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Thanks for the information.

However, in the article she wrote to which you linked, As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People, she seems to justify my conclusion.

She does not have the fascination with technology that other Slashdot readers and I often have.

I'm also fascinated with women. A long time ago, after a long conversation with a woman, I said, "I seem to be more interested in you than you are." She said, "Maybe you're right!"

Being fascinated with technology doesn't stop fascination with humans.

Completely wrong on McArdle's background. She started out as a technology consultant before deciding it wasn't fulfilling for her, got a business degree and became an economic policy journalist.

(The link goes into some of her background of building servers and whatnot and is a fairly compassionate take on the James Damore brouhaha.)

This is the actual opinion article by the actual publisher, Bloomberg Businessweek: The Internet Had Already Lost Its Neutrality (Nov. 21, 2017) Why did Slashdot link to the same article in The Japan Times?

There are at least 2 separate issues: 1) Neutrality of speed and access of delivery of digital internet information, and 2) "Neutrality" of what people communicate. That 2nd issue is a very old one. Before the year 313 CE (Common Era), people could be killed for being Christian. After the year 313 CE, people could be killed for NOT being Christian.

The Bloomberg article was written by a woman who apparently has NO knowledge of technology and no interest in technology: Megan McArdle is a Bloomberg View columnist.. Look at the other articles by Megan McArdle at that link, for example: Keep Your Dark Chocolate, and Your Unearned Sense of Superiority.

Notice that, in the article about internet neutrality, Megan McArdle calls President Trump the "genital-grabber-in-chief". Is there beginning to be a world-wide understanding that President Trump is not mentally capable of being a leader? Apparently that idea has been adopted by the Japan Times.

This is the actual opinion article by the actual publisher, Bloomberg Businessweek: The Internet Had Already Lost Its Neutrality (Nov. 21, 2017) Why did Slashdot link to the same article in The Japan Times?

There are at least 2 separate issues: 1) Neutrality of speed and access of delivery of digital internet information, and 2) "Neutrality" of what people communicate. That 2nd issue is a very old one. Before the year 313 CE (Common Era), people could be killed for being Christian. After the year 313 CE, people could be killed for NOT being Christian.

The Bloomberg article was written by a woman who apparently has NO knowledge of technology and no interest in technology: Megan McArdle is a Bloomberg View columnist.. Look at the other articles by Megan McArdle at that link, for example: Keep Your Dark Chocolate, and Your Unearned Sense of Superiority.

Notice that, in the article about internet neutrality, Megan McArdle calls President Trump the "genital-grabber-in-chief". Is there beginning to be a world-wide understanding that President Trump is not mentally capable of being a leader? Apparently that idea has been adopted by the Japan Times.

This is the actual opinion article by the actual publisher, Bloomberg Businessweek: The Internet Had Already Lost Its Neutrality (Nov. 21, 2017) Why did Slashdot link to the same article in The Japan Times?

There are at least 2 separate issues: 1) Neutrality of speed and access of delivery of digital internet information, and 2) "Neutrality" of what people communicate. That 2nd issue is a very old one. Before the year 313 CE (Common Era), people could be killed for being Christian. After the year 313 CE, people could be killed for NOT being Christian.

The Bloomberg article was written by a woman who apparently has NO knowledge of technology and no interest in technology: Megan McArdle is a Bloomberg View columnist.. Look at the other articles by Megan McArdle at that link, for example: Keep Your Dark Chocolate, and Your Unearned Sense of Superiority.

Notice that, in the article about internet neutrality, Megan McArdle calls President Trump the "genital-grabber-in-chief". Is there beginning to be a world-wide understanding that President Trump is not mentally capable of being a leader? Apparently that idea has been adopted by the Japan Times.

You will need net neutrality because of crap congress pulls so we don't even have the option to sue anymore.

There is not a single piece of evidence Russia "tampered" with your elections. Not a single one. You are just repeating the bullshit American propaganda.

Will you still be saying that when you find out specifically who's been trolling you?

Meanwhile, our experience of the internet is increasingly controlled by a handful of firms, most especially Google and Facebook. The argument for regulating these companies as public utilities is arguably at least as strong as the argument for thus regulating ISPs, and very possibly much stronger; while cable monopolies may have local dominance, none of them has the ability that Google and Facebook have to unilaterally shape what Americans see, hear, and read.

In other words, we already live in the walled garden that activists worry about, and the walls are getting higher every day.

Clinton did not collude with Russia, the Trump campaign did.

Proof? Nope, there is none. Hello, nothingburger.

Clinton is not responsible for her husband's behavior, but that said, it is highly unlikely any allegations of sexual harassment, let alone rape, are true again him, given he has been the victim of a smear campaign concerning this since 1991, a campaign that started in large part because Republicans were angry that sexual assault allegations against a Supreme Court nominee were made public. Bill Clinton's sex life has been under scrutiny since then, culminating in the revelation that... uh, he had a 100% consensual affair with Monica Lewinsky.

You're a rapist denier. Congratulations.

The Obama administration's IRS never attacked citizens based on political views. It, as it is required to do by law, gave special examination to organizations claiming tax immunity that were apparently political given certain keyword and key phrases. One such key phrase was "Tea Party". Another was "Occupy". The Republicans admitted it was a fictional smear against the IRS today, as it happens.

