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Blockchain:

- Unclear accountability (the real reason for popularity)

- You're putting data on lots of computers, in different jurisdictions.

- Can't really delete anything (privacy nightmare)

- Not really anonymous.

- Encryption will be broken in time.

- Power not really distributed, just obfuscated (lies with devs).

- Slow and overly complex.

Sources:

http://estsjournal.org/article...

https://medium.com/enspiral-ta...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

https://www.theatlantic.com/te...

https://blog.ethereum.org/2016...

http://blog.ezyang.com/2011/06...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) provides information on major U.S. hurricanes during the past 100-plus years.According to the NHC, 70 major hurricanes struck the United States in the 100 years between 1911 and 2010. That is an average of 7 major hurricane strikes per decade. What are the trends within this 100-year span? Let's take a look. Let's split the 100-year hurricane record in half, starting with major hurricane strikes during the most recent 50 years.... During the preceding decade...

Did an arts graduate write that junk Forbes article? It's ridiculous and disingenuous to try to explain a TABLE of data with ad-hoc divisions like that. We're on slashdot; we should know better. Here's a graph with trend lines since 1978:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/20...

This trend line shows a slight decrease in hurricanes overall, but despite that a slight increase in major hurricanes. We'd have to do trend lines for the source data for the Forbes article to make sense of it.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

Source cited there.
(from the article)
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) provides information on major U.S. hurricanes during the past 100-plus years.According to the NHC, 70 major hurricanes struck the United States in the 100 years between 1911 and 2010. That is an average of 7 major hurricane strikes per decade. What are the trends within this 100-year span? Letâ(TM)s take a look.

Letâ(TM)s split the 100-year hurricane record in half, starting with major hurricane strikes during the most recent 50 years.

During the most recent decade, 2001-2010, 7 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is exactly the 100-year average.

During the preceding decade, 1991-2000, 6 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is below the 100-year average.

During the decade 1981-1990, 4 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is substantially below the 100-year average, and ties the least number of major hurricanes on record.

During the decade 1971-1980, 4 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is substantially below the 100-year average, and ties 1981-1990 as the two decades with the least number of major hurricanes.

During the decade 1961-1970, 7 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is exactly the 100-year average.

Incredibly, not a single decade during the past 50 years saw an above-average number of major hurricanes â" not a single decade!

Now letâ(TM)s look at the preceding 50 years in the hurricane record, before the alleged human-induced global warming crisis.

During the decade 1951-1960, 9 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is above the 100-year average.

During the decade 1941-1950, 11 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is substantially above the 100-year average.

During the decade 1931-1940, 8 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is above the 100-year average.

During the decade 1921-1930, 6 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is slightly below the 100-year average.

During the decade 1911-1920, 8 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is above the 100-year average. ... During the past 5 decades, an average of 5.6 major hurricanes struck the United States.
During the preceding 5 decades, and average of 8.4 major hurricanes struck the United States.

Isn't this the same government that mandates that everyone use Internet Explorer with ActiveX to access government services, do banking, or shopping?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://www.reddit.com/r/today...

Solar is only cheap if it is connected, and that means there's some centralized utility. If you take solar off the grid then you need storage, and that costs money.

Careful or facts might get in the way. It's called economies of scale and it's helped us before.

Wouldn't an idiot with a rifle be even more successful in attacking solar panels than a coal, nuclear, or natural gas power plant?

The point is the reduce amount of damage that can be done by one person. With shingles they could use a shitload of ammo to destroy the power system for one house but they can't do that to millions of houses. Even if one guy shot a bunch of solar panels, you can just go to wal-mart and buy a new panel.

I mean we can (and do) put a nuclear power plant in a big concrete dome to protect it from attack but we can't do that to solar panels. What of a hail storm?

Oh those pesky facts are at it again!

Without a tie to the grid then how are these people supposed to get power until the solar panels are repaired? I know the answer, on site diesel generators, kind of like how we deal with grid outages now.

