Log scales are for quitters who can't find enough paper to make their point properly.

Fuel energy density, in MegaJoules/kg

• Sugar 19
• Coal 24
• Fat 39
• Gasoline 46
• Uranium 76,000,000

The company expected to be the first in the United States to operate a small nuclear reactor is facing setbacks that have caused supporters to question whether the novel technology will ever realize its potential as a tool to combat climate change. //

Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, a group of small community-owned utilities in six Western states, cited a rise in expected costs for the NuScale reactors. The group is counting on the nuclear power to provide around-the-clock, zero-carbon electricity to replace a coal plant it plans to close, but its members say they won’t need the new cleaner electricity source until later than expected.

“The setbacks are not fatal,” said Erik Olson, a climate and energy analyst at the Breakthrough Institute. “But if this project falls through, that would be an enormous blow to the promised next wave of nuclear power.”

Under union election rules, management of North Carolina's Mission Hospital can't promote its views within 24 hours of the start of mail-in balloting.

Crisis communications.

How to LEARN faster with the Feynman technique:

Pick a topic you wanna understand and start studying it
Pretend to teach the topic to a classroom
Go back to the books when you get stuck
Simplify and use analogies!

Teaching a powerful tool for learning.
Brain

DiceKeys is a physical mechanism for creating and storing a 192-bit key. The idea is that you roll a special set of twenty-five dice, put them into a plastic jig, and then use an app to convert those dice into a key. You can then use that key for a variety of purposes, and regenerate it from the dice if you need to. //

Note: I am an adviser on the project. //

Q • August 24, 2020 6:57 AM

I would very very uncomfortable about having not only the physical key available to any thief or agent that decides they want it, but also having it available in a vulnerable leaky phone and app that all measure of companies and people can spy upon. Just no.

Stuff like this should only be in my head IMO. Then I get to decide if it ever gets revealed to someone else.

Ari Trachtenberg • August 24, 2020 7:20 AM

"mathematically unguessable key" - really Bruce? You know better than to taunt the hackers with hyperbolic language. If anything, the key is "practically unguessable" - but mathematically, it is certainly guessable.

z • August 24, 2020 7:46 AM

Good, cheap and simple random number generator. But it's not that special it's just very practical and it gets rid of most trust issues. But Dice quality can effect entropy, so don't let any academic measure your dice :-D

Sam • August 24, 2020 9:54 AM

What problem is this solving exactly? There are many problems across the entire crpyto ecosystem, but "keys not being random enough" is pretty damn low on the list, and certainly not outweighed by sending your key through a computer-vision based web app.

Richard Feynman
@ProfFeynman
It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.

Cornell University Lecture, 1964

Elon Musk put up a proverbial middle finger to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) earlier this week with his announcement that Tesla vehicles would either play snake jazz or Polynesian elevator music out of an external speaker. //

Elon Musk
@elonmusk
New Tesla feature coming that enables your car to play snake jazz or Polynesian elevator music through its outside speakers wherever you go
3:17 AM · Aug 20, 2020

The NHTSA passed a mandate a decade ago called “the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2010,” which states that electric vehicles must have an audible sound at speeds below 19 MPH. The noise will warn nearby pedestrians of the vehicle’s presence. Because electric cars are missing a combustion motor, the cars make very little noise, which could be a hazard to some pedestrians.

Now nations in the Middle East are openly forming alliances with Israel, fully acknowledging that Israeli-Palestinian issues remain bilateral in nature. //

While all eyes have been on the Democratic National Convention taking place via Zoom, truly historic events have occurred in the Middle East.

Among them: a long-awaited peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, including full normalization of relations; presumed peace deals to follow between Israel and Sudan, Oman and Bahrain; the possibility on the horizon of a similar deal with Saudi Arabia.

These are not only historic events; they are unmitigated goods: The recognition of a Jewish state in the Middle East is the precondition to any peace in the Middle East. And the formation of a durable coalition to stave off the aggressive Islamism of Iran provides more stability and greater deterrence in the region.

It’s easy to tell whether these are historic events by identifying those who oppose them. Iran is particularly angry; so is Iranian publicity agent Ben Rhodes, who served as former President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser. The tyrannical government of Turkey is deeply miffed; so is the terrorist government of the Palestinian Authority. //

Biden’s chief contribution to the diplomatic breakthrough was actually the Obama administration’s sycophantic embrace of the Iranian regime: By making clear that the United States could not be relied upon to protect Sunni nations from Iranian predations, the Obama administration convinced Arab nations that their interests lie in security alliance with Israel. //

The first important breakthrough in the Middle East in three decades just took place. And it took place because reality finally set in for Israel’s heretofore enemies: Israel isn’t going anywhere.

Perhaps Palestinians will eventually learn the same lesson and peace will truly be possible.