Oh it certainly did. This denial is even more laughable than Infowars conspiracies. You're in la-la land.

Hillary Clinton has not been shown to have lied under oath.

Now you're just being ridiculous. She can't keep a story straight.

Hillary Clinton did not rig the DNC primary, she wouldn't have been able to if she tried, she doesn't and didn't run the DNC.

And she knew nothing about it, right. So innocent.
But Trump was behind every and any wrongdoing on the RNC side, amiright? Which, BTW, played far more far and by the rules than the DNC did.

The only point you'd have going for you, you didn't mention: Hillary is really not relevant or germane to this discussion and it was pretty desperate of the first AC who mentioned her.

Clinton did none of those things. She was never in a position to sell Uranium to Russia - indeed, that's not even the scandal! (The "scandal", which is also bogus, is she supposedly approved a Uranium ore mine sale to a Russian company after accepting a donation. Only the person who made the donation hadn't been linked to the Russian company for two years, having sold his stake completely, and AGAIN the approval was needed from numerous organizations unrelated to Clinton. It's a bust.

Clinton did not collude with Russia, the Trump campaign did.

Clinton is not responsible for her husband's behavior, but that said, it is highly unlikely any allegations of sexual harassment, let alone rape, are true again him, given he has been the victim of a smear campaign concerning this since 1991, a campaign that started in large part because Republicans were angry that sexual assault allegations against a Supreme Court nominee were made public. Bill Clinton's sex life has been under scrutiny since then, culminating in the revelation that... uh, he had a 100% consensual affair with Monica Lewinsky.

The Obama administration's IRS never attacked citizens based on political views. It, as it is required to do by law, gave special examination to organizations claiming tax immunity that were apparently political given certain keyword and key phrases. One such key phrase was "Tea Party". Another was "Occupy". The Republicans admitted it was a fictional smear against the IRS today, as it happens.

Hillary Clinton has not been shown to have lied under oath.

Hillary Clinton's Husband did not threaten the head of the DoJ. That's just entirely made up.

Hillary Clinton did not rig the DNC primary, she wouldn't have been able to if she tried, she doesn't and didn't run the DNC.

You can't possible be dumber than you are.

At least the GP didn't uncritically repeat seven complete BS conspiracy theories about someone knowing full well that she and her husband have been victims of a continuous smear campaign since 1991. I'm surprised you didn't mention Vince Foster.

Sorry, but all evidence shown so far seems to indicate Kaspersky software works just fine, Not caused system compromises, AND
any case where Kaspersky "exposed" or "leaked" secret files were Kaspersky working like it's supposed to --- not Kaspersky violating any privacy expectations; you
just don't get to run "secret" potentially-malicious programs on desktop computers without the possibility of malware samples of your suspicious code going to the AV vendor for analysis.... I can accept that, and I think most people SHOULD accept that with zero objections.

Yep all a vast liberal conspiracy with 0 evidence from other parties that Russian intelligence has been using Kaspersky at all because Trump has an R next so any negative news must be by the democrats.

It is not like a foreign independent intelligence agency found any proof of this at all.

Sorry, but all evidence shown so far seems to indicate Kaspersky software works just fine, Not caused system compromises, AND
any case where Kaspersky "exposed" or "leaked" secret files were Kaspersky working like it's supposed to --- not Kaspersky violating any privacy expectations; you
just don't get to run "secret" potentially-malicious programs on desktop computers without the possibility of malware samples of your suspicious code going to the AV vendor for analysis.... I can accept that, and I think most people SHOULD accept that with zero objections.

Yep all a vast liberal conspiracy with 0 evidence from other parties that Russian intelligence has been using Kaspersky at all because Trump has an R next so any negative news must be by the democrats.

Though a free country can't ban them, we do have to be aware of these efforts and we can't base any actual decisions on the "sentiment" of social networks and blogs. Because the enemy — such as Russia — really does make massive use of these methods, paying loony activists and saturating twitter et al with comments by both human trolls and outright robots.

And whereas the old USSR was only relying on Left-leaning movements abroad, Putin is happy to use everyone. In France, for example, it is the Right that's on his payroll, whereas in Germany — the Left, even if the common media wouldn't admit that, singling out individual assholes, rather than entire movements it finds sympathetic.

Russia sells fossil fuels AND more land becomes usable with climate change. Climate change destabilizes the current world order, which is obviously the goal of Russia trying to nudge the US into an isolationist position and countries to withdraw from the EU.

The only reason one would have to doubt that climate change denialism is being promoted by foreign adversaries is the same reason one would doubt that our adversaries were trying to convince us Trump would be good: You don't like the implications and are too stupid to realize the damage will happen no matter what you believe.

The Fed prints electronic money, funnels it into some investment companies, which then burn the money on investment/welfare for Uber. It's just turning the US dollar into the Zimbabwean dollar.

The US possibly to default on its debt is not going to help: https://www.bloomberg.com/news.... The US is already a Third World country w.r.t. its infrastructure, so perhaps it will also become one financially. E.g., with the end of the petrodollar in sight, what will the US really have to offer to the world, besides a flashy phone (on which it can barely can make any tax dollars)?

