Posts by John Pombrio

There is an easy, inexpensive way to cool down the most heavily affected area of the world, the Arctic. Just set off a volcano. Or at least the major atmospheric effect of a volcano, Sulfur Dioxide gas. It cools down the Earth so well that 1816 was known as "The year without a summer" because of the effect the eruption of Mount Tambora had.

There are huge leftover stockpiles of sulfur left over from removing it from Canadian oil. It can be mixed with water and sprayed into a high altitude by pumps, hoses, and high flying balloons creating sulfur dioxide gas. The sun gets reflected off of the gas and we have a much cooler Arctic. And Europe. And Canada. And Russia. The polar bears are happy. Humans? Not so much.

The question is should we let part of the world suffer for the good of Gaia? Humans have had a huge effect on the world and that is part of who and what we are. I expect the world to adapt to us, at least for the short time we as a species exist here. Welcome to the Age of Anthropocene.

I was at another town's library here in the US and went to check out my books. No one was at the checkout desk.

There was a monitor screen and integrated underneath a platform with a bar code light shining down. To check out, all I had to do was to scan my library card and place the books and magazines I wanted to check out on the platform. Blip went the books and mags onto the screen and a receipt printed out and fell on top of my books. My first OMG use of the IoT. There also goes several unnecessary librarian jobs.

New cover on an old book?

There is a ton of links on the new website but as for actual new code? Not so much. The site lists blog posts that seem to offer new tools for the developers but most links lead to a newer version (and some not so new versions) of tools that have been around for a few years now.

It is a nice and well laid out website and hopefully will grow into a good open source site for developers (and more hardware agnostic tools I hope). For now, it's just another coating on the same tools that were there before. Reminds me a lot of Crimson, right down to the same old interface once you dig down far enough but with a few new and slightly useful apps sitting on top.

If nothing else, AMD is getting some decent web page designers online.

AMD needs to do two things. One is to get their R&D spending back into something that can actually produce a product that someone would actually want to buy. Next is to take that R&D and go for some new products to diversify its products lines. Don't try to buy your way into a new field, make it yourself. The way company is running now is on the wrong side of a hill with a cliff on it.

50% of the industries in Russia that are now owned by the state, up from a third in 1991. I expect Putin to start announcing "5 year plans" for industries, agricultural yields, and Russian automobiles.

Heard a rumor about this.

Someone wrote that the XBox One's AMD chip actually had a hidden ARM processor layered into the chip itself. Could MS get away from hiding something like this for so long? Doubtful and I am not sure why they would bother.

First in your class at a great college?

At the top of your class in college, yeah you get to pretty much pick your salary. My son had a job offer and got it bumped up by $10K by showing the acceptance salary at another firm. Plus the $10K bonus, plus shares in the company. $90K a year a month job before he even got his degrees. Gave it all up for going to get a PhD in Comp Sci at Brown (the school gave him a free ride plus $22K stipend tho).