With solar shingles, you would have to take them all out to reduce power generation to zero. If someone shoots three-fourths of them, you just don't use high power high-power things until you can get replacement shingles. With panels, again, you can just go to wal-mart and buy a new panel. This isn't rocket science.

I'm sure that there's a lot of things we could do to secure our electrical supply. I'm also sure that solar power isn't one of those things.

You're also an idiot who ignores inconvenient facts, so nobody should take your word for it.

Ahh I guess I was wrong. There is no machine learning at all yet.

In the case of Watson for Oncology, those human operators are a couple dozen physicians at a single, though highly respected, U.S. hospital: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Doctors there are empowered to input their own recommendations into Watson, even when the evidence supporting those recommendations is thin.

That's all you need to know from the article. The value of machine learning is the ability to find subtle trends by processing in unbiased fission large and diverse data sets. Instead they fed it a limited data set that was strongly biased by the fact that it is based on 12 oncologist who coordinate their decision (Tumor boards, where all oncologist will gather and review each case is the standard practice in US hospitals). Then there is the "standard of care" approach which is a must for US hospitals - once you have agreed on what the disease is you apply a standard treatment that has been shown in the past to provide the best outcome (hopefully). You can deviate from the standard treatment and seek alternatives only if it was proven ineffective for the patient or you have a strong reason to believe that it will not be effective. Standard of care and treatment options are usually different in different countries, although the differences are unlikely to be very dramatic. The differences are likely in novel and very expensive treatments, and in the formulation of drug and radiotherapy regiments. Basically there is nothing to train the AI on, especially if you are limited to data from one site. Diagnosis and treatment is mostly a series of predefined binary choice for which you don't really need an AI.

IBM actually had a second training site at MD Anderson, but it was not an integrated effort with Sloan Kettering. Instead, MD Anderson was developing their separate product. This turned out to be a disaster due to gross mismanagement. Among other things, MD Anderson management apparently bypassed their IT department when integrating Watson with their medical records system. Guess what happened when the hospital changed the software used to maintain the medical records.

In the case of China - fleeing with more than $50,000 IS tax evasion. You're not allowed to take that much currency out. And try to do that in the US as well without declaring currencies over $10,000 - that is a Federal offense that can result in jail time. Try quitting the US as a citizen - the IRS will claim a nice big chunk of your worldwide assets as an "exit tax". And if you don't pay, you end up in jail.

Uranium and thorium are everywhere. If they are mining for anything then they have a source of uranium and thorium in the mining tails. Barring that they can extract uranium from seawater.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

I love how people say that "we" can do without coal and nuclear if only we put up enough windmills, solar panels, and connect them all with enough wires. That might work in a large nation and/or in a politically stable part of the world. What of the people that don't have a lot of sun and wind, and don't particularly get along with their neighbors? I believe Finland applies here. The nation is largely sub-arctic, so not a lot of sun. Sharing a border with Russia would shackling their first world economy to a second world economy by electrical wires, or the idea of a "smart grid" fails from the start. Dealing with Russia for natural gas is bad enough, at least that can be tanked up for times when they decide to turn off the tap and demand a higher price. If the plug is pulled on the electric grid like that then it means things get dark and cold real quick.

You do realize that they don't manipulate their currency right?.. that has been proven many MANY times over.

  And its not a matter of respecting IP that's the issue.. The larger cause for concern is basically an espionage group having the ability to review and possibly steal/alter code. IP is stolen all the time.. (from everyone)..

And a blanket embargo won't do anything other than make the local citizens hurt.. (its not like wages rise as fast as COL).. And salaries have been depressed for the last 30 years.

Actually, the value of their currency is defined by the central bank which is controlled by the government. It has been well documented that they have manipulated their currency. As AC said: "The RMB is a managed float and by definition is manipulated by the central bank to fulfill the "managed". That doesn't even consider the impacts of other policies they institute, such as those on foreign/domestic investment."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/...