Because the Fed can print money, the US will never be forced to default on its debt. It will always be able to print money to pay its debts. That can cause other problems, no doubt. But default or bankruptcy are not among them.

Wait up - back in May IBM reversed their remoting policy and shifted to bringing people back into the office. Did anyone ever get a solid reason why they opted for this route?

http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/1...
https://www.bloomberg.com/view...

I am *not* dead wrong. Russia has a terrible position. They're no Soviet Union. They're surrounded, where are they going to go?

Uhh, Crimea, for a start? They have Syria, too.

The US won't allow anything to happen to its captive vassal states in Europe.

I think the people of Ukraine would disagree with you on that.

The European Union is already strong enough to defend against Russia

So far, they've been strong enough to impose some sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine and the taking of Crimea. But it's kinda over... nobody believes Russia is going to just pack up and leave. Re-draw the maps: Crimea is now part of the Russian Federation.

Don't fall for the old "blame the dirty foreigners" line, it's the oldest trick in the book.

Unless the dirty foreigners are actually playing dirty. They play dirty in Ukraine, they play dirty in Syria. They play dirty on the high seas. They have vast oil wealth, hold real estate interests worldwide, and maintain the largest nuclear stockpile in the world, which Putin said (over dinner) could destroy America in a half-hour or less.

And then there's that whole internet hacking thing. If the shoe fits, wear it.

much harder for ordinary Russians to access websites ISPs are instructed to block connections to by Russian regulator Roskomnadzor

Whereas the "Great Firewall of China" may be considered a tragedy, Roskomnadzor's efforts are the proverbial farce that follows: the agency has blocked itself — apparently, on more than one occasion...

Nobody changed their mind on who to vote for based on a facebook ad. If you think someone did, prove it.

Wtf?

First of all, who said the point of the ads is to get people to change their mind? This is what the Trump team itself was doing with ads/targeting before the elections:

Trump’s campaign has devised another strategy, which, not surprisingly, is negative. Instead of expanding the electorate, Bannon and his team are trying to shrink it. “We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” says a senior official. They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans. Trump’s invocation at the debate of Clinton’s WikiLeaks e-mails and support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership was designed to turn off Sanders supporters. The parade of women who say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and harassed or threatened by Hillary is meant to undermine her appeal to young women. And her 1996 suggestion that some African American males are “super predators” is the basis of a below-the-radar effort to discourage infrequent black voters from showing up at the polls—particularly in Florida.

All you need to dö is get enough people in the key demographic of your opponent to stay home in key areas.

Second of all: many people don't recognize sponsored content/ads in social media, or elsewhere. You'll see a news article or a blog post that has above it something like '[Your friend name here] also liked [our site]' and that's in fact a paid ad targeted to you because someone you know has liked the page and they've targeted their promotion that way, but really people generally don't think of these as ads but just another part of their newsfeed which actually makes them more effective.

Third of all: ads (both direct and sponsored content) do affect people's decisions. That's why they exist and why companies are pouring money into them but you obviously will have a hard time finding anyone who says they bought any opinion/product/service because it was advertised to them, partly because people don't often recognize the impact ads have on them. Chances are high advertising has affected your behavior during your lifetime without you being directly aware of it. You see ads and at some later point when you're making the decision of what to buy, the ads play into your preconceptions and decision making process at a subconscious level. Hardly no-one is at the store like 'I'm going to buy this product because I saw that ad last week" but there is still is an increase in sales following a successful marketing campaign.

So no, if you poll people and ask them 'did you see any paid for articles in your news feed about either candidate and if so did they effect your decision on whether to vote or not and for which candidate?' you're likely going to get a 'no' on all 3 of those from most people but that doesn't mean there was no effect, it just means most people can't recognize well placed ads as ads anymore and that like always, people think they're immune to the psychological effects of ads/sponsored content when they provably are not.

Human beings on average are much more easy to influence than we tend to admit, and the marketing industry has been honing their skills for way over half a century at this point becoming more and more successful at it.

If i'd looked at the URL first i wouldn't have been expecting much from a FOX article, but it failed even to meet those low standards. It says nothing at all about the robot and consists almost entirely of Kaywell's semi-coherent musings on the topic.

A quick search resulted in this article from Bloomberg. Which at least explains what they're talking about, though still not in very great detail.

As expected it's a PR stunt, relating to the "robot city" they're planning to build.

I'll bite Mr. AC, you and your short memory. Obama took over after a certain W spent a surplus away with tax cuts for the rich (that didn't improve the economy or create jobs) and a WAR that we're still fighting over WMD's that didn't exist and that they told us would pay for itself. Obama turned that around. Hell, he permitted the government to save the U.S. auto industry - remember GM about to go belly-up - when Mitt Romney said in his own words to let it go bankrupt. Everyone driving a sweet, new, spanky Camaro today should friendly thank you to Mr. Obama for preventing the Rominator from letting the "market" slice GM into whatever would have turned a fast buck. Funny thing, facts: they don't always agree with the prejudice you want to maintain.

