BFTN #12 2018-06-25

The US Department of Energy is in the process of revamping the contract for the Aurora supercomputer, shifting its deployment from 2018 to 2021, and increasing its performance from 180 petaflops to over 1 exaflop. That will more than likely make it the first supercomputer in the US to leap over the exascale hurdle. https://www.top500.org/news/retooled-aurora-supercomputer-will-be-americas-first-exascale-system/

one exaFLOPS, or a billion billion calculations per second. Such capacity represents a thousandfold increase over the first petascale computer that came into operation in 2008

Exascale computing would be considered as a significant achievement in computer engineering, for it is believed to be the order of processing power of the human brain at neural level.

It is, for instance, the target power of the Human Brain Project.

China’s first exascale supercomputer will enter service by 2020 according to the head of the school of computing at the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT).

Japan is also planning an exascale system for 2020.

The measure legalizes marijuana possession, home growing, and sales for adults. The federal government will oversee remaining criminal sanctions (for, say, selling to minors) and the licensing of producers, while provincial governments will manage sales, distribution, and related regulations — as such, provinces will be able to impose tougher rules, such as raising the minimum age.

What sets Canada apart, though, is it’s doing this as a country. Previously, the South American nation of Uruguay was the only one that legally allowed marijuana for recreational purposes.

Canada, like the US, is part of international drug treaties that explicitly ban legalizing marijuana. Although activists have been pushing to change these treaties for years, they have failed so far — and that means Canada will be, in effect, in violation of international law in moving to legalize.

It could also follow Uruguay, which has essentially refused to acknowledge that legalization violates the treaties. Despite warnings from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, no one has taken significant action against Uruguay for its decision.

OR – they could just walk away – like the U.S. did with the UNHRC last week.

Now that the US has pulled out of the UN Human Rights Council, has praised Kim Jong Un, loves Putin, praises Duterte, locks up babies in detention camps and attacks our allies, can we please stop pretending that we are some shining light on a hill? We need to recognise that we are now the cautionary tale. (Scott Martin)

“Human rights abusers continue to serve on, and be elected to, the council.” – said Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, as her country separated 2000 screaming and crying children from their screaming and crying parents at the border.

The same country that ran secret torture camps around the world a decade ago.

Explain that the UN is a democracy.

Explain that while it may be true that the HRC focuses more attention on israel than other abusers, Israel is still a human rights abuser.

The US has just left it because they want to protect one of their client states who is a major abuser of human rights, according to Amnesty, Oxfam, the UN General Assembly, the members of the UN Security Council (except the US) and many other organisations. Are you going to leave the GA and SC as well?

The United States will be the world’s top oil producer in just a matter of months.

That’s the assessment of Pioneer Natural Resources Chairman Scott Sheffield, who told CNNMoney that he expects US production to surpass 11 million barrels a day within the next three to four months.

If achieved, that level of output would move the United States past Russia and make it the world’s top oil producer.

In 2017, the United States consumed a total of 7.26 billion barrels of petroleum products, an average of about 19.88 million barrels per day

more than 25% of the world’s total.

So the 11 million would be a little more than half of what the U.S. consumes.

The United States is currently pumping 10.3 million barrels per day, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Russia pumps 10.6 million barrels per day, while Saudi Arabia’s production stands at 10.1 million.

American production surpassed that of Saudi Arabia for the first time in February.

What does that mean for the U.S.-Saudi relationship? And U.S.-Russia?

Where does the U.S. get the rest of its oil?

In 2015,  the U.S. imported 1.37 billion barrels of oil from Canada, while Mexico provides 277 million, and Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait combine for just 544.9 million barrels, which is a 39.6% decrease from levels in 2000. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-04/where-does-us-get-its-oil

And didn’t Trump just start a trade war with Canada?

an Australian think tank

The 2018 Lowy Institute Poll reports the results of a nationally representative survey conducted by the Social Research Centre between 5 and 25 March 2018 with a sample size of 1200 Australian adults.

only 62% of respondents said they thought democracy was preferable to any other kind of government

But less that half of the 18-44 age bracket

Hasn’t changed much since 2012

since 2011 faith in the US to act responsibly has fallen from 83% to 55%, while only 30% of Australians have confidence in Trump’s foreign policy.

Trust in Russia has dropped from 59% in 2009 to 28% in 2018

Most Aussie think China is the world’s leading economic power

Most think climate change is a serious problem

78% are dissatisfied with the direction the way things are going in the world today