As far as IP theft goes, please show me the Chinese product or military hardware stolen by the US and put into production to damage Chinese business. Drawing equivalence between the US keeping tabs on the world for security purposes and China stealing IP at a massive rate from every successful business on the planet for the purpose of undercutting them and boosting their own economy is not justified by the facts, to the point of being an assinine assertion.

China's economy is what fuels their military and their government. Their booming economy https://www.google.com/search?...: is the only reason that they have not democratized long ago, in similar fashion to the USSR. When things get bad enough for the citizenry, they start to rebel. When a country can't feed it's army, it either disbands, or overthrows the government.

Forbes just published an article calling BTC the new gold standard.

Bitcoin is the New Gold
https://www.forbes.com/sites/p...

before the end came in round TEN .

Many had the bout much closer than a near shutout, especially in the earlier rounds.

https://www.si.com/boxing/2017...

For the first few rounds, Conor McGregor, the UFC fighter, looked like a boxer. A competent boxer. Dare we say, even a good boxer. He looked like he might even do what he had been telling us heâ(TM)d do for the last three months: beat Mayweather at his own sport, outbox one of the best boxers of all time. In the first round Mayweather threw five total punches. McGregor charged forward, looking like he wanted to make good on his promise that heâ(TM)d drop Mayweather in the first round. He put his arms behind his back, taunting Mayweather. He threw jabs and landed them. He countered a Mayweather attack with an uppercut, something that very few professional boxers have ever done. The vastly pro-McGregor crowd broke out in an olé chant, thinking their hero was going to do the impossible, again, just like he told them he would.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0... https://www.forbes.com/sites/b...

None of the shots McGregor landed seemed to hurt Mayweather, but the success the Irishman experienced was more than many boxing pundits thought he could enjoy. Mayweather stayed composed throughout the fight and gradually turned up the heat beginning in the fourth round Until you can find a professional analyst who claims McGregor "looked like a joke" we'll just have to agree to disagree.

before the hordes of class action lawyers descend like a plague on them.

Maybe people will become more educated. A large screen panel should be more like a monitor, and less like an internet connected media device.

I wonder if the solution Samsung will come up with is a thumb drive with a new system image.

Because if the existing devices are truly bricked, that's about the only way (short of device replacement) that is going to solve this.

Yes. Because Samsung TVs never had any issues with thumbdrive-loaded data, before .

If you don't like a company's products then don't buy them. You can make your own

Until the company that makes them sues you for copyright or patent infringement.
Or unless the government requires use of the company's products, such as business tax preparation and filing software in a country that has phased out paper forms.
Or unless it's a natural monopoly, such as electric power, water, or heating gas.
Or unless all grocery stores near you play the company's product over the speaker system when not making an announcement and put a fraction of your grocery bill toward royalties.
Or unless essentially all employers in your (field, area) require you to use a particular product as a condition of becoming or remaining employed. (See Facebook abstainers being called "suspicious" in background checks.)

My point is that for some products (though I concede not this Sonos product), only the Amish have a reasonable chance of avoiding buying them.

In five years of group lawsuits, we tallied an average of $220 million paid to 6.8 million consumers per year. Yet in the arbitration cases we studied, on average, 16 people per year recovered less than $100,000 total.

Sooo... for lawsuits, 6.8 consumers recovered $220 million -- that's $32.35 per consumer. Lawyers probably get around $100 million.

For arbitration, 16 consumers recovered around $100,000 -- that's over $6,000 per consumer. Lawyers get little to nothing.

Let's not be naive -- this is a push by a long-time, high-flying lawyer to increase the volume of class action lawsuits that are generally easy money for law firms and, as shown by his very own data, don't award meaningful money to consumers.