Here's another one: GDP tends to go up under Democratic administrations, down in Republican ones. I suppose Trump is still enjoying the fruits of Obama's hard work, here in his first year. But as he keeps throwing monkey-wrenches at the health-care and insurance markets with his Tweets and executive orders, instead of just leaving it alone, health care and health insurance is only going to go up, up, up as insurance companies can't predict what to charge to cover their asses. Does that affect rich people? No, billionaires and Senators can pay cash to the best doctors and hospitals. But it affects YOU, hits YOUR paycheck or, if you don't get health from your boss, hits you with bankruptcy when that pain in your gut turns out to be cancer, when that traffic accident with that uninsured drunk in the pickup kills your kidneys and puts you on dialysis for the rest of your life, hits you as you get old and your knees start to give out. Trump will get his knees replaced, and tax-payers will pay for it. YOU will just live with it, buy a walker from Walgreen's and shuffle around between your bed and your TV couch. Dammit, what happened to the Fox News? Had to choose between the pain pills and the cable bill - guess which one's more addictive.

Yes, Daimler's plans are not new:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Amazon and Microsoft contribute to making Seattle a MISERABLE place to live. The world, not just Seattle, needs better city management. (Posting this again, with improvements.)

Amazon: Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (February 23, 2014)

Amazon: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (August 15, 2015) Quote: "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."

Amazon: Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany (February 19, 2013)

Microsoft: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book (May 23, 2012) The Microsoft headquarters is in Redmond, part of the Seattle metropolitan area.

Seattle: Together with Amazon, Microsoft, and inadequate city management, Seattle is an extremely miserable place:

Traffic: Seattle one of the worst U.S. cities for traffic congestion, tied with NYC (March 31, 2015) Quote: "An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic may not sound like much, but when it adds up over a year it becomes 89 hours." (Whoever wrote that must be accustomed to Seattle misery. An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic sounds HORRIBLE.)

Slow internet: Many areas of Seattle have poor internet connections. See the article, These places have the slowest Internet in the country. (June 25, 2015) Quote: "... Seattle ... CenturyLink (CTL) customers trying to access particular sites from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. will have unbearably slow speeds."

Important questions for city managers and residents of Amazon's new city: 1) Do you want to invite a company to your city that has a history of abusiveness? 2) Could the managers of Amazon's new city manage Amazon's growth, or would it be almost completely out of their control?

No

Unless this includes a policy reversal, Trump still get's a pass since he's basically their financial lifeline right now--err em, excuse me... I mean "news worthy."

When I clicked the link, all I got was a page that made it clear that it was a Javascript site, not a HTML site.

Here are three links which are higher quality than the garbage you linked to this story: one two three. Is this site news for nerds, or dick-jerking for people who don't care if the web goes to shit? Clearly, the latter.

. . . this effort:

Facebook Is Looking for Employees With National Security Clearances

Well, I can't find any references to a court case that established QDOS piracy, so that could be one where my memory fails.

This write-up from 2004 looks pretty good. It's a really murky subject: https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

I expect it to happen if drone operators continue to do stupid stuff that interferes with aircraft. I'm sorry, but there are too many stupid people playing with drones to have forced this because they clearly can't regulate themselves. Imagine the outcry when people die because of some stupid drone operator hitting an aircraft at some critical point. They have already caused mid-air collisions and have interfered with emergency responders.

Here's a case that resulted in damage to the helicopter:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
Here's a possible hit with an A320:
https://www.theverge.com/2016/...
There have also been hundreds of close calls:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Interfering with firefighters:
http://wildfiretoday.com/2017/...
http://www.mercurynews.com/201...
http://www.npr.org/2015/07/23/...

They can't even control hitting other drones.

https://www.faa.gov/uas/faqs/

That cutting edge will cause people to bleed if they don't get this right.

Currently around 3500 people die in auto accidents every month, and another 380k get injured badly enough to go to a hospital (citation below). What we have today is far from perfect and if they can improve on what we currently have, despite not being perfect, it's progress and a good thing. The early data is that it helps reduce deaths by ~20% and injuries by ~40%. That's quite an improvement and I'm certain that it will get even better over time.

Citation:

http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

People have been screaming about the reliability of voting machines and voter fraud for years, but they where dismissed as paranoid.
Now, when it's in favor of their political interest, the establishment suddenly cares about the reliability of elections.

They're talking about thousands of dollars in an election where Hillary spent more than a billion dollars, 550 million more than her opponent.
https://www.bloomberg.com/poli...
Yet somehow a couple hundred thousand dollars from Russians flipped the election...

Also, why would we trust these establishment companies who have a huge political bias?
It's so obvious that they're just pushing this bullshit to excuse Hillary's failure.

Over the past few years I've watched with a kind of sickened admiration as Amazon has grown from an online bookstore to a purveyor of 'all things'. Really, their expansion to a definitely-not-a-monopoly player within a market, their subsequent embrace of another market, followed by expansion within that market, and so on, is a thing of beauty. In a sense it's been like watching the growth and evolution of a living organism.

One perfect example of this effect hit the news only the other day: After its retail sales had reached a certain size it made perfect sense, from an economies of scale perspective, for it to start performing its own logistics and deliveries to the detriment of long standing logistics companies. The obvious end point, again benefiting from economies of scale, is to then actually enter the logistics business.

I can't help feeling like a bit of a doomsayer here, but we all know the step that follows embrace and extend.

I suspect that I know what some of you are thinking right now: Amazon is not a monopoly. Amazon has tons of competition. Amazon isn't anything like Microsoft. Amazon doesn't even make a profit. (I could go on, but I'll save us all the time...)

