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Chicago is a favorite red herring of the gun nuts that relies on the reader being uninformed about Chicago.

So read.
and become informed:
a) Chicago proper is a rather small area, and guns very easy to get in the surrounding cities that make up the metro area
b) Chicago isn't even in the top 10 cities for gun violence. The cities that top that list are St Louis, Birmingham, New Orleans, and other red-state cities with far looser gun laws and higher gun availability.
c) Chicago's gun laws aren't the strictest of any major US city. in fact, by state law (GOP legislature), Chicago actually cannot pass any more gun laws than it already has
d) NYC's gun laws are even stricter than Chicagos. Its gun violence rate is also lower. This same pattern is repeated in several other gun control heavy cities.
e) http://www.bloomberg.com/polit...

It's not hard to say, over there weekend there was a currency devaluation in China.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

If you knew that the cash that you saved will buy less than it does right now, how would you protect it? Buying bitcoin is one possible answer. By the way, the fear is not deflation. Deflation would mean that your cash can buy MORE in the future. This is a devaluation, where your currency will buy less. China fears that they will need to print up large amounts of cash to bail out several bankrupt industries, and is attempting to devalue now to prevent a massive crash.

See the real time data for how Ontario achieves this. In 2015, they produced 90% of their energy from non-fossil sources. (60% nuclear + 24% hydro)

"It is increasingly plausible to foresee a future in which cheap renewable electricity becomes the world's primary power source and fossil fuels are relegated to a minority status," reads the conclusion of the 32-page document, produced by Policy Horizons Canada.

This is total BS; even with immense investment the world over, wind and solar haven't even made a dent in fossil fuel consumption. If anything, they cement the position of fossil fuels required for backing up their intermittent and unreliable power. See a short video about the reality of Germany's wind and solar, or one of the many articles about Germany's return to coal for providing reliable power. Their attempt to phase out nuclear has been a very expensive failure, and only succeeded in ramping coal consumption, including construction of new plants.

"It's absolutely not pie in the sky," said Michal Moore from the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy. "These folks are being realistic -- they may not be popular, but they're being realistic."

Notice the need to reaffirm their nonsense not once, but three times. The data does not support their position, so they continue to repeat the lie. Sadly, this often works.

Agree, the funny part about Bitcoin is that they change the definition of it when they can to their own profit. Sometimes it's a currency, other a commodity or just a payment channel... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

According to Bloomberg,

Oracle Co-Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz invoked the Ten Commandments to characterize Google as acting above the law. Catz told jurors that, at a bat mitzvah in 2012, Google General Counsel Kent Walker told her, “You know, Safra, Google is this really special company, and the old rules don’t apply to us.”

“I immediately said, ‘Thou shalt not steal,’” Catz testified. “It’s an oldie but goodie.”

Wow. If that's true, then Kent Walker should learn to not say things like that - even in a non-business setting.

~500K Americans will be killed by smoking this year, ~10 million worldwide.
66 people were injured by being dumb with the only effective smoking cessation method (well 1 of 2, the other being death). Yes, they were dumb. We have EEs in here probably already explaining what you do not do with a vape.
Ban vapes!!! OMG TERRAR! BAN THEM!!
Big Tobacco is part of the Pro Cancer movement looking to ban vapes for obvious reasons.
Big Pharma is against vapes as the best they can put out is products with a lower success rate than nothing (cold turkey)
Politician often are Pro Cancer for the campaign contributions, as well as having people taxed like no one's business via something they cannot quit. Then there are the tobacco bonds.. Which this article misattributes to doing well due to low gas prices rather then the success of the Pro Cancer movement and its war on vapes http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

So give some ad money to Buzzfeed and they will help kill millions.
Join the Pro Cancer movement and you can help kill millions. BAN VAPES! Think of the children!

Actually they are Lets buy america. Almost impossible to move your company to canada - very easy for your company to be "bought" by a canadian company. Burger King was bought by Tim Horton. The sad thing is once you are purchased by an overseas company it is easy to move the money into the US Tax free to spend on things like hiring employees, buying infrastructure, and general investing needs. Many of these large tech companies are borrowing money in the US so they can spend it here. It is cheaper to borrow money in the US than bring cash from overseas that comes with a significant penalty. This is just stupid.

Government is uniquely positioned to take longer term bets that the corporate world will not take.

Bullshit. Absolute stinking cow manure.

You would not offer citations for your claim, but here are counter-examples:

the max horizon is 3 years out.

Another steaming pile of excrement — five, not three years is considered the "traditional" investment period in the above cases.

