For IP that is not changing, you are correct. But so long as AMD continues to design new processors, any partners in China will continue to abide by whatever contract they have negotiated. To violate the contract would put the company at risk of losing access to future designs. This is a "goose that laid the golden egg" type scenario. If anything, the fact that they never bothered to make any changes to the CPU design is a good sign for AMD.
It was a good move by AMD because it will guarantee them a much larger market share in China. Most notably, it will help them win government / military contracts which require proof / verification that all components are secure and free of backdoors. Local Chinese companies have a huge advantage in this respect.
You are correct that supersonic flights will never be more economical - but that is only if you ignore time. Time is tricky to evaluate because everyone will have a different opinion on how valuable it is.
Ignoring the obvious error of mpg per passenger, this simple assessment does not differentiate between the different stages of flight. It matters because the majority of fuel is used at takeoff. Once at the desired velocity and altitude it takes considerably less fuel to maintain said velocity and altitude. As a result, planes that operate at very high altitude, where there is little resistance, can travel long distances with different economies then more traditional planes.
There is a niche market for flights where time is expensive, distances are long, and overall mass required for transport is small. Not being able to fly supersonic over land is a major hurdle that must be overcome in order to make such planes a reality. The other is maintenance cost - the real reason why the concord was retired.
Statistics are nothing to be scared of for someone who can think critically.
Statistics are not scary, but the presentation of said statistics should be of concern to anyone who realizes that most people lack the ability to think critically. It is in their presentation that statistics can mislead - usually due to omitted information.
For starters, apply a tax to items packaged with non-biodegradable plastic. Exceptions for certain types of products as required. This will encourage packaging to be redesigned to utilize plastics that can be processed along with compost. Gradually increase the tax until biodegradable packaging becomes the norm. For those non-biodegradable plastics that are still required, a tax / refund-upon-return should be applied to assist paying for post-consumer recycling. Adding design elements to make such plastics easy to identify, such as a specific color, would also be a good idea.
Some packaging would no longer be available. Oh well, it is just packaging and does not represent much of a loss. For example, consider plastic retainers for 6-packs of canned beer. We would just have to revert back to a cardboard box - only a small sacrifice.
Note that I am referring to packaging - not final products. Such requirements on final products would unnecessarily restrict innovation. Packaging represents the majority of waste and is where we should start.
India does not want to rely on China for solar panels - they want to build them locally. To justify building a local factory there has to be a stable demand to pay for it. You do this with large, long term projects -- like this one. It is important for India to not have their future energy production dependent on a country like China.
if the damn plastic bowl was so porous as to be permanently stained by tomato sauce, what the hell else might it have soaked up, and/or leached out of it?
All plastic is porous - if not washed right away it eventually absorbs whatever it is in contact with. Interesting fact, you know PEX water pipe that is used in newer house builds? It is made of plastic and works great. However, standard PEX is not used for in-floor heating applications. The reason why is that oxygen can travel though the PEX and cause rust within the closed heating system. To prevent this they use a PEX that contains a internal layer of aluminum foil. Because to stop oxygen (or any other gas), you can not rely on plastic.
Not arguing against solar - just the claim that it is available anywhere on earth. And you do not have to be on the polar caps to be adversely effected by the tilt of the earth. I grew up in such an environment (northern Canada) as have many others.
Try working out how many solar panels are required to power equipment north of the arctic circle -- all year round. In northern climates you require energy storage and greatly increased solar panel area to deal with the short winter days. It results in solar power only being good for supplementing an existing power source during the summer. For those months when you actually need the power - the sun will not be visible.
Allowing "hot particles" to escape is essential. One has to condense steam back into water so that it can be circulated by pumps. This results is lost heat and is the main reason why turbines will never go much beyond 50% efficiency -- with 40% being more common. In theory you could use Stirling engines to capture some of this energy - but only some of the energy and in practice it is not worth it.
First off, a very cool project. However, this is an example of how when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The jitter in the resulting screen is horrible - probably the result of the CPU not having consistent timing.
The BeagleBone board has a main CPU along with some dedicated, single cycle, accurate timing, real-time processors. It would have been interesting to see such a board being used where the main CPU does the emulation and the real-time processors handle the actual final output. Alternatively, an iCE40 or similar FPGA could have been used. The Pi is just not the right tool for the job. Although, it would be interesting to see it paired with a small FPGA.
So it is great that Tom "Tom7" Murphy got this to work. An excellent first step. But if the jitter problem were to be solved it would be even better.. Oh who am I kidding, it is damn impressive even with the jitter.
