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June 18, 2011 by yorksranter 0 comments

MGIs for cleaner skies, and Power Tool of the Week

Swinging off a discussion at Jamie Kenny’s of climate deniers, I wonder what Jamie thinks about Steve Levine’s thesis here that China’s emerging culture of mass protest, the famous Mass-Group Incidents or MGIs, may have major and positive consequences for Chinese energy policy and therefore for the world. It’s surely time we started calling the…

August 18, 2008 by yorksranter 7 comments

The Harrowell Plan (Or, No Christmas Card from Dsquared)

I’m about to propose something to make Daniel Davies cry. Specifically, it’s a solution to a problem we currently deal with by a cash transfer through the tax and benefit system. But I think I’ve made a good case that trying to deal with high energy prices by paying the poor to burn more energy…

August 2, 2008 by yorksranter 0 comments

Civilisation is common defence and waste disposal

Jamie Zawinski links to a campaign to have a Californian sewage works renamed after George W. Bush. I disagree, strongly. Who on earth would associate something as civic, egalitarian, and useful as sewage treatment with the Commander Guy? Not just that, but it’s a publicly-owned sewage plant, part of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.…

December 23, 2006 by yorksranter 0 comments

Electricity – let it wash all over me! Or not

James Glanz of the NYT reports at great length on the electrical siege of Baghdad, with detail, network maps, and more. Great. Obviously, this being a blog, the primary meaning of this is an excuse to moan about the press. Why didn’t Glanz (or anyone else at the NYT) report on this back in 2004,…

François Bayrou, toujours sans gouvernement et déjà affaibli
« L’impression que donne François Bayrou est celle d’avoir fantasmé son arrivée au pouvoir pendant trente ans, en espérant l’union des Français, de la gauche et de la droite, autour de lui. Mais il n’a pas de majorité, ni vraiment le soutien enthousiaste de l’Elysée, et il est faible dans l’opinion », observe Benjamin Morel, […]
Linear no-threshold model - Wikipedia
Radiation precautions have led to sunlight being listed as a carcinogen at all sun exposure rates, due to the ultraviolet component of sunlight, with no safe level of sunlight exposure being suggested, following the precautionary LNT model. According to a 2007 study submitted by the University of Ottawa to the Department of Health and Human […]
AMD arms itself to challenge Nvidia's push into AI PC market
Industry sources suggest that Nvidia plans to release its Arm-based consumer PC platform in September 2025, featuring in-house CPU and GPU designs aimed at the high-end AI PC market. A commercial platform is expected to follow in March 2026, according to reports from Patently Apple and Tom's Hardware....AMD launched its first Arm-based SoC, the Opteron […]
TSMC capacity expansion powers supply chain for 2025 boom
TSMC has begun constructing its first German fab, with equipment installation set for the third quarter of 2027. Mass production is anticipated by late 2027, gradually reaching a monthly output of 40,000 wafers by 2028. TSMC's Kumamoto Fab 1 specializes in 28nm and 22nm processes, targeting 30,000 wafers per month by early 2025 and scaling […]
Micron advances HBM4 development, sets 2026 for mass production
HBM4 utilizes Micron's 1β (5th Generation 10nm-class) DRAM technology, integrating up to 16 DRAM dies per stack, each offering 32 GB of capacity. The technology features a 2048-bit interface and 6.4 GT/s data rates, delivering a peak bandwidth of 1.64 TB/s per stack. Production timing aligns with the release of Nvidia's Vera Rubin GPUs and […]
HS2’s £100m ‘bat shield’ tunnel is not bat-proof
“The aperture size of 43mm x 23mm appears large to keep out Bechstein’s bats, which are very small in size,” said a design review commissioned by HS2. Originally the holes were to be 25mm x 25mm.
Michael Dnes on X: "So when we weren’t looking for them, we thought these bats were rare and under threat Now we’ve looked, we’ve found lots. But because that’s about data collection, it shouldn’t change their status Because nothing has changed
Cobra effect. But for bats.
‘Free and impartial’ addiction helplines paid secret commission by rehabs | Drugs | The Guardian
They were calling up our finance department and demanding early payment. They’d want their commission for the whole length of stay upfront, even though people might drop out and want refunds,” he said. “And we were getting all these emails from the brokers with names of people, saying: ‘If this person writes to you, they […]
Let it go - by Tom Hamilton - Dividing Lines
I would gently suggest to the Conservative Party that relitigating an issue that helped to prompt a huge shift in public opinion away from them, contributing a great deal to the downfall of an election-winning Prime Minister and an eventual landslide defeat, is not the best use of the time of a new leader who […]
Qualcomm claims trial win in dispute with Arm over chip design licences
Qualcomm said it was pleased with the verdict. The jury had “vindicated Qualcomm’s right to innovate” and confirmed the products at issue in the case were protected by its existing contract with Arm, it said. Arm said would seek a retrial based on the fact that the jury was “unable to reach consensus across the […]