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The sun provides about 1 kilowatt per square meter.

https://ag.tennessee.edu/solar...

A Chevy Bolt, as an example vehicle, gets "over 200 miles" from 60 kWh.

https://insideevs.com/deep-div...

Let's assume batteries get better, and it could get 500 miles from the same 60 kWh. So you would need another 60 kWh from the solar cells to go 1000 miles. At an average of 60 mph, that's almost 17 hours. 60 kWh in that time means 3.5 kW of power from the solar cells, so 3.5 square meters if the cells are 100% efficient. That's an array 1.8 meters on a side.

If this is happening in the next 10 years, you're right it will be way closer than I think.

It was a hurried wartime effort, and the science was just being discovered. The mess is a byproduct of weapons production, unrelated to nuclear energy. Armed with a better understanding, there is no need to repeat it.

Thorium Research in the Manhattan Project Era provides a fascinating history of this time period. While thorium proved to be useless for weapons, it was recognized as the superior choice for sustainably generating power. Unfortunately, the scientists were sworn to secrecy, and the public remained ignorant. Politicians are responsible for the foolish choices that resulted in the stagnation of nuclear technology, and the eventual accidents which provided fodder for the anti-nuclear movement.

Not only that there are in fact precedents indicating that the courts will have no problem declaring you a jackass for trying to use pennies, and uphold your debt regardless of your shenanigans.

While it is interesting to suppose what it would be like if that were to work, in reality it would not:

In State v. Carroll, 1997 WL 118064 (Ohio App. 4 Dist.), the Court upheld the municipal court's refusal to accept the pennies. The plaintiff argued that under 31 U.S.C.A. ' 5103, United States coins are legal tender "for all debts, public charges taxes and dues," and for that reason the city was required to accept the pennies as payment of the fine. Without pointing to any case law, the Court simply concluded that "It defies logic and common sense that this Congress intended such a wooden and broad application of the statute beyond the control of the payee regardless of the circumstances."
Source

No, this is an NSF Petascale "Track 2" project like TACC's earlier Ranger system or NICS' Kraken system, whereas Blue Waters was/is the NSF Petascale "Track 1" project. Same basic idea, slightly different pots of money.

(Disclaimer: I work for NICS.)

--t

No, this is an NSF Petascale "Track 2" project like TACC's earlier Ranger system or NICS' Kraken system, whereas Blue Waters was/is the NSF Petascale "Track 1" project. Same basic idea, slightly different pots of money.

(Disclaimer: I work for NICS.)

--t

1511.61 is ~21% of the 7200 daily BTCs, so you'd need around that in computing power.

According to the NICS page, the Kraken has a peak performance of 1.17 PetaFLOP.
According to bitcoin watch, the network has now a performance of 46.4 PetaFLOP.

Now, I'm no mathematician, but it seems to me that 1.17 is far from 21% of 46.4; according to my calculator, it's in fact little over 2.5%.

Take a look at any documentary about food production. You will see a sizable portion of the food go to waste. Ever watched how corn gets stripped from the cob? I'd wager a good 10-20% of waste here alone (and we're not even talking about any other point of the production process, just the part where the corn grain gets stripped from the cob, nothing else. You will notice something similar during flour production.

A quick search would've provided you with links to back up your data, or to refute it. For example:

Some of the major factors that affect the quality of combining operations include: weather, skill of the operator, conditions of the field and crop, adjustment and condition of the combine, speed of forward travel, width of combine header, feed rate of the material through the combine, variety of crop, type of combine and the attachments used.

Mentioned elsewhere in the article, ideal efficiency is 3% loss, with averages "closer to" 10% (implying the range is probably more like 5-15% loss rather than 10-20% loss). And don't think farmers aren't keenly aware of this and will do just about anything to increase their yields. These are machines that cost the equivalent of a nice house in most places ($250,000 on average) and if there's a newer model with higher efficiency then most farmers will trade up to the latest and greatest. Even a small increase in efficiency over several years could cover the cost of the equipment.

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- farming is one of the most advanced areas for technology, biology, chemistry, etc. These are not slack-jawed yokels trotting behind horses. Even the average family farmer works > 1000 acres with only 1 or 2 people and has technology the rest of us have only dreamed of. GPS when it was otherwise only available to military and government applications, satellite maps, sophisticated data collection sensors to track yields, self-driving vehicles, market tracking tools that rival anything wall street brokers can think up, etc. Of course it's also a metric pantload of physical labor, long hours, and a livelihood that is directly affected and threatened by "acts of god" the rest of us would completely ignore (a hail shower might dent your car and cost you $500 in repairs, but it could ruin a farmer's entire crop and cost him $100,000 or more).

They don't need to have spys in the company itself, all equipment exported to Iran are under Export Control https://my.tennessee.edu/portal/page?_pageid=43,618777&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL So Siemens needs to report all equipment exported to Iran to the German government, and this is relatively easy to access this information. As a spy, all you would need to do is to see who is exporting and what to Iran. Of course you need the experts to tell you what kind of equipment can be used...

We just finished acceptance testing on an SGI Altix UV 1000 with 1024 cores. It runs one copy of Linux on it.

I bet that saves on licensing costs.

Um, no. The early Itanium-based Altixes (Altices?) could go up to 512 cores running a single copy of Linux. The new Nehalem-based Altixes can have up to 2048 cores in a single system image IIRC. We just finished acceptance testing on an SGI Altix UV 1000 with 1024 cores. It runs one copy of Linux on it.

Cops do have to explain their use of taser just as much as their use of a baton or chemical weapon (pepper spray). It is less than that of a gun because it is not to be used in situations requiring lethal force. The decision to use a taser is dependent on the actions of the threat facing the officers, explicitly as a defensive weapon. For example, if the officer says "stay in your car" and you get out of your car, the officer is correct to use a taser. Always.

Here's the policy:

http://www.mtas.tennessee.edu/KnowledgeBase.nsf/vwebauthor/B1771739182D96E085256D550047F938

Some quick Googles:

ITT Corporation Announces Plea Agreement in its Night Vision Business
Company agrees to pay $50 million fine and invest $50 million in night vision technology

Some background and a list of companies that have paid millions

More info

The money line:

Criminal Sanctions: Individual - A fine of up to $1,000,000 or up to ten years in prison, or both, for each violation.

They get to decide who they go after. A quick google does not reveal any individual that appears honest that was hammered (though a few companies got hammered for honest mistakes, in my opinion) - but I know of many people that are harrased by them. ITAR is a very bad thing, and it makes the US less secure because it forces others to catch up technologically.

Can you afford a lawsuit?

the web site has a very unique signature phrase

No, it's not "very unique" - it might be unique, but it's only a little bit unique.

Dumbass. Maybe you should learn what a word means before using it.