It could have been faked, but unlikely. Most of the Ukrainian assertions claim that Russia was more directly involved. It is doubtful they would fake a recording that counters their assertions.
Russia did not pull the trigger - they gave a powerful weapon to untrained rebels who did pull the trigger. The distinction is minor - but relevant.
If Russia was operating the AA missiles MH17 would probably be intact. The Russian military is well trained and would verify the identity of a plane before firing. The rebels - not so much. Giving AA missiles to the rebels is like giving a BB gun to a 10 year old --- do not be surprised when you find a pile of dead birds with BB shaped holes in them.
After MH17 was brought down, the AA missiles were withdrawn back to Russia. This is a sign that Russia is embarrassed by what happened and was taking steps to prevent it from happening again. Too little too late... After this there was an increase in Russian military activity - probably due to the fact they could not trust the rebels to do the job for them.
So Russia is to blame but they did not pull the trigger. Giving the AA missiles to the rebels was probably a political decision that had nothing to do with the military. I imagine that, at the time, the Russian generals did not approve of the decision and were probably not surprised by the result.
And a note regarding Russians looting the victims --- it did not happen. The looting was from the local rebels. Basically gangs of undisciplined assholes tasked with driving out anyone who did not speak Russian. Once again, the Russians facilitated this behavior and are partially responsible, but they did not do it.
Could it at least be used to reposition satellites? It appears to be an energy hog but if one first accumulates sufficient solar power then it might work.
Device manufacturers pay royalties when they sell a device that supports GPS. There might be an exception for cell phones that only use GPS for 911 calls - but GPS is not free.
military protection
The US protects US interests and nothing else. Just look at all the ethnic cleansing that has occurred in Africa - it did not involve US interests so they never got involved.
US Navy keeping the sea routes open
Once again, this is for the benefit of America. I should note that this is also why the super-rich should pay more taxes. They benefit the most from taxpayer dollars - including military spending.
American citizens dying from hyper expensive medical costs
You are really going to blame the rest of the world for this??? American drug costs are determined, not by the cost of production, but by how much people are willing to pay.
More like 5k for each sensor. Check out Sea-Bird - they make the gold standard for many types of oceanographic sensors. They are very expensive and very good.
With traditional oceanographic measurements, the most expensive part of acquiring data is physically going to the location from where you want to acquire the measurement. The cost of the sensors is nothing in comparison. As a result, you have expensive, high quality sensors being the norm. With these autonomous boats there might be a push to reduce sensor costs because the sensors will make up a greater percentage of the total cost. Time will tell...
No, it is probably why China allowed him to register the "Trump" trade name right after being elected despite being denied for so many years. It is a decision that is quite easy to reverse. If this were about buying and selling stock there would be a paper trail and China (not Trump) is too smart for that.
This is why sitting presidents should forgo all their business interests when taking on the position of president. Otherwise, it is impossible to not have conflicts of interest. There will always be the desire to work for oneself at the expense of the country they serve.
The Tesla batter will also play games much like modern cell phones. They will only charge to 80% and never discharge below 30%. Applying this technique in cell phones is what allowed Apple to integrate a non-replaceable battery that would get 1000 charge cycles. Previous phones would only get ~100.
Electric bikes want to maximize their range so they probably go from 0 to 100% when charging / discharging. Most battery powered electric tools do the same thing --- working time is more important then the number of charge cycles. Maximizing energy storage at the expense of longevity is a good compromise for such applications.
A quick look through the source code shows the vast majority is C++ with some Python thrown in. The only CSharp I can see is in "flow/ActorCompiler". There is not much there and it could probably be converted into Python with a little effort.
Now that this is an open source project it is likely that the CSharp will be rewritten in another language. The thought of having to install Mono makes me cringe - and I doubt I am the only one. Someone will consider it worth their time to make the change. It does not look like the CSharp components are used to facilitate binding to.NET so a change is likely viable.
One guess, it minimizes fraud. Cash payments made "under the table" take away from tax revenue resulting in increased tax rates for those who pay their taxes. It is sort of like shoplifting - costs just get passed on to those that do not steal / do pay their taxes. Worse yet, many of those who get paid discretely still try to benefit from the social safety net. This increases the cost to taxpayers even more.
Which is why having support built into the base OS is a big deal. Almost impossible to get it working well when support is an afterthought or third party addition. Fundamental changes to the OS and APIs are required to allow applications to work without rebooting while the underlying hardware is swapped out. It is a big deal, and the only reason why I can accept it being posted on Slashdot --- unlike most point updates which should not be posted.
