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Comment Re:He's right (Score 1) 90

by Hobadee (#63025705) Attached to: Tim Berners-Lee Wants Us To 'Ignore' Web3, It's 'Not the Web at All'

Blockchain is a write-only database. This database is used to track transactions made by users going back to the beginning of the "currency". (ie: Alice paid Bob $2. Bob paid Charlie $1)

"Mining" is just doing the work needed to write to the write-only database. As a reward for writing to the database, you are rewarded with a piece of the pie. Currently that reward is newly-minted currency. In the nearish future, it will be a transaction fee taken from transactions conducted.

Comment Open source? (Score 2) 45

Maybe it's time to develop an open-source computer model. With Intel/AMD being a duopoly on the x86/x64 formats, people thought ARM would be the savior, but if ARM is going to pull this crap, it's obvious they can't be trusted either.

The world could really benefit from an open source CPU design, similar to how it has greatly benefitted from Linux as an open-source OS.

Comment Not gonna happen (Score 1) 102

by Hobadee (#62925575) Attached to: An All-Electric Passenger Plane Completed Its First Test Flight

Batteries are great for a great number of things. Planes are not one of those things.

Planes are things where we count the weight separately at the start and at the end, because it makes that much of a difference. We weight every tiny thing that goes into them and scrutinize it in extreme detail to see if we can lighten it in any way. Every component that weighs a plane down needs to have the best bang for it's buck.

Batteries just don't fit this model. Not even the absolute pinacle of *theoretical* battery technology comes close to the power/weight ratio of fossil fuels, plus you don't have the benefit of the weight going away as you use up the power.

Can you make a battery powered plane? Yes. Is it going to be commercially feasible? No.

Submission + - The Hardware that Searches for Dark Matter (hackaday.com)

Submitted by szczys
szczys writes: Deep in a gold mine in South Dakota the Large Underground Xenon experiment waits in the darkness for a tiny flash of light that signals that dark matter actually exists. So far we theorize that it does exist, and have gone to great lengths to build hardware to detect dark matter. Very cold, very pure liquid Xenon sits waiting for a dark matter particle to strike the nucleus of a Xenon molecule, producing a distinct pattern of photons through scintillation. An array of photomultiplier tubes detect the photons, whose pattern is processed by FPGAs on custom boards connected using HDMI. The experiment has generated a list of properties not possessed by dark matter; running for several years no evidence of the particles interacting with the Xenon have been found. But when the data collection concludes this year, a much larger version of the impressive hardware will be built.

Submission + - ATF puts up surveillance cameras around Seattle ... to catch illegal grease dump (muckrock.com)

Submitted by v3rgEz
v3rgEz writes: Last summer, Seattleites noticed that utility polls around town were showing some odd growths: A raft of surveillance cameras that, under Seattle's strict surveillance equipment laws, shouldn't have been there without disclosure and monitoring. But Seattle Police said that they weren't theirs, and one enterprising citizen followed up with a series of public records requests, only to discover that they were actually the ATF's cameras — on the watch for grease dumpers. Now the requester is fighting for the full list of federal surveillance watching over Seattle, and answers to how often federal agencies pursue what appear to be purely local crimes.

Submission + - First children have been diagnosed in 100,000 Genomes project (bbc.com)

Submitted by Zane C.
Zane C. writes: The 100,000 Genomes project, an organization dedicated to diagnosing and researching rare genetic disorders, has just diagnosed its first 2 patients. After painstakingly analyzing about 3 billion base pairs from the parents of one young girl, and the girl herself, "doctors told them the genetic abnormality — in a gene called KDM5b — had been identified". The new information will not yet change the way the young girl, named Georgia, is treated, but it opens up a path for future treatments. For the other girl, Jessica, the genetic analysis provided enough information to diagnose and begin a new treatment. A mutation had occurred "[causing] a condition called Glut1 deficiency syndrome in which the brain cannot get enough energy to function properly." Jessica's brain specifically had not been able to obtain enough sugar to power her brain cells, and as such, doctors prescribed a high fat diet to give her brain an alternate energy source. She has already begun showing improvement.

Submission + - Explosion-Proof Lithium-Ion Battery Shuts Down At High Temperatures (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists have designed a lithium-ion battery that self-regulates according to temperature, to prevent itself from overheating. Reaching extreme temperatures, the battery is able to shut itself down, only restarting once it has cooled. The researchers designed the battery to shut down and restart itself over a repeated heating and cooling cycle, without compromising performance. A polyethylene film is applied to one of the electrodes, which expands and shrinks depending on temperature, to create a conductive/non-conductive material.

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