Catégorie oBox : OBOXMA

In an interview on Tuesday, January 6, Republican Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) predicted that the Cuban government will be overthrown as early as this year. The comments come after US President Donald Trump predicted Cuba would fall, and as the U.S. blockade of oil exports from Venezuela is ramping up pressure on the communist Cuban regime. According to Scott, who is a close ally of Donald Trump, the Cuban government will be overthrown this year or next, and a democratic leader will be installed. According to Scott, current Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez’s regime will end, and democracy will follow.

Donald Trump began talking about Cuba just hours after capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Maduro was charged with Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machine guns and Destructive Devices, Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy and Conspiracy to Possess Machine guns and Destructive Devices against the United States after dozens of US air strikes on naval vessels leaving Venezuela. Maduro pleaded ‘not guilty’ to all charges, and is currently in a prison in the US alongside his wife.

Why Cuba?

There are many layers to why Donald Trump and the U.S. want to overthrow the Cuban government. To start, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez operated a communist government, a style of government America has been historically diametrically opposed to. Communism is still viewed as a threat to America by many American voters and politicians. Bermúdez also condemned the U.S. attack on Venezuela and capture of Maduro, calling the action ‘acts of state terrorism.’ U.S. control of Venezuelan oil exports seriously impacts Cuba, which imports nearly a third of its oil from Venezuela. With Donald Trump threatening to cut off supply to Cuba, the country is potentially facing a dangerous lack of power.

Energy shortages and power blackouts have become common in Cuba. In September, Cuba’s entire electrical grid failed, affecting nearly 10 million people, and over the past 12 months, it has suffered a dozen nationwide outages. Its malfunctioning energy network has taken another hit thanks to the U.S. naval blockade on Venezuela, which has limited shipments to Cuba. Now, with the U.S. completely in control of Venezuela’s oil, Venezuelan citizens are worried the country’s energy shortage will only worsen. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro had a close relationship with Cuba, with Venezuela frequently aiding the nearby nation during power outages and blackouts.

Next steps for Trump

After his operation in Venezuela was successful, it’s safe to assume Trump won’t be opposed to taking similar action in Cuba, a country with a long history of tensions with the U.S. In Venezuela, the U.S. began with airstrikes on the capital city before dropping into Maduro’s residence and taking the leader and his wife. It’s likely Trump would be willing to employ similar tactics in Cuba, especially with the obvious pride that Trump has taken in the successful operation. Trump has claimed that the U.S. could run Venezuela for the next five years, and it’s safe to say that his focus will remain on Venezuela for most of the year.

The price of RAM modules, an essential component of every computer and smartphone, has risen exponentially in recent months. Why? Not because of a sudden shortage of raw materials, but because of the arrival of new customers in the RAM market: the giants of artificial intelligence. Manufacturers of RAM modules are now turning to the more lucrative HBM memory for data centers practicing large-scale AI models.

Behind this shortage of RAM lie various components demanded by the tech industry. First of all, the piece of RAM used by the majority of our PCs, smartphones, and consoles is a very specific type of RAM called DDR4/DDR5 DRAM. This component represents the computer’s temporary memory, which stores what it’s currently using and empties when it’s switched off. DRAM production is mainly controlled by three companies – Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron – which together hold 93% of the world market. These manufacturers are diverting their production interests towards another type of RAM: HBM(High Bandwidth Memory). This is essential for the production of data centers practicing large-scale AI models.

More complex to manufacture and considerably more expensive than the RAM used for PCs, HBMs are now the manufacturing priorities of RAM production companies, putting consumer RAM manufacturing on the back burner. This bottleneck, caused by limited RAM production capacity, is leading to an increase in the price of RAM modules. According to PCPartPicker, a set of 2 x 32 GB DRAM strips has risen from US$229.99 in October to US$629.99 on Amazon’s website for the same retailer. This price increase per unit will also affect new products such as PCs, smartphones, and tablets, with RAM representing 10-20% of the overall price of a PC.

Electronics manufacturers will therefore be faced with two choices: absorb the RAM price increase, or pass it on to the consumer. This decision will depend on how much margin the manufacturer wants to keep. A final option could be to reduce the number of bytes—the unit defining a computer system’s storage capacity—within RAM. On the other hand, this option would be a retrograde step towards lower-performance devices, but one that would ensure the same price as today’s higher-performance devices.

A new study, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, reopens the debate on the origin and onset of the Black Death, the deadly disease that decimated half of Europe’s population in the 14th century. While scientists are well acquainted with the mechanisms of the plague, including its pathogen and its transmission by rats and fleas, this recent discovery provides an initial explanation of the timing of its arrival in Europe, comparing it with the devastation it had already caused in Central Asian communities. Research suggests that the emergence of this epidemic may be attributable to a volcanic eruption around 1345, some two years before the start of the pandemic, which cooled the climate, leading to famine and, consequently, grain imports that may have introduced the plague.

The research carried out by Ulf Büntgen and his colleagues was based on clues drawn from tree rings: from these, the team was able to reconstruct the temperature and precipitation history of the last 2000 years in Europe with remarkable accuracy. Ulf Büntgen observed that temperatures throughout the Mediterranean basin were slightly below average between 1345 and 1357. This climatic anomaly immediately caught his attention, prompting him to carry out further research into its origins and mechanisms. The cooling of a climate can be attributed to a number of factors: he hypothesized that a volcanic eruption had caused the release of aerosols, thus cooling the climate. To confirm his point, he then examined ice cores dating back to 1345 in Greenland and Antarctica. The results were unanimous: the cores showed high levels of sulfur, indicative of volcanic eruptions.

At a conference, Martin Bauch, a medieval climate historian involved in research associated with the development of the Black Death, met Ulf Büntgen. Both were interested in the same abnormal climatic years deemed decisive for the emergence of the Black Death. To reconstruct the social context of these key years, Martin Bauch had already analyzed administrative documents, letters, treatises on the plague, poems, and inscriptions. The historian from the Leibniz Institute for East European History and Culture in Leipzig discovered traces of volcanic activity in these archives. He has also uncovered strange accounts, notably from China and Bohemia, of lunar eclipses which, according to orbit calculations, could not have taken place at that time. According to him, it is possible that a particle-laden sky (potentially volcanic) altered the appearance of the Moon as seen from Earth, giving rise to these unusual lunar descriptions.

These events combined in a causal chain that ultimately triggered the Black Death pandemic. The volcanic eruption was followed by a multi-year cold snap that had a devastating impact on harvests throughout the Mediterranean basin. This agricultural crisis led to human actions that unintentionally accelerated the spread of the plague. To counter the famine caused by falling yields, major Italian city-states such as Venice and Genoa were forced to urgently import wheat from the Black Sea region. These precious shipments were infested with the deadly plague bacterium Yersinia pestis. Rat fleas, vectors of the disease, are particularly attracted to grain stocks and were able to survive for months on grain dust. This enabled them to endure the long sea voyage from the Black Sea to Italy. Once the grain had reached its destination, storage and redistribution of the merchandise led to the spread of the fleas and, consequently, of the pathogen across the continent. The consequences were catastrophic: before the pandemic, the world population was estimated at less than 450 million. Between 1347 and 1351, the Black Death killed at least 25 million people. The shockwaves of this catastrophe left social, economic, and cultural repercussions that lasted for decades.