The video appears to be deceiving. It is almost like it was purposely dimmed before being released. A human behind the wheel would be able to see much more then what is shown on the video. Look at the buildings in the background, the ditch further down the road... it is all black. No more then 50' from a street light and everything is black. The human eye is so much better then that. If the driver was watching, he would have seen her. Any video system should have also been able to see her. Uber has no excuse - the cyclist was technically at fault but the Uber car should never have hit her. The car never even slowed down.
Deer are harder to see then a cyclist with reflective shoes - most drivers would have avoided a deer in this situation.
So, the same speed as the F18. The object could be stationary and the perceived speed is the result of the observer moving towards the object. The moving background would just be an optical illusion resulting from the fact the observer is moving. All the sudden, it really does look like a weather balloon.
Six speakers with beamforming to generate stereo sounds. They can bounce the left channel off one side of the room, right the other. The effects are good but not as good as true stereo. For that you require two HomePod speakers. One takes over the left side, the other the right side. Their software lets you join them together allowing two HomePods to act as one. You just have to give Apple more money.
It really depends if they actually have the hardware necessary to write the flash memory. It requires a higher than normal voltage, so if the chip wants to have self programming capability then it has to have as high voltage generator.
While this hardware is cheap it's not free, and carries risks. It can accidently erase or corrupt the flash memory. To mitigate that you need brown out protection, but even that isn't perfect so you will see a higher failure rate.
All the SOC chips out there already require multiple power rails at various different voltages. Managing all the power rails is a real pain - TI and others make ICs with internal LDOs and DCDC switches to simplify the process. So all SOCs will all have access to the 3.3V / 1.8V rails required to write to FLASH. Without this, they would never be able to support a USB transceiver.
The FLASH memory will not require additional hardware for writing - the controller will include all required components. The SOC will simply interface using quad-SPI or some other standardized bus. Unless they have specific reasons to make it complex, they will use a licensed IP module for FLASH memory and that is it. Making it a true ROM would add to the cost and complexity - significantly. WIth transistor budgets the way they are, savings from a read-only ROM are non-existent. Costs associated with an error in ROM that could have been fixed had it been FLASH - scary high.
Slashdot Mirror
For IP that is not changing, you are correct. But so long as AMD continues to design new processors, any partners in China will continue to abide by whatever contract they have negotiated. To violate the contract would put the company at risk of losing access to future designs. This is a "goose that laid the golden egg" type scenario. If anything, the fact that they never bothered to make any changes to the CPU design is a good sign for AMD.
It was a good move by AMD because it will guarantee them a much larger market share in China. Most notably, it will help them win government / military contracts which require proof / verification that all components are secure and free of backdoors. Local Chinese companies have a huge advantage in this respect.
You are correct that supersonic flights will never be more economical - but that is only if you ignore time. Time is tricky to evaluate because everyone will have a different opinion on how valuable it is.
Ignoring the obvious error of mpg per passenger, this simple assessment does not differentiate between the different stages of flight. It matters because the majority of fuel is used at takeoff. Once at the desired velocity and altitude it takes considerably less fuel to maintain said velocity and altitude. As a result, planes that operate at very high altitude, where there is little resistance, can travel long distances with different economies then more traditional planes.
There is a niche market for flights where time is expensive, distances are long, and overall mass required for transport is small. Not being able to fly supersonic over land is a major hurdle that must be overcome in order to make such planes a reality. The other is maintenance cost - the real reason why the concord was retired.
Statistics are nothing to be scared of for someone who can think critically.
Statistics are not scary, but the presentation of said statistics should be of concern to anyone who realizes that most people lack the ability to think critically. It is in their presentation that statistics can mislead - usually due to omitted information.
For starters, apply a tax to items packaged with non-biodegradable plastic. Exceptions for certain types of products as required. This will encourage packaging to be redesigned to utilize plastics that can be processed along with compost. Gradually increase the tax until biodegradable packaging becomes the norm. For those non-biodegradable plastics that are still required, a tax / refund-upon-return should be applied to assist paying for post-consumer recycling. Adding design elements to make such plastics easy to identify, such as a specific color, would also be a good idea.
Some packaging would no longer be available. Oh well, it is just packaging and does not represent much of a loss. For example, consider plastic retainers for 6-packs of canned beer. We would just have to revert back to a cardboard box - only a small sacrifice.
Note that I am referring to packaging - not final products. Such requirements on final products would unnecessarily restrict innovation. Packaging represents the majority of waste and is where we should start.
