. in Geology and Geophysics from Yale, briefly mentions the discovery. But petroglyph experts and the larger scientific community continue to completely ignore the findings and implications. What does it mean that the public must learn about this groundbreaking discovery from a comedian? Why have science journalists ignored the discovery for almost 15 years?

The Slashdot community does not itself seem especially concerned about warnings from nuclear scientists, as the submission has had plenty of time by now to make it to the homepage.

I think saving money on cooling is the primary motivation behind the project, with security an additional consideration. From the Microsoft page that you linked:

In fact, Naval Group adapted a heat-exchange process commonly used for cooling submarines to the underwater datacenter. The system pipes seawater directly through the radiators on the back of each of the 12 server racks and back out into the ocean. Findings from phase 1 of Project Natick indicate water from the datacenter rapidly mixes and dissipates in the surrounding currents.

From the IEEE Spectrum article about Project Natick that Microsoft links to:

When Sean James, who works on data-center technology for Microsoft, suggested that the company put server farms entirely underwater, his colleagues were a bit dubious. But for James, who had earlier served on board a submarine for the U.S. Navy, submerging whole data centers beneath the waves made perfect sense.

This tactic, he argued, would not only limit the cost of cooling the machines—an enormous expense for many data-center operators—but it could also reduce construction costs, make it easier to power these facilities with renewable energy, and even improve their performance.

How about security? Is your data safe from cyber or physical theft if it’s underwater? Absolutely. A Natick site would provide the same encryption and other security guarantees of a land-based Microsoft data center. While no people would be physically present, sensors would give a Natick pod an excellent awareness of its surroundings, including the presence of any unexpected visitors.

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, has already famously addressed the issue of Moore's law.

Expect to see more chip businesses move into "full-stack" improvements to deal with Moore's law. This means more proprietary toolchains.