Interesting Links for 24-11-2022

[andrewducker]

1. All You Need To Know About Scotland's Legal Bid For An Independence Referendum

(tags:scotland law independence )

2. COVID-19 vaccination associated with 15% reduction in stillbirths

(tags:pandemic vaccination death pregnancy )

3. The influence of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies on cinematic portrayals of ancient Greece and Rome

(tags:rome greece lotr movies )

4. Turns out that dreaded pit beasts are a lot like cats

(tags:funny fantasy comic cats )

5. How much does it cost Facebook to look after your cat pictures?

(tags:cats facebook storage )

6. Lugo, the only town with fully intact Roman walls

(tags:history rome Spain architecture viaDanielDWilliam )

7. Where are all the heat pumps?

(tags:electricity heating UK viaDanielDWilliam )

8. If you're wondering how SpaceX coped with Musk, this will fill you in

(tags:ElonMusk Spacex management )

9. Fossil fuel power plants kill 35x as many birds as wind turbines do per GWh (and nuclear power is twice as deadly as wind power)

(tags:birds death nuclearpower coal gas environment windpower )

10. European Parliament declares Russia a terrorism sponsor, then its site goes down

(tags:web russia europe terrorism )

11. How much trouble are GPs in Scotland in?

(tags:healthcare scotland )

12. Sponsian: Ancient Roman gold coins thought to be 'fakes' reveal long-lost local emperor

(tags:rome Romania archeology )

Comments

[autopope]

There's an error in the Facebook data storage piece (ironically published on Livejournal): 3 billion people a month use FB, and it spends $30Bn a year on infrastructure ... but there are only 0.33Bn people in the US: realistically, the USA accounts for about 200M users, around 5% of FB's usage. So if it was run as a public service the cost to the US government would be closer to something on the order of $1.5Bn a year, which in US government terms is peanuts -- less than the production cost of a single SLS rocket or B-2 bomber.

(The point about it being private and very dangerous still stands, but it's annoying to see such an obvious error in an otherwise solid argument.)