I know Amazon is not a monopoly, any more than (another perfect example of the strategy) Google is. They're very cleverly making sure of that. Any time they're in danger of being considered a monopoly they simply expand into another market and bingo they're in competition with dozens of other players. As this market consolidates, or rather as Amazon (or Google) grows into the main player in this market, they expand into another.

I must admit though I hadn't thought of prescription drugs (although I had wondered about when or if they'd start selling pot - in the US at least) as one of their next markets. Somewhat blinkered there. And I'd actually thought they'd go with fairly high quality frozen ready meals first, rather than outright buy a supermarket chain. Just goes to show I wasn't thinking Bezo's-big enough.

^ And it's this last thought that's starting to worry me!

I'd take issue, AC, with "other technologies". For example:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
https://www.greentechmedia.com...

Straight up alkaline, abundant base materials, and the same technology can also be used to make other kinds of batteries. Bill Joy is Not An Idiot, although he did miss the chance to make Sun Microsystems' SunOS into Linux before Linux got off of the ground (and in the process, put the hurt on Microsoft) back when he had a perfectly good 386 Unix and nobody else did. Outside of that one mistake (and sure, it was a doozy) he isn't likely to be pulling a scam or anything like it. This is technology that is probably going to work, and will be commercialized (I'm guessing) in a lot less than five years if early mass-marketable prototypes work as well as the early demonstration cells do. Joy is talking about dropping the cost of house or car batteries from the current $500-ish/MWH to under $100/MWH, maybe as low as half that. And if you follow /. and other science sites, you must be aware that there are advances constantly being made in battery technologies that can, and almost certainly will, revolutionize energy storage within the next few years ASIDE from this one. Synthesis of different advances may yet make zinc oxide batteries work (which would be huge all by itself).

TESLA'S hype may not measure up to reality, but overall the reality is that battery technology is already cheap enough and robust enough to make houses that run well over 90% of the time fully off grid, houses that can run for one to two days on limited sun including AC, at an investment that amortizes in roughly 10 to 12 years at typical power prices. At PR prices of $0.20/KWH it would be more like 7 or 8 -- that is well above the national average. 8 year amortization is actually damn close to being a no-brainer, provided that you install hurricane-proof cells on hurricane-proof houses in a hurricane-prone part of the world, something that one really should do ANYWAY because it doesn't do anyone any good to build a house and have it blow away in a storm.

What Musk proposes is far from crazy, and could conceivably be one of the most cost-beneficial solutions -- but probably NOT if one buys it from Musk himself, as his prices for solar roofs and batteries are at least 50% higher than market average and kicks amortization back up to the 12 year plus level of not obviously worth it. If Joy's batteries come through with 1200+ recharge cycles at $60/KWH (and maybe fronted by supercapacitors to buffer daytime utilization and extend this still further) it will drop the amortization time for solarizing a house to five years at the up-front cost of a cheap car and with the loan repaid entirely by money saved on electricity. Well within five years all of this is going to happen no matter what happens with oil and coal and Paris accords or the like, driven by the simple fact that it will be the cheapest way to get power in 2/3 of the word. Power companies are already building solar as fast as they can afford to because for them, economies of scale already make it a no-brainer (they don't need batteries, for the most part, and can feed the energy straight into their grids to reduce fuel costs at their fuel based plants and avoid having to build expensive GW-scale new plants to keep up with demand).

It will be interesting to see whether or not centralized power generation and distribution survives my lifetime (at this point, likely to be somewhere between 10 and 20 years, small chances of 30 or more). I expect to put solar on both of my houses well within the decade not to save the Earth but to save money, sooner if batteries get cheaper faster and cell prices keep coming down or if meter prices for electricity go up. I'm waiting for

Thanks for the links. I'm all for having as concrete discussions as possible about this stuff -- I think people spend a lot of time talking across each other on this because they don't use actual numbers and/or look at the big picture.

Also, SoCal Edison has been bringing online some incredible advances in energy storage technology.

As I read your Edison link, it says they're buying a bunch of Tesla battery packs (400MW in total) and installing most of them as fairly small buffers at some of their conventional plants, and also tagging 125MW of those batteries as a renewable pilot. That's a statistically irrelevant amount of capacity.

Your first California ISO link shows a peak solar supply of about 9500MW, which looking at the area under the curve is probably available about 9 hours a day. Let's go with 10 and say that's about the average sunny-day yield year-round, which should be conservative. So you'd need about 13GW of battery capacity to be able to supply 9500MW around the clock.

Then you need additional generation capacity to be able to charge your batteries with 13GW over your 10-hour sunny period, or another 1.3GW for a total of 2.2GW. Statewide electricity consumption looks to average about 32GW, so now we're up to 66GW of solar generation capacity and 430GW of battery capacity.

And we still haven't touched the cloudy day problem. A margin for that which is both safe and feasible doesn't exist, but let's say we're willing to live with 3x (assuming some level of averaging across the system and with some sort of conventional last-ditch generation capacity for the weeks you're wrong). Now 200GW of solar generation capacity and 1.5TW of battery capacity.

That's about 100x the battery capacity Tesla is promising to build by "the 2020s". Just for California.