The RMB is not pegged. The HKD is pegged to a narrow band, but the RMB is manipulated as Beijing deems so that they can have an accelerator on the import/export/production side of the economy. In the last 2 years, the RMB has gone from ~6.3 to one USD to ~7 to one USD, and now sits about 6.7 RMB to the USD. It's more ""volatile" compared to the EUR:USD exchange rate. Would that mean the EUR is pegged to the USD?

And there definitely is a housing bubble in China. Three years ago, my wife (Shanghainese) and I helped my stepdaughter buy an apartment in Shanghai. 34 square meters, it was about 1.8 million RMB (about $275,000). She's looking to move to a different area of Shanghai, and the appraisals are coming in at 4.2 million RMB - more than doubling of price in about 3 years. That's a nice 30% return, annually. Multiple real estate agents have told us that - IF we decide to sell - we can expect all-cash offers within 1-2 days, and probably a bidding war that will push the price to around 4.5 million RMB.

The RMB is not pegged. The HKD is pegged to a narrow band, but the RMB is manipulated as Beijing deems so that they can have an accelerator on the import/export/production side of the economy. In the last 2 years, the RMB has gone from ~6.3 to one USD to ~7 to one USD, and now sits about 6.7 RMB to the USD. It's more ""volatile" compared to the EUR:USD exchange rate. Would that mean the EUR is pegged to the USD?

And there definitely is a housing bubble in China. Three years ago, my wife (Shanghainese) and I helped my stepdaughter buy an apartment in Shanghai. 34 square meters, it was about 1.8 million RMB (about $275,000). She's looking to move to a different area of Shanghai, and the appraisals are coming in at 4.2 million RMB - more than doubling of price in about 3 years. That's a nice 30% return, annually. Multiple real estate agents have told us that - IF we decide to sell - we can expect all-cash offers within 1-2 days, and probably a bidding war that will push the price to around 4.5 million RMB.

The low cost of natural gas didn't help coal, but that was hardly the root cause for it's demise.

No, the root causes are that it's inefficient, becoming increasingly automated and displaced by other energy sources. Obama didn't do this but he did help this.

You are worried that we are turning into Venus huh? You do know that Venus receives more intense solar radiation than earth, plus Venus atmosphere is 97% plus CO2 (970,000 PPM), whereas on earth we are at 400PPM (or 0.04%).

I guess you don't know about feedback loops, eh? The Venus state is just the end result of the totality of many feedback loops.

No, plants and animals both respriate and produce CO2

Riiight. Let's put you in a room full of CO2 to test that theory.

Regarding the ACA, if the Democrats wanted to make health care better, they should have gotten involved instead of sitting on their hands and trying to obstruct.

LOL! Right... so how does that work when all the work is being done in secret at Republican luncheons that Democrats were prohibited from attending? Also, you really want to talk about obstruction? The 113th congress narrowly avoided the prize of being the least productive congress in US history. I agree and hope the Democrats are in fact working on bills to reform the ACA but I don't see the current congress doing anything but shooting it down if only to play politics.

Regarding education spending: Privatizing schools would solve virtually all the problems via competition. (Competition provides virtually everything else in your life of quality, you might think on that for a minute.)

Competition in capitalism is an excellent motivator but it's optimizes for a metric that will provide the most money, not the best outcome.

Regarding criminals: GTFO. Crime rates are at historic lows in large part to 3 strikes laws taking habitual criminals out of circulation.

I've seen plenty of studies that have found that to not be the case. Always look at who is funding a study.

That you believe anyone wants people to be incarcerated for financial gain is pitiful (you need to pull your head out of whatever liberal echo chamber you have been living in).

Corporations are systems, not people. The people inside them are continually seeking optimizations to maximize profits because if they don't then they literally are risking losing their job. It's all about money, not people. I very much encourage you to investigate the matter of incarceration for profit because it has been studied extensively and has found some very depressing realities. Why would you think that people would be above this kind of thing when there are so many examples of corporations doing the most depraved things? GM saved $0.57 on an ignition switch that they knew would kill people because it was cheaper to settle the lawsuits. How is this any less vile?