India does not want to rely on China for solar panels - they want to build them locally. To justify building a local factory there has to be a stable demand to pay for it. You do this with large, long term projects -- like this one. It is important for India to not have their future energy production dependent on a country like China.
if the damn plastic bowl was so porous as to be permanently stained by tomato sauce, what the hell else might it have soaked up, and/or leached out of it?
All plastic is porous - if not washed right away it eventually absorbs whatever it is in contact with. Interesting fact, you know PEX water pipe that is used in newer house builds? It is made of plastic and works great. However, standard PEX is not used for in-floor heating applications. The reason why is that oxygen can travel though the PEX and cause rust within the closed heating system. To prevent this they use a PEX that contains a internal layer of aluminum foil. Because to stop oxygen (or any other gas), you can not rely on plastic.
Not arguing against solar - just the claim that it is available anywhere on earth. And you do not have to be on the polar caps to be adversely effected by the tilt of the earth. I grew up in such an environment (northern Canada) as have many others.
Try working out how many solar panels are required to power equipment north of the arctic circle -- all year round. In northern climates you require energy storage and greatly increased solar panel area to deal with the short winter days. It results in solar power only being good for supplementing an existing power source during the summer. For those months when you actually need the power - the sun will not be visible.
Allowing "hot particles" to escape is essential. One has to condense steam back into water so that it can be circulated by pumps. This results is lost heat and is the main reason why turbines will never go much beyond 50% efficiency -- with 40% being more common. In theory you could use Stirling engines to capture some of this energy - but only some of the energy and in practice it is not worth it.
First off, a very cool project. However, this is an example of how when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The jitter in the resulting screen is horrible - probably the result of the CPU not having consistent timing.
The BeagleBone board has a main CPU along with some dedicated, single cycle, accurate timing, real-time processors. It would have been interesting to see such a board being used where the main CPU does the emulation and the real-time processors handle the actual final output. Alternatively, an iCE40 or similar FPGA could have been used. The Pi is just not the right tool for the job. Although, it would be interesting to see it paired with a small FPGA.
So it is great that Tom "Tom7" Murphy got this to work. An excellent first step. But if the jitter problem were to be solved it would be even better.. Oh who am I kidding, it is damn impressive even with the jitter.
And an intercepted recording of the incident...
CNN
It could have been faked, but unlikely. Most of the Ukrainian assertions claim that Russia was more directly involved. It is doubtful they would fake a recording that counters their assertions.
Russia did not pull the trigger - they gave a powerful weapon to untrained rebels who did pull the trigger. The distinction is minor - but relevant.
If Russia was operating the AA missiles MH17 would probably be intact. The Russian military is well trained and would verify the identity of a plane before firing. The rebels - not so much. Giving AA missiles to the rebels is like giving a BB gun to a 10 year old --- do not be surprised when you find a pile of dead birds with BB shaped holes in them.
After MH17 was brought down, the AA missiles were withdrawn back to Russia. This is a sign that Russia is embarrassed by what happened and was taking steps to prevent it from happening again. Too little too late... After this there was an increase in Russian military activity - probably due to the fact they could not trust the rebels to do the job for them.
So Russia is to blame but they did not pull the trigger. Giving the AA missiles to the rebels was probably a political decision that had nothing to do with the military. I imagine that, at the time, the Russian generals did not approve of the decision and were probably not surprised by the result.
And a note regarding Russians looting the victims --- it did not happen. The looting was from the local rebels. Basically gangs of undisciplined assholes tasked with driving out anyone who did not speak Russian. Once again, the Russians facilitated this behavior and are partially responsible, but they did not do it.
Could it at least be used to reposition satellites? It appears to be an energy hog but if one first accumulates sufficient solar power then it might work.
GPS
Device manufacturers pay royalties when they sell a device that supports GPS. There might be an exception for cell phones that only use GPS for 911 calls - but GPS is not free.
military protection
The US protects US interests and nothing else. Just look at all the ethnic cleansing that has occurred in Africa - it did not involve US interests so they never got involved.
US Navy keeping the sea routes open
Once again, this is for the benefit of America. I should note that this is also why the super-rich should pay more taxes. They benefit the most from taxpayer dollars - including military spending.
American citizens dying from hyper expensive medical costs
You are really going to blame the rest of the world for this??? American drug costs are determined, not by the cost of production, but by how much people are willing to pay.
More like 5k for each sensor. Check out Sea-Bird - they make the gold standard for many types of oceanographic sensors. They are very expensive and very good.
With traditional oceanographic measurements, the most expensive part of acquiring data is physically going to the location from where you want to acquire the measurement. The cost of the sensors is nothing in comparison. As a result, you have expensive, high quality sensors being the norm. With these autonomous boats there might be a push to reduce sensor costs because the sensors will make up a greater percentage of the total cost. Time will tell...