You now need to multiply the above numbers by about 15 (back of the envelope -- national average consumption looks to run around 450GW). Even if we say a true national rollout would allow us to significantly decrease the cloudy day buffer, that's still approaching on the order of 7-800x Tesla's anticipated battery output over the next several years. And that's not even taking into account practical realities of availability of scarce resources to be able to build (and, eventually, rebuild) batteries on that scale. Nor does it consider the feasibility of securing the ~20 million acres the solar panels would require (which, remember, must be geographically distributed enough to average out weather patterns). Which, it must be said, is a relative bargain compared to the ~200 million acres it would take for a national wind farm (hand-waving that the average effective duty cycle of the wind is about that of the sun, which it probably isn't).

Systems like these will begin taking hold across the country over the course of the next decade, changing the dynamics of solar energy availability and reliability.

See above. I don't think people really comprehend what it would take for something like this to scale across the country.

Top climate investment fund drops Tesla. Why? Concerns over overpriced stock. Even the pros can't see a way that Tesla becomes worth it's current market value. But hey - you probably also cheer-lead for a $60 billion valuation for Uber and think Twitter's stock price should be $100 per share, right?

I knew Hillary was the very definition of corruption, entitled, a pathological liar, and the worst kind of sickening elitist LONG before Facebook even existed. I didn't need to see any ads on the topic, her own statements, and admitted public actions were plenty enough to make me despise her and vote for *anyone*, even Trump, to prevent her from becoming president.

Which is why you saw no ads or stories about this, they're called targeted for a reason. Besides, unless you live in the key swing states there's no reason to target anything to you in the first place. Look at what the Trump campaign itself said it's doing with targeted voter identification and advertising:

When Bannon joined the campaign in August, Project Alamo’s data began shaping even more of Trump’s political and travel strategy—and especially his fundraising. Trump himself was an avid pupil. Parscale would sit with him on the plane to share the latest data on his mushrooming audience and the $230 million they’ve funneled into his campaign coffers. Today, housed across from a La-Z-Boy Furniture Gallery along Interstate 410 in San Antonio, the digital nerve center of Trump’s operation encompasses more than 100 people, from European data scientists to gun-toting elderly call-center volunteers. They labor in offices lined with Trump iconography and Trump-focused inspirational quotes from Sheriff Joe Arpaio and evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr. Until now, Trump has kept this operation hidden from public view. But he granted Bloomberg Businessweek exclusive access to the people, the strategy, the ads, and a large part of the data that brought him to this point and will determine how the final two weeks of the campaign unfold. - -

Trump’s campaign has devised another strategy, which, not surprisingly, is negative. Instead of expanding the electorate, Bannon and his team are trying to shrink it. “We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” says a senior official. They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans. Trump’s invocation at the debate of Clinton’s WikiLeaks e-mails and support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership was designed to turn off Sanders supporters. The parade of women who say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and harassed or threatened by Hillary is meant to undermine her appeal to young women. And her 1996 suggestion that some African American males are “super predators” is the basis of a below-the-radar effort to discourage infrequent black voters from showing up at the polls—particularly in Florida.- -

Regardless of whether this works or backfires, setting back GOP efforts to attract women and minorities even further, Trump won’t come away from the presidential election empty-handed. Although his operation lags previous campaigns in many areas (its ground game, television ad buys, money raised from large donors), it’s excelled at one thing: building an audience. Powered by Project Alamo and data supplied by the RNC and Cambridge Analytica, his team is spending $70 million a month, much of it to cultivate a universe of millions of fervent Trump supporters, many of them reached through Facebook. By Election Day, the campaign expects to have captured 12 million to 14 million e-mail addresses and contact information (including credit card numbers) for 2.5 million small-dollar donors, who together will have ponied up almost $275 million. “I wouldn’t have come aboard, even for Trump, if I hadn’t known they were building this massive Facebook and data engine,” says Bannon. “Facebook is what propelled Breitbart to a massive audience. We know its power.”

Emphasis mine. And this is the Trump

Oh name calling like a big boy! From the tone you must have shit your diapers when you read my post.

For you first link, I see a lot of US references in briefly looking. Furthermore, India knows Russia is of zero use in
It's ongoing boarder disputes with China. I think you're getting confused by old cold war political alignments to be honest.

As far as weapons go...
How about they're our second largest purchaser of arms
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
Or how about we're their largest supplier of weapons
https://swarajyamag.com/politi...

As for education abroad, so what? Russia is far closer to India and far cheaper than the US so that's not terribly surprising at all.

Experts from Germany (Sonnen GmbH) are coordinating and doing install on this project:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Trump meanwhile did helpfully dedicate a golf trophy in honor of Puerto Rico:

http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

In case you didn't know, Puerto Rico is an AMERICAN territory - the people of that territory are American citizens. But our current government for some reason is unwilling/unable to help, and is only much later getting assistance from those who ARE willing/able to help.

Not that I'm just blaming conservatives here - Bill Clinton was the one that signed the bill that removed the tax benefits that attracted a large percent of business to Puerto Rico, leaving their economy 70 billion dollars in debt once it was phased out.

But it DOES take a 'modern conservative' approach to be so completely uncaring/unable to help in this kind of recovery after a disaster.

