Brexit Developments and the Impact on the Queen’s Currency
Now that the Tories have secured an 80-strong majority in parliament, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has a stronger negotiating hand to carve out an effective Brexit strategy
Month: January 2020
7 Nanometer Chips and 64 Core AMD Threadripper
At CES AMD has announced the 64 core AMD Threadripper line, (3990X). It will have super-high GHz clocks, and only $4,000 a package pricing. Nextbigfuture reader and commenter Goatguy notes that combining the AMD super chip with 512 GB of RAM ($3,000, ECC, DDR4-3200) and 4 TB of NVME ($2,000) and a top-top shelf Nvidia …
Other Car Makers Never Displaced Toyota for Top Hybrid
There is a lot of talk about potential competitors for Tesla. The history of traditional carmakers knocking off a solid number one in a category of cars is not good. Toyota developed a dominant hybrid car with the Prius family. They sell over half of the hybrid cars in the USA and the world. This …
Tesla Has Years of Domination
Nextbigfuture has been saying that Tesla is a huge winner even before the recent surge in its stock price. This article is mostly from a newsletter that I sent out yesterday. Tesla is clearly on track for a successful ramp of China production and is expanding the Shanghai Factory. Ramping China production and slightly increasing …
IBM Doubles Its Quantum Volume to 32
IBM announced a new 28-qubit quantum system backend, Raleigh and achieved a system demonstrating Quantum Volume of 32. This is double the quantum volume of 16 of a prior IBM system. Quantum Volume (QV) is a hardware-agnostic metric that we defined to measure the performance of a real quantum computer. Each system IBM develop brings …
Iran Cruise Missiles and Ballistic Missiles
Iran has developed some cruise missiles that are based upon the Soviet era KH-55 cruise missile. Russia and the United States both have GPS jamming and spoofing capabilities. Russia would not actually fight with Iran but will provide various military systems. CEP is used to measure missile accuracy. CEP (Circular Error Probable) is defined as …
What About Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars, Buses and Trucks?
Toyota began developing hydrogen-powered cars more than 20 years ago, but they have been costly and the refueling infrastructure is still minimal. Recent technological advances halved the cost of fuel-cell stacks that mix hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity. Toyota made 3,000 hydrogen cars and buses in 2018 and will make 30,000 in 2020 and …
Perspective on World War 3 and the Draft
Kids in Grade 6 are freaking out about the potential for World War 3. Kids in Grade 9 are freaking out about a possible draft. I was told by my kids that these issues were raised by other kids in school. I have straightened out my children but I just want to tell people in …
NuScale Submits Next Regulatory Step in Canada for Modular SMR Reactor Design
NuScale Power today announced its first submittal to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) for pre-licensing vendor design review (VDR) of NuScale’s innovative small modular reactor (SMR) design. This submission reflects the substantive work that NuScale continues to accomplish in the regulatory field as the company is simultaneously bringing the U.S.’s first NuScale power plant …
Second Collision of Neutron Stars Detected
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo collaborations have detected the collision of the second pair of neutron stars. This is the first major event of LIGO detector’s third observing run. This is the second observing run to be conducted with the company of the Virgo detector in Italy. On April 25, 2019, the …
SpaceX Successfully Launches 60 More Starlink Satellites
SpaceX had its third launch of Starlink satellites from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Following stage separation, SpaceX will land Falcon 9’s first stage on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. Approximately 45 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX’s fairing …