Different people have different investment priorities, that's true. But some do have long-term ones.

by taking a longer term view they will quite regularly waste money

It is not the length of the term, that wastes money — it is the incompetence of the folks doing the "investing" coupled with the absence of self-interest and personal risk. A private investor putting his millions into Solyndra would not have anything left to invest again. How many bureaucrats got similarly disqualified at the DOE?

I made the above comment in good faith, as I did with a similar comment elsewhere in this thread. Both are at -1.

The effect of hosting the Olympics on Greek debt has been widely reported.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-08-02/how-the-2004-olympics-triggered-greeces-decline
http://www.news.com.au/sport/sports-life/a-dark-olympic-legacy-for-greece/news-story/8dcf6d1e8df9fe2e0f93ff12e74b1b72

Furthermore, there are economic studies in the US that show that public subsidies for sports venues aren't worth it.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/use-of-taxpayer-money-for-pro-sports-arenas-draws-fresh-scrutiny-1425856677

My comments are supported by plenty of research on these topics. There's no good reason why my posts were modded down. I'm not sure why I bother trying to make good posts if moderators are going to downmod them to -1 where most people won't see them. I can only assume I was modded down because someone disagreed with my posts, which is a blatant abuse of moderation.

He should be in Australia now, not too far from China. Any hope to see him heading to manage Foxconn ? It would be the final blow to chinese economy...

First US usage of power is about 4 times higher per household than Germany, possibly due to Germans mostly not having or using AC in the warmer months. This makes summer the power usage low in Germany. In the US the summer months are the usage high.
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com...
https://www.eia.gov/electricit...

The government (ie taxpayers) subsidize the tune of 20 billion Euros per year and rising (hiding the actual cost)

http://www.bloomberg.com/view/...
http://www.greentechmedia.com/...
http://www.seia.org/research-r...

German prices per kwh are higher (~.34 per kwh) vs US (~.15) mostly due to tax/tariff on energy, and regulatory procedures related to the infrastructure payments of solar and other renewables. The prices are rising so fast the government has had to begin a more restrictive path on new solar.

https://www.eia.gov/electricit...
https://www.cleanenergywire.or...

Based solely on price per kwh and predictable capacity, solar is awful. More specifically awful for germany, because of geography and weather trends.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/qu...

This unpredictability is causing massive new production plants using coal. This is a reult of shutting down nuclear and building solar which only generates an average of >10% of potential capacity. Altogether the solar plan's end result is not bringing them closer to meeting their climate pollution goals.
https://carboncounter.wordpres...

"when the wind suddenly stops blowing, and in particular during the cold season, supply becomes scarce. That's when heavy oil and coal power plants have to be fired up to close the gap, which is why Germany's energy producers in 2012 actually released more climate-damaging carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than in 2011. If there is still an electricity shortfall, energy-hungry plants like the ArcelorMittal steel mill in Hamburg are sometimes asked to shut down production to protect the grid. Of course, ordinary electricity customers are then expected to pay for the compensation these businesses are entitled to for lost profits."

http://www.spiegel.de/internat...

You obviously haven't followed the latest apple results. Even with smartphone makers trying build in forced obsolescence, sales are declining. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-26/apple-forecasts-another-sales-decline-as-iphone-demand-cools

When someone invests money (instead of sitting on it), they increase the velocity of money. When someone invests money (instead of spending it on consumer goods), they decrease the velocity of money.

No, what matters here is how quickly it changes hands to another person, not whether it changes hands in exchange for consumer goods

So, let me get this straight. If someone invests money, say in treasury bills, and as a result, it changes hands two or three times over the next year, this money has the same velocity as money that is spent at a food truck, where it will change hands two or three times over the next day? That buying bonds instead of cheeseburgers doesn't result in a net decrease in velocity of money? That notion seems to be at odds with the textbook definition of money velocity. In case you're not the academic type, and textbook definitions mean nothing to you, then let's grab an arbitrary media publication that also counters your position:

Money tends to slow down in the early stages of an economic recovery as people reduce spending, pay down debt, and increase their savings rate, and it doesn’t pick up speed until about four years into a turnaround.

--matthew philips, associate editor at bloomberg businessweek

(I just googled for 'investments slow velocity of money' and picked the first [arguably] reputable media outlet -- 5th hit for me)

Your model would suggest that reduced spending and increasing savings rates shouldn't decrease the velocity of money, as you disagree with my claim that consumer spending increases money velocity more than investing does. This is contrary to both intuition and economic data. Do you have any evidence to back this rather unorthodox position beyond a reference to "econ 101 lol"?

Also, now seems like a good time to point out that we've long departed from the original context, which was me asking you why you felt that stratification of wealth was insufficient to cause the economic slowdown that we're seeing. You still haven't answered that question, or any other that I've posed. In hindsight, I think I would've had better luck steering this thread in a more informative direction with mod points instead of pointed questions.

