If an unknown drone appears over a nuclear power plant, the plant could launch a UAV to follow it about until it goes home, watch who picks it up after it lands, and then just send in the police.
Enough to counter the disappearance of the 85% of export income Saudi Arabia gets from oil?
Enough to counter the fact that Russia gets 52% of its federal revenue from oil and gas?
I find it hard to believe that making desalination a little cheaper, or transport a little less expensive will even come close to counter balancing those sort of percentages.
And even if it did, the relative importance of nations will change. Nations that were important because they had fossil fuels will become less important, and nations that were held back by lack of resources could become more powerful.
Those sorts of changes in power balances would cause a lot of turbulence.
If this works, and the global demand for fossil fuels significantly reduces or disappears, imagine the impact it will have on the countries whose economies are largely dependant on exporting oil, gas or coal. A large part of the Middle East, or even countries lie Russia or Venezuela could be in for a very bad few decades.
I first read nybble/nibble in a book in the late 80s when I was a kid.
I don't think I read or heard about it again for over a decade. It's never sounded silly to me, or at least no more silly than "byte", and it's at least slightly useful to explain converting hex.
I found out a few weeks ago they made a bunch of those bombs, minus the nuclear elements, for training. They even dropped some on Japanese targets and found they were fairly effective just from the explosive content.
I didn't know about the streaming problem with Flash on Linux. That would explain some past problems I've had with other websites.