Other users should not have to pay for Amazon's insatiable diet for electricity. If Amazon want more, they should pay for it. That is also true elsewhere, especially in the U.S., where state utility regulators keep raising the cost of electricity on everyone to meet the demand from growing data centers.

I graduated from high school in 1959. It was a very high-performing school. There were no computers.

After high school, I attended UCLA. In my junior year, I was living in an on-campus dormitory. Two engineering students on the same dorm floot dragged me to a meeting of the Computer Club. I saw SWAC ([National Bureau of] Standards Western Automatic Computer) a custom-built computer and one of the very first stored-program computers in the world. In the Computer Club, I learned how to program an IBM 7090 in FORTRAN. I am a gadget freak. To me that was the ultimate gadget, superseded when it was upgraded to an IBM 7094. Majoring in math, I changed my planned curriculum to emphasize logic and numerical analysis. At that time, no university in the U.S. offered a degree in computer science. By the time I received my BA in math, only three universities (not yet UCLA) offered degrees in computer science.

Now retired 21+ years, my whole 41-year career involved computer software. For over thirty years, I dealt with the software used by the U.S. military to operate its earth-orbiting space satellites.. I wrote specifications for new features and even for a total replacement of a major system. I taught military personnel how to use the software. I reviewed developers' specifications and test plans. I headed a team that performed system-level of software testing. Details of my career are at [http://www.rossde.com/retired.html#career].

Several fires are burning at the same time in Los Angeles County. Not all deaths were in the Palisades fire.

An arsonist was arrested for starting the Kenneth fire along the border between Los Angeles and Ventura Counties. That fire also killed someone. The arsonist might be facing manslaughter or murder charges.

The Alta Dena fire has caused about the same amount of destruction as the Palisades fire.

I believe there is at least one other major fire in the area. All of these are burning at the same time.

Trump is wrong about water. The California reservoirs currently contain above average amounts of water. We are not wasting water by sending it into the ocean.

The delta smelt are actually important. They are the food for the fish we eat. No smelt = no tuna or salmon.

There is no way for a ship leaving a Russian port on the Baltic to reach the Atlantic without going through the national waters of Sweden or Denmark. That is, they would definitely be within 12 nautical miles of either nation. Smaller ships can traverse the Keil Canal, but that lies entirely within Germany. All three nations are part of NATO.

The title "Meta Asks the US Government To Block OpenAI's Switch To a For-Profit" is misleading. California Attorney General Rob Bonta Rob Bonta is a state official and not part of the U.S. government. By law, the California Attorney General is the "super trustee" of all non-profits incorporated in California.

More than once in the past, a California non-profit has converted to for-profit. The largest was likely California Blue Cross, which converted in 1996 and became WellPoint.

The conversion of the System Development Corporation (SDC) in the 1970s -- where I was employed at the time -- provides a road map. Renaming itself the System Development Foundation (SDF), it incorporated a wholly owned for-profit subsidiary that acquired all of the old SDC's assets including the name System Development Corporation. SDF tried to dispose of for-profit SDC three times. Attempting public sales twice failed when general stock market conditions turned sour. A third attempt was blocked by the California Attorney General because the investment banker that advised the old SDC on how to convert was going to bring the new SDC to the public, which was a conflict of interest. Eventually, SDF sold its SDC subsidiary to the Burroughs Corporation in 1980. SDF used the money it received for grants to universities and other non-profits.

Windows Media Player itself was deprecated a few years ago. Try Real Player from [http://www.real.com/index.html], WACUP from [https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgetwacup.com%2F], or VLC from [http://www.videolan.org/].

I think my process for updating software on my PC provides strong protection.

First of all, I block pushed automatic updates. Instead, I download a complete off-line installer file. I scan the installer file with three different unrelated anti-malware applications that I keep current. If nothing amiss is found, I disable my Internet connection and then execute the installer file.

While U.S. law provides there is an implied copyright on any original text, even if it is made public, I put the copyright symbol on all of my Web pages. I just now added "bing" and "bingbot" to my robots.txt file. Those two user agents of Microsoft appeared in a log of visitors to my Web site.

However, there are bots, crawlers, and scrapers -- all of which are really the same -- that ignore robots.txt. Among them are bots run by Amazon and Google.

I thought Impossible Meat, Beyond Meat, and the other vegetable-based simulated meats were the ultimate in processed foods. They contain excessive amounts of salt plus chemical flavorings. However, lab-grown meat exceeds them all.

Doctors warn us to avoid eating processed foods. Real meats from steers, pigs, lambs, chickens, et cetera are far less processed than meat simulations.

My brother once asked: "If we are not supposed to eat animals, why are they made out of meat?"

A single point of failure killed 911 service in three states. Why was there such a centralized system for 911? Critical services should be DECENTRALIZED!

When my wife was pregnant with our first child, I bought a combination of term life insurance (relative low cost) and whole life insurance (high cost). I wanted my wife to have a financial cushion if I died, where she would not have to work full time. After the baby was born, I bought a combination of whole and term insurance on my wife, to help pay the cost of child care and housekeeping if my wife died. I repeated all this with our second child.

Later, when I was earning a good income, I converted all the term insurance to whole life insurance. I had the dividends applied to buying more insurance.

When interest rates jumped, I borrowed from the policies at low interest and invested the money in high-paying utility bonds (but NOT junk bonds). As interest rates fell, I sold the bonds at a profit and repaid the policy loans. Through all that, I did not have to tap my own savings.

Much later, I was laid off. I looked at the policies and the dividends they were earning. The combined annual dividends exceeded the combined annual premiums. I contacted my insurance agent and had the premiums applied to paying the premiums with the excess dividends still buying more insurance.

Today, I could cash in the policies; but my retirement investment portfolio is sufficient that I do not need the extra cash. Our heirs will collect the benefits tax-free, which they cannot do with our IRAs.

The U.S. has over 200 land-based wind farms rated at over 67,000 megawatts. California has over 3,900 MW, including the Alta Wind Energy Center (also known as Mojave Wind Farm) commissioned in 2010 and rated at 1548 MW, and the Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm completed in 2016 and rated at 710 MW. Texas has wind farms rated at over 18,200 MW including the Los Vientos Wind Farm commissioned in 2016 and rated at 912 MW.

Last year, Scientific American reported that the "break through" did not really generate more power than it consumed. The surge of power lasted only seconds and destroyed the equipment that generated it. More important, the power released was far less than the power required to create that equipment.

For those of you who avoid processed food, you should avoid any "meat" grown in a vat.

Even earlier -- when white screens with black text and black screens with white or green text were equally common -- the question was raised: which is best for proof-reading text. A report found that white and black screens were about the same but that printed hardcopy was better. This was reported in an ACM publication, possibly 25 or more years ago.