Cheers, and may we both have better luck next time.

Apologies for the terrible citation, but anonymised health records can be de-anonymised relatively easily.

Here's an excellent article by Ashlee Vance about a self-driving neural net-based system created by one man, George Hotz: http://www.bloomberg.com/featu...

It contains one passage that sums up my fears:

Hotz hadn't programmed any of these behaviors into the vehicle. He can't really explain all the reasons it does what it does. It's started making decisions on its own.

This will come back to bite us. More than once. Systems can exhibit unexpected behavior even when the inventor has an excellent understanding of the invention; here, a very bright inventor seems to have no hope of fully understanding things.

Unexpected behavior from the control system of an object that has a lot of kinetic energy is usually bad. And a car is not the most dangerous thing you can put a neural net in charge of.

This has been noted in lots of other articles.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

http://www.heritage.org/resear...

Fact is that the total number of manufacturing jobs worldwide has been declining for years.

--Paul

Mercedes at least is removing the robots:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

At least for small batchs humans with their flexibility are are better than robots.

American solar producer asks "Who needs China?"

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

You're right. He didn't say that solar was cheaper than coal. He said coal was more expensive than solar.

I know it's asking a lot but you have to read the whole article. At the end is a graph (in yellow) which shows that solar is cheaper than oil and gas in about half the states.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Also, "The economic advantages of wind and solar over fossil fuels go beyond price.5 Still, it's remarkable that in every major region of the world, the lifetime cost of new coal and gas projects6 are rising considerably in the second half of 2015, according to BNEF. And in every major region the cost of renewables continues to fall."

He is the Energy Minister so he should know more than some random Kochbot guy on /.

Even in the US, solar is cheaper than coal and gas in about half the states:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

You are right to ask about "other systemic costs".
Coal and gas have an advantage in that they don't have to pay for the cost of damage to the environment or health. Even so, renewables are cheaper.

Thanks for that very informative number. Help me understand what that means as it strikes me as too low.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... Of course, in real life, you also need to pay for the rooftop installation, and the power inverters for your grid hookup.

Not really, if that becomes a problem, we'll just re-institute the ban on exporting oil from the US. We've done it before.

That's the sort of stupid I expect from someone who's doomed to repeat history. Hint: first you have to lift the existing ban, and, it didn't work last time either - because you're a bunch of greedy, deceitful, cheating, ignorant bastards (mostly).

The bigger problem is, this is a ridiculous bill - you can't let all of your citizens individually pick fights with foreign countries.

I guess that would depend on which one, no?

It happens a lot. I don't know why you think that. There's been a lawsuit on a similar topic for a while.

Saudi Arabia is hot. Iran is not.

I mean, wouldn't it be scary if in this world, you cannot say anything that someone would be considered douche?

Like this?

We will never get over this censorship bullshit until we develop robust P2P and distributed services that cannot be taken down without nuking the whole planet. Make it impossible and the problem is solved, end of story.

Oh, please! It doesn't stop there. The Ottoman Empire shall rise again!

The recent price crash of oil was caused by a supply glut of 2 million barrels per day. According the the studies referenced here, if electric vehicle growth continues at the rate we have seen in recent years, electric vehicles will in and of themselves create their own oil demand glut of 2 million barrels by 2023. I wouldn't want to own oil stocks when that happens.

Perhaps it's time to farm out design and coding, and stick to icon design and repackaging other companies' off the shelf components.

You're so full of shit, it's pathetic.

To be sure, just like every other tech company, Apple uses many off-the-shelf components.

However, UNLIKE most other tech companies (e.g. Lenovo, Dell and HP), Apple designs many, many custom components for their products, e.g. sound processors, memory controllers, I/O controllers and much, much more. And that doesn't even touch on their custom cases, power supplies, plus a boatload of custom cables, connectors and adapters; this list goes on and on.

There are many examples over the years (most of which are very hard to find references for); but even if we restrict the list to JUST their mobile SoCs, you are easily shown to be quite the liar. Or fool. Take your pick.

Perhaps there is a reason for that. Immigration should not be taken lightly, it is a tremendous decision, and it is something that harms the country you are leaving. It should not be easy to just leave your country of birth and move to another just because you don't like your home country anymore.