Should be the real title. Eg, POTUS can easily start a nuclear war, here are the directions: https://www.bloomberg.com/poli...

So - brief summary of timeline:-

Feb 24, 2016 - Annual 10K report - indicates only generic, boilerplate risks that a financial services company like Equifax should include in their SEC filing.

Jly 27, 2017 - Quarterly 10-Q filing with the SEC, indicating "There have been no material changes with respect to the risk factors disclosed in our 2016 Form 10-K."

Aug 1, 2017 - Chief Financial Officer John Gamble sells $946,374 in shares

Aug 2, 2017 - Joseph Loughran, President of US Information Solutions sells $584,099 in shares... and Rodolfo Ploder, President of Workforce Solutions, sells $250,458 in shares

Aug 17, 2017 - Rick Smith gives a presentation to the University of Georgia, discussing cyber security threats - and makes a memorable quote...

Sep 7, 2017 - Equifax admit to a massive data breach, impacting at least 143 million Americans, see here:-

http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

Sep 7, 2017 - On the same day as admitting to the breach, Equifax also admit that 3 executive sold $1.8MM in shares between the breach being detected and the date it was made public. Crucially, despite Equifax claiming that the Executives had no knowledge of the breach, none of the three sales were part of planned, scheduled trading (i.e. were covered by 10b5-1 plans). In other words, these were spontaneous sales. See here:-

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

The crucial thing is, however, that in the above Independent article, published September 7th, is the statement,

"The Atlanta-based company said that that “criminals” exploited a US website application to access files between mid-May and July of this year - with the weakness said to have been discovered at the end of that month. "

Now, among the pieces of information we don't know are: 1) when, exactly, did the three executives sell their shares?; and 2) what internal discussions - i.e. board meetings, emails - were used to disseminate the information internally.

Obviously we're not told this, but the company will by now have received a "Preservation Order" from the SEC, requiring them to ensure that data pertaining to this event is not destroyed. Backup tapes will be pulled from cycles; current email folders will be locked; individuals will be warned that their documents are subject to such an order. Given the close proximity of events - we're talking days, not weeks or months - it should not be difficult to forensically re-create a very precise time-line.

So whilst the speech that Smith gave a the University of Georgia is going to be hugely embarrassing for him personally - and whilst the acknowledgements he makes in it will be very uncomfortable for the company - the really crucial evidence here is all about the timing. Understanding the truth behind the question, "Who knew what, and when", is going to make the difference between negligence and a criminal act.

Here is the key thing to bear in mind. That statement as reported in the UK Independent newspaper article that the breach came to light "at the end of July" is absolutely crucial. If there is enough evidence to suggest that persons within the company knew of the data breach *before* that 10-Q was filed, then I don't see how Smith and his co-directors can avoid jail time. The deciding factor [for me] is that the actual timing could very easily show conspiracy.

If there was a suggestion that a concerted effort was made to hold back the breach information until after the second quarter 10-Q, then it will not look good for the board. They are on the horns of a dilemma here. Either there was widespread knowledge of the breach and the three executives attempted of

> I notice you ignored the bit about calls to violence.
Incorrect. In my first posted I mentioned "Either you censor or you don't. PERIOD."

Let's pretend we make "Yelling 'Fire' in a (full) theater (not-on-fire) illegal" with the justification "because it incites violence."

WHERE does it stop??? _Who_ decides what incites violence??? Because this quickly becomes a slippery slope.

Guess what -- I can incite violence with almost ANY word. For example, if I jump out and scare an old lady with "Boo!" and she has a heart attack and dies due to the stress do we now make "Boo!" illegal??? What if someone shouts "BOObies!" because they have Tourette syndrome but she only heard the first syllable? What if I am telling a joke "What bees make milk? BOO-BEES!" What if I use ANY word in a very LOUD context to scare someone to death???

Banning/Making the entire English language "illegal" because it _might_ be mis-used is utteraly retarded.

This is _completely_ backwards thinking. Words don't DO anything. PEOPLE do. The _specific_ word is NOT the problem. The _intent_ or the _act_ of destruction is the problem -- NOT the specific phonemes. All we've done is attempt to shift the cause of the problem to an inanimate object. Notice that this same stupidity is made with gun laws. The fact that some guns are legal while others are illegal is complete bullshit. You can kill a person with either one. Taking the life of someone IS the problem -- not _what_ weapon of choice they used!! Hell, they could have used THEIR HANDS. Furthermore, more people are killed by cars then guns (!) but we don't ban cars because a few idiots mis-use them.

It is all about the context. If I am writing an essay on an old book am I allowed to quote phrases that have "illegal" words? Making words OK in one context and not in another is dumb. George Carlin eloquently and beautifully pointing out "What you resist, persists."
with his 7 Words You Can't Say On TV on the stupidity of making words "Taboo" monologue.

The problem with social contracts is that they are implicit and not explicit. We should be looking at the spirit of the law not the letter of the law. We should be striving for simplicity in our laws, over-engineering them. As Publius Tacitus said before 120 AD.

The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.

Stop with all the fucking corner cases, edge cases, and just allow people to say whatever the fuck they want. Because when there is no "stigma" attached then everyone will quickly lose interest in them and go back to their lives.

> I was asking if downvoting is censorship and runs afoul of your "Either you censor or you don't. PERIOD" idea.

