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Who is designing that self-driving truck that can pick up trash cans automatically?

Several cities already have trucks with just one driver which automatically pick up trash. Here are a few off the top of Google: Albuquerque.Calgary. Minot. Salem.

Meaniwhile Tesla, Uber and others are designing self-driving trucks and are already testing them on the roads. It's obvious that putting the two together is just a matter of time.

This thing would only be advantageous if your electric car spent its daylight hours at your house.

No, where it would be advantageous is in parking lots (ideally my employer's parking lot!) All the wasted energy falling on parking lots every day is not only wasted, it is harmful, because it makes urban heat islands - the city is hotter than the climate it's in.

That said, it's foolish to devote the panels on a parking garage to the car that might or might not be there. Feed it into the grid and use it where it is needed. Check out the new solar array on the long-term parking at my local airport. This is how you do it. What was uncovered parking is now covered parking and produces energy too.

So what happens to curbside recycling materials? I seriously doubt anyone is hand-sorting and dealing with contamination issues like neck rings.

That is exactly what happens in Albuquerque. Things that can't be mechanically separated are hand sorted by minimum wage workers, a large number of whom are homeless.

there still is no way to interpret the 2002-present data as anything but a sustained downward trend

Actually, it just looks like a brief downward excursion in a larger chaotic trend. We see exactly the same behavior in another chaotic system, the stock marker: even in a a bull market (good times), one finds downward trends.

Changes in temperature on this scale are exactly what you would expect to find, actually, in the context of an overall, long-term warming trend.

Amazing. On a planet 4.5 billion years old, a 10-year drop in temperatures is a "brief downward excursion", but a 100-year increase that just happens to correspond to vastly improved and much more widely distributed instrumentation is a "long-term warming trend".

Yeah, I guess I gotta agree.

Because when I look where the polar ice caps were 10,000 years ago, I find that New York City was under half a mile of ice.

Damn, your "long term warming trend" is a quite a few millenia old.

But it's obviously caused by humanity, and we damn well better spend trillions of dollars that could be spent on something useful to maybe drop the Earth's temperature 1/20th of one degree.

Yeeeaaaaahhhhh, ssssuuuuurrrrre.

there still is no way to interpret the 2002-present data as anything but a sustained downward trend

Actually, it just looks like a brief downward excursion in a larger chaotic trend. We see exactly the same behavior in another chaotic system, the stock marker: even in a a bull market (good times), one finds downward trends.

Changes in temperature on this scale are exactly what you would expect to find, actually, in the context of an overall, long-term warming trend.

It's been suggested before, in Albuquerque, (build a green roof). Their references? Here and Here. Albuquerque isn't that large of city (~half million people, can go from edge to edge in 20 minutes, with traffic... 12 without), so I'm not sure it would do too much on the grand scheme of things for the entire city to "go green" with their roofing.

The legislators have thought of that. It's an infraction, rather than a misdemeanor, so it's an administrative fine -- it goes on your driving record, but not your criminal record.

Here in Albuquerque, New Mexico its not even that. You pay your $69 fine (for "running" a red light) and it doesn't go on any record. If you don't pay the fine, the police will impound your car via boot on your own property.
From their FAQ:

"Are points assessed against my driver's license for photo enforcement convictions?

No. The STOP program is a civil violation, much like a parking ticket. It is not reported to the Motor Vehicle Division."

They do not directly. In typical usage, you will pull a very specific amount of air through a specific type of paper filter and then messure the counts. The counts can then be used to determine a Microcuries/ml of radioactivity in the air.

There are some concerns as to the accuracy. Is the air pump, filter, and counter calibrated and working correctly? Was background levels taken into consideration, what is the baseline in the area. Is there a temperature inversion happening which is causing a natural radon build up and will the person taking the readings know how to compensate for that? All of these will effect the accuracy. I see the problem of people not having a general understanding of contaminants and exactly what is involved in monitoring them and they could be easily mislead by potentially bogus results. Is that enough of a concern to ban people from taking their own readings? I don't think so.

Nuclear power generation is a complex subject to attempt to explain to the average person. The only thing that roughly 99.9% of population know about it is what they heard on the news after the last accident X years ago.
I worked as a nuclear operator for almost 10 years. I do not know a single person in the field that had a single concern for the safty of the plant or their family that lived close by.
The more people learn about nuclear power, the more comfortable they will be. Currently it gets treated like the boogy man and people do not even know why they are scared of it, they just are. Some people are armed with some statitics and figures but those same figures may not be a true representative of the situation, represent the whole story, or are not compared in a relative manner to other forms of energy production.
Just for reference,
- A typical airline crew member recieves more radiation per year then a typcial nuclear plant employee.
- One method nuclear plants monitor for primary coolant leaks is by monitoring the air at certain points in plant. Temperature inversions in the atmosphere will commonly cause these devices to alarm because the level of naturally occuring radon from fresh air brought into the area is too high. I've seen levels 3x the plants limit.
- The most radiation I ever recieved in a calender year was only 10% of the federal legal limit. That specific year, I spent a lot of time in the reactor compartment doing maintenance during an extended shutdown.

I'll even guess that more people have died while bungy jumping then have from nuclear power accidents.

I should have taken a left a 17.254.3.183

While I think the intent is admirable, the net effect might be somewhat frustrating. For example, how are we supposed to get contact info if say a governement group's DNS goes south? Or maybe just a portions of it? what about entities that have been misapportioned? (Good example is the City of Albuquerque, NM.)

The quote that I found interesting is: "Also removed from the FTP site was the zone file for in-addr.arpa, which is used for reverse-DNS lookups (when somebody wants to find out what domain is associated with an IP address, rather than the other way around)." So is this a prelude for them to stop supporting rev. DNS? If it does stop, are they really aware of the potential consequences? (Stopped email, blocked access, etc.) What about who to contact and how to contact them about possible network outages?

Things like this might seem like a good idea at the time, but can (and do) lead to other problems. I am in favor of security as much as the next guy, but half though-out moves like this don't help.

-D.

P.S. I wonder if they are going to stop publishing things like the white pages (online or even the print edition)? Hey they do have government entity addresses and phone numbers?