A study for the National Foundation for American Policy estimated that to hire someone on an H-1B visa, a U.S. employer has to pay about $2,500 in legal fees; a $1,500 training fee; a $1,000 “premium processing” fee; a $500 antifraud fee; a $190 immigration service fee; around $125 in additional incidental costs; and a $100 visa fee. That totals almost $6,000. Complicated immigration cases can cost eligible applicants $10,000 or more in legal fees alone. Meanwhile, even unauthorized immigrants from Central America pay between $7,000 and $10,000 in smuggling fees to get across the border, according to Alex Nowrasteh at the Competitive Enterprise Institute—often more than once, because they get caught, thrown out, and try to return.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

So, a difficult immigration can cost around $10k, however, people are paying that amount to come in illegally in smuggling fees. So it must not be an issue how much it costs. The $6000 they list for hiring a H1B sounds pretty fair too, it costs around that to hire a citizen instead.

Adoption costs around this much, and it is just as much of a decision.

This site says that some Visas cost as little as $465, so it is just too much money!
http://www.theguardian.com/mon...

I'd really like to see some numbers on how his (Bezos) wealth breaks down, so I'd prefer more than your word on the matter. Beyond that, much of what he owns isn't just land, but is also real estate (homes, apartments, offices, the like) as is shown in the first posted article.

While we're at it, it's interesting to note that much of what has Trump's name on it isn't actually something he owns. He's a big fan of licensing his name and having no other involvement beyond that, which gives the illusion that he owns more than he actually does. This article in particular has some interesting things to note- particularly the latest assessment by Forbes of Trump's net worth. Trump himself states his net worth (depending on the day and his mood) between 8.6 and 10 billion dollars when you include his "brand". The Forbes assessment actually says it should be 3.2 billion, which puts the "brand" component at up to 5.4 or even 6.8 billion dollars- a much larger portion of his wealth than his real estate holdings. Doubly so when in the same article, Trump says his brand is worth 4 billion. So, no, according to Trump himself and the other sources available, most of his wealth does not come from real estate, local businesses or casinos. It comes from his brand and licensing.

I also find the idea of only land and real estate holders having the ability to vote quite disturbing. I'm at a point in my life where I'm able to put time and effort into researching candidates and politics, but I don't have the money necessary to own real estate. I should not be prevented from having a say/having my voice heard just because I lack the funds to own something almost entirely irrelevant to most of the issues I care about. Since people who rent also don't own real estate, we'd lose many votes from the cities which would disenfranchise a great deal of minorities. Such a plan says that anyone poor, young, or not white, doesn't deserve a say in who represents them, even if they vastly outnumber the people who would be left with the vote.

People do have a tendency to call people racist when they really mean they disagree about race relate political issues. But that isn't what is going on here. Trump's words far exceed any sort of attempt to enforce current immigration laws. For example, his claims that Mexico was deliberately sending its criminals to the US http://www.laweekly.com/news/heres-a-fact-check-of-donald-trumps-mexico-bashing-5754639 which was demonstrably false. He plans on making a wall between Mexico and the US and making Mexico pay for it, despite the fact that the number of illegal immigrants has in the last few years been stable or declined http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/19/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/. He's claimed that a judge in a legal case was biased against him purely under the basis that the judge was Hispanic http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-27/trump-university-argues-ex-student-can-t-bow-out-as-trial-nears. And then there was the bit where he refused to disavow the KKK and then lied about it, claiming it was due to mishearing the question when his response indicates he understood exactly what was being asked http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/28/politics/donald-trump-white-supremacists/

And this is before we get to the fact that many of his other policy ideas about immigration have nothing to do with enforcing current rules (e.g. his ideas about banning all Muslims from entering the US).

I don't know if Trump is racist, but he's made a lot of comments that certainly move in that direction, and if he isn't racist he's making a concerted effort to appeal to racists and general xenophobic sentiments.

Why would Americans wanting to hide stuff go off-shore when they can do everything they need to do right in the USA?

The conspiracy theorists are playing right along by saying there are no Americans mentioned in the Panama Papers so it must have been scrubbed, despite (1) hundreds of Americans being named in them, and (2) you don't have to go offshore to hide money. The US works just fine for hiding money.

"They buy a 16GB device because that's what they want to buy"

To quote you, "Bullshit"

What's Behind Apple's Epic Memory Markup :

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Kinda maybe. Tesla introduced the base model at $33,560, with the top of the line going for almost double that. The average per the link will be about $42k. You can get many gas powered vehicles for $33k +/- loaded with features. Still good job on Tesla for pushing into the future. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

If all restaurants have the same cost, then all are as competitive as they were be before.

Except they lose competitiveness versus making your own food.

Spending on restaurants has just surpassed spending on groceries in the US for the first time. This could slide back into reverse now with rising minimum wages.

This is a typical build vs. buy decision. You save time eating at McDonalds, but if it costs more, you might make your own sandwich.