Why would it? You are not stopping the person from commenting. The fact that no one agrees with them is beside the point.

> Businesses discriminate on all sorts of things
You are conflating a Contract with Discrimination. They are not the same thing.

First, ALL Law is based on Contract Law.

Second, when a business has a sign that says "No Shirt, No Service" they are NOT violating your rights. They are legally allowed to put additional qualifiers onto the Contract between them and you (as long as none of them are illegal.) The reason they can't say "Race _x_ not served" is because the Business derives its permission (aka power) from the Government. And the government has said "We will give you a business license IF you accept these Terms of the Contract. Violate the terms and we revoke your permission. The terms include you can't refuse service based on someone's race, gender, religion, etc."

$100,000? Like, really? The Clinton+Trump campaigns have spent together over $200,000,000 on their campaigns. Either the Russians are absolute geniuses and light years ahead of everybody else when it comes to effective political ads, or this is just another inflated sensationalist article trying to get views for WaPo using a hot topic.
Also, I'm somehow missing the connection to Russia in the article - it's once again presented as a certainty, but it is not explained how the authors managed to do the attribution to the Russian government. If this is considered a serious article in the US, I'm not surprised that "fake news" is a thing there. How about some critical thinking?
Really, guys, to the rest of the world this histeria is beyond awkward and facepalming. Trump is your creature, born out of the swamp that is the 2-party scam, not some foreign plant. Reform your political system, and these things won't happen. Until you do so, according to the article everybody who has $100,000 to burn will be able to elect your president for you...

Not so. They were going to go with Digital Research DOS. It was better. When they tried to contact him, he was on a flight across the country in his private aircraft. They should have said - we'll wait until he can return our call. Instead they moved on to Bill, who jumped at the chance.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Right place, right time, everything was right for Bill.

The ultimate outcome will depend on how quickly existing OEM's can adapt. BlackBerry is actually well positioned to take advantage of its majority position in the infotainment arena and just announced a partnership with Delphi to develop autonomous tech for the masses.

...If this came from Bitdefender or Kaspersky, this would actually be credible.

Yeah, Kaspersky is reputable for reals: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-11/kaspersky-lab-has-been-working-with-russian-intelligence

In a statement, the company said the March breach was not related to the hack that exposed the personal and financial data on 143 million U.S. consumers, but one of the people said the breaches involve the same intruders. Either way, the revelation that the 118-year-old credit-reporting agency suffered two major incidents in the span of a few months adds to a mounting crisis at the company, which is the subject of multiple investigations and announced the retirement of two of its top security executives on Friday.

Equifax hired the security firm Mandiant on both occasions and may have believed it had the initial breach under control, only to have to bring the investigators back when it detected suspicious activity again on July 29, two of the people said.

Link: Equifax Suffered a Hack Almost Five Months Earlier Than the Date It Disclosed

For Christ's sake Jim Zemlin is milking the Linux Foundation for north of $300k/year for years. He could at least learn to "eat his own dogfood". Give a trained monkey a Thinkpad, a Red Hat distro, and Impress to get through the presentation if he cannot grok Linux.
Show the asshats like Zemlin the door! He isn't even a good poseur.

https://www.itworld.com/articl...
https://www.bloomberg.com/rese...

Technically it never reached the point of being able to be ratified. First, there must be the "advice and consent" of the Senate, and THEN ratified by the POTUS. However, there is a long tradition in the US called "Sole Executive" agreements. Congress has tried several times to "revoke" this tradition and failed, so this is one of those measures that is "not specifically denied" so technically allowed. In regards to the Paris Agreement, there is (was?) a high chance of any monetary costs incurred by US entities would have been challenged and blocked; reasons for this stem from the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

The Paris Agreement was, however, crafted specifically with this in mind. They purposly did NOT call it a "treaty", and this is exact reason why most of the terms are nonbinding, and why it calls for countries to set targets without setting sanctions for noncompliance. It's purposely vague because of US law.

References: International Agreements and U.S. Law
The Constitution - Executive agreements
The Paris Accord and the Reality of Presidential Power

Why hasn't she been fired then?

She has. So has the CIO.

No word on what the CIO's major was.

...investing approximately $10 billion in the state and building a factory that could employ up to 13,000 workers. ...

What is the timeline for the $10 billion to be invested? Surely, a sum that large has some planning behind it. How soon will it be before the entire $10 billion is invested? Also, what is the timeline for the ramp-up to 13,000 new employees?

.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view...

...Let's clarify this: Foxconn promised to invest $10 billion and create 3,000 jobs initially, but those numbers are squishy. As Bloomberg Businessweek observed:

Just this past year, Foxconn is reported to have pledged investments of $5 billion in India; $3.65 billion in Kunshan, China; and $8.8 billion in Guangzhou. It's too early to know if those sums will ever be spent, but including Wisconsin, the tally now stands at $27.5 billion of commitments. That's more than Hon Hai (the company's publicly traded flagship) has spent in the last 23 years.

Those promises are mostly that and little more. At best, this is a wildly optimistic hope for new jobs in an era when U.S. manufacturing employment been in long-term decline. At worse, it is a giant grift, a taxpayer-funded photo op that will yield little in terms of job gains, other than a few hundred heavily subsidized positions....