No, it is probably why China allowed him to register the "Trump" trade name right after being elected despite being denied for so many years. It is a decision that is quite easy to reverse. If this were about buying and selling stock there would be a paper trail and China (not Trump) is too smart for that.
This is why sitting presidents should forgo all their business interests when taking on the position of president. Otherwise, it is impossible to not have conflicts of interest. There will always be the desire to work for oneself at the expense of the country they serve.
The Tesla batter will also play games much like modern cell phones. They will only charge to 80% and never discharge below 30%. Applying this technique in cell phones is what allowed Apple to integrate a non-replaceable battery that would get 1000 charge cycles. Previous phones would only get ~100.
Electric bikes want to maximize their range so they probably go from 0 to 100% when charging / discharging. Most battery powered electric tools do the same thing --- working time is more important then the number of charge cycles. Maximizing energy storage at the expense of longevity is a good compromise for such applications.
A quick look through the source code shows the vast majority is C++ with some Python thrown in. The only CSharp I can see is in "flow/ActorCompiler". There is not much there and it could probably be converted into Python with a little effort.
Now that this is an open source project it is likely that the CSharp will be rewritten in another language. The thought of having to install Mono makes me cringe - and I doubt I am the only one. Someone will consider it worth their time to make the change. It does not look like the CSharp components are used to facilitate binding to .NET so a change is likely viable.
A quick quote from Wikipedia,
As such, birds were the only dinosaur lineage to survive the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago.
Crocodiles are not decedents of dinosaurs - they are reptiles. If this paper can not even see this then I can not put much weight into their theory.
One guess, it minimizes fraud. Cash payments made "under the table" take away from tax revenue resulting in increased tax rates for those who pay their taxes. It is sort of like shoplifting - costs just get passed on to those that do not steal / do pay their taxes. Worse yet, many of those who get paid discretely still try to benefit from the social safety net. This increases the cost to taxpayers even more.
Most were unpopular or unusable.
Which is why having support built into the base OS is a big deal. Almost impossible to get it working well when support is an afterthought or third party addition. Fundamental changes to the OS and APIs are required to allow applications to work without rebooting while the underlying hardware is swapped out. It is a big deal, and the only reason why I can accept it being posted on Slashdot --- unlike most point updates which should not be posted.
The video appears to be deceiving. It is almost like it was purposely dimmed before being released. A human behind the wheel would be able to see much more then what is shown on the video. Look at the buildings in the background, the ditch further down the road... it is all black. No more then 50' from a street light and everything is black. The human eye is so much better then that. If the driver was watching, he would have seen her. Any video system should have also been able to see her. Uber has no excuse - the cyclist was technically at fault but the Uber car should never have hit her. The car never even slowed down.
Deer are harder to see then a cyclist with reflective shoes - most drivers would have avoided a deer in this situation.
So, the same speed as the F18. The object could be stationary and the perceived speed is the result of the observer moving towards the object. The moving background would just be an optical illusion resulting from the fact the observer is moving. All the sudden, it really does look like a weather balloon.
Six speakers with beamforming to generate stereo sounds. They can bounce the left channel off one side of the room, right the other. The effects are good but not as good as true stereo. For that you require two HomePod speakers. One takes over the left side, the other the right side. Their software lets you join them together allowing two HomePods to act as one. You just have to give Apple more money.
It really depends if they actually have the hardware necessary to write the flash memory. It requires a higher than normal voltage, so if the chip wants to have self programming capability then it has to have as high voltage generator.
While this hardware is cheap it's not free, and carries risks. It can accidently erase or corrupt the flash memory. To mitigate that you need brown out protection, but even that isn't perfect so you will see a higher failure rate.
All the SOC chips out there already require multiple power rails at various different voltages. Managing all the power rails is a real pain - TI and others make ICs with internal LDOs and DCDC switches to simplify the process. So all SOCs will all have access to the 3.3V / 1.8V rails required to write to FLASH. Without this, they would never be able to support a USB transceiver.
The FLASH memory will not require additional hardware for writing - the controller will include all required components. The SOC will simply interface using quad-SPI or some other standardized bus. Unless they have specific reasons to make it complex, they will use a licensed IP module for FLASH memory and that is it. Making it a true ROM would add to the cost and complexity - significantly. WIth transistor budgets the way they are, savings from a read-only ROM are non-existent. Costs associated with an error in ROM that could have been fixed had it been FLASH - scary high.