This also applies to nannies: a female computer programmer makes a decision to have a nanny care for her child instead of her so she can work. If the nanny's wages goes up, the programmer may chose to leave the workforce because she is no longer making enough to cover child care (especially after taxes). Note that the latter scenario is the loss of two jobs, the nanny and the computer programmer. The economy has a double loss.

Could be worse. They could be Konami, that basically is trashing all of its old flagship franchises and the creators along with them, in order to switch completely to mobile gaming. I'd much rather pay for a mobile port of a real game, than get saddled with a ridiculous microtransaction heavy mess, like with Granblue Fantasy: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

The irony is sweet with this one: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Doubtful. They are protecting sources and methods by refusing to disclose to Apple.

The irony is sweet with this one:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

The problem is that they often see US citizens as criminals. You know, before all that stupid trial stuff.

And if your point was valid, they wouldn't be fighting Apple in federal court for security, or been fighting them on it for several years now.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

How much in tax dollars is being spent to make this happen? More or less, all of that solar (and wind) power is being funded with tax dollars in one form or another. Either with direct rebates, or via tax credits...

You dumb shit.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

"...subsidies "are aimed at occupying more market share within the short term and is competitively unfair for the taxi industry"

But it's okay when The Chinese decide to subsidize Chinese industries to give that same unfairness against non-Chinese Industry:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
http://www.economist.com/news/...

I believe the AC was referring to negative interest rates.

Dear Anonymous Coward,

My only political comment in the past here at /. was a report about the reaction in Brazil against Rede Globo. Globo is kowingly a long-time supporter of authoritarianism and corruption. They even attempted to apologize for supporting the dictatorship that ousted President João Goulatr, in 1964. Brazil has a so terrible media landscape that Reporters Without Borders called it “the country of 30 Berlusconis”. The fact that Globo and Brazilian media are attempting to oust President Dilma Rouseff and prevent Lula from running for president in 2018 is blatantly clear. The irony in this story is that while Lula is being accused of hiding property the Marinho family, owners of Globo attempts to conceal the luxury house that they illegally built in a natural preserve in Paraty, state of Rio de Janeiro.

For those that aren't aware: the license plate can cost more than the car itself; hence the forgeries.

Its obvious that LYING OBAMA SHITSTAIN is talking up the economy. As you see, the I_MAXI_PAD has made games into fuckign angry birds. In turn, real games such as Deus Ex 1, which require a brain and have dialogue are gone and ANGRY FAGS and CANDY SHIT CRUSH are what we got.

Now the economy is SHIT and VIDEO GAMES SUCK DICK as a genre.

March 4 2016

Wages Drop...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

93,688,000 Americans Not in Labor Force...
http://cnsnews.com/news/articl...

Deficit with China GROWS...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wir...

Exports hit 5-1/2-year low...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wir...

ROGERS: 100% Probability of Recession...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Gold soars into bull market as growth fears mount...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/bus...

"Today's news"
JOBS, JOBS: FEB +242,000, 4.9%...

Its obvious that LYING OBAMA SHITSTAIN is talking up the economy. As you see, the I_MAXI_PAD has made games into fuckign angry birds. In turn, real games such as Deus Ex 1, which require a brain and have dialogue are gone and ANGRY FAGS and CANDY SHIT CRUSH are what we got.

Now the economy is SHIT and VIDEO GAMES SUCK DICK as a genre.

March 4 2016

Wages Drop...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

93,688,000 Americans Not in Labor Force...
http://cnsnews.com/news/articl...

Deficit with China GROWS...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wir...

Exports hit 5-1/2-year low...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wir...

ROGERS: 100% Probability of Recession...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Gold soars into bull market as growth fears mount...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/bus...

"Today's news"
JOBS, JOBS: FEB +242,000, 4.9%...

Ads are not downloaded like a simple image banner anymore. The first thing that's loaded is a script, and that loads the ad you see (or not). A major benefit of ad-blocking is not running that script, but without that script, you'd never know what image or movie to download. And of course one other benefit of ad-blocking is not downloading those huge "asset" files. And if that isn't enough to convince you that downloading ads and not showing them is not a better ad-blocker for the client, then read this and realize that it wouldn't be a better ad blocker for the site owner either.

TFA tells us that in 2016, 18.1GW (9.5GW of solar and 8.6GW of wind) renewable energy is expected to come online in America

Very good

On the other hand ...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

According to bloomberg's article

... China to add more than 20 gigawatts of wind power in 2016

China eyes at least 15 gigawatts of solar power additions ...

... in the same year, China gonna have at least35GW of new renewable energy coming online

We could do better

In fact, we should do better