Regarding welfare: So please tell me what should be taxed to discourage all the people taking welfare and other entitlements?

Tax food based on how helpful/harmful it is to your body (encourages health and pays for health care). Tax corporation based on how much it costs to clean up their pollution (all things emitted [even products being sold] are pollution) (encourages "green" manufacturing/products and pays for cleaning up pollution). Tax pharmaceutical companies based on how many people become addicted to their product (helps pay for recovery programs). These taxes are called feedback loops which are the very things that define behavior.

Regarding farmers: So according

Suburbs and exurbs are an almost uniquely American thing.

There's a bunch of bunk. I lived with coworkers in a suburb of Lyon in France. The minute people have the means to leave your treeless urban hellscapes they do it; nothing uniquely murican about it. The fact that it is harder to get the means in Europe making it less common is orthogonal; when they can they do. Full stop.

IBM did that for most of a century

Arguing with success right there. IBM dominated its field for most of that century and is still a mighty force offering full stack solutions from chips to bodies. When you get above the world of hipster startups and investor funny money you find IBM. IBM is still distributed in nearly all 50 states. One wonders whether a hypothetical IBM — stupidly consolidated in the SF — could have expected all of their employees to show up at the office, as they've done recently.

Telecommuting has been tried.

More arguing with success. IBM has its reasons, but the rest of the US is going another way. The Growing Army of Americans Who Work From Home

Hi Rydia,

How do you view Dr. Debrah Soh's op-ed? Her's is one of the more well-written supportive article of Damore that I've seen.

https://www.theglobeandmail.co...

Dr. Suzanne Sadedin has written a critical response, though more nuanced (and imho powerful) than some of the others that you've listed.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/q...

Try colleges. Women are approximately 56% of university students, above their representation level in the general population. And while whites make up 75% of the US general population, they make up about 60% of college students. So being a white male means you're probably not going to make it to a university, as compared to other minority groups. At least not at the level of representation in the general population.

Starving artist living hand to mouth gives 1 million dollars to charity [nydailynews.com]

Except Bruno Mars isn't a "starving artist" when he's worth $39M according to Forbes.

https://www.forbes.com/profile/bruno-mars/

So, where's your donation, Mr Talented Businessman?

Starving artists don't have money. Try again, asshat.

Russia misogynistic? Seriously? Right now Russia has one of the world's highest proportions of women in top government roles. Reference: https://www.forbes.com/sites/d...

There is very little misogyny in Russia, it's one of the achievements of the USSR. China is a similar story - Communist party actively promoted gender equality and it pays off now.

Since you sound absolutely desperate for me to come up empty, I'll give you a link to Forbes.

Dig deeper here.

Pretty much this. Apple really needs a visit from Susan Cain.

Intel is another company where everyone works in a cubicle, even the CEO.

There are more: CEOs who work from cubicles.

But just because cubicles may work for a CEO, that doesn't mean they work for programmers. The jobs are very different. There is nothing a CEO does that is analogous to tracking down a race condition in a 10,000 line threaded real-time application written by an intern three summers ago.

1) It's not unsupported; there's plenty of high-quality work showing personality differences between men and women (on average!) that are consistent across many diverse cultures,

Like how in that bastion of gender equality known as Iran, women are 70% of STEM university graduates?

Or that given two juxtaposed tribes, one patrilineal and one matrilineal, women in the matrilineal tribe have equivalent spacial reasoning skills as the men?

2) programming was a completely different job at that point,

Yeah, all the tools and high-level languages we have now mean its not as hard as it once was when real women programmed on bare iron.

3) saying that men and women may be attracted to different things, and that this partially explains the gender gap in CS does not preclude bias as a contributor.

Which is utterly irrelevant to any argument focusing on biology being the problem which is what Damore did.

To date there is ZERO proof climate change is affected by humans. And yet the scientific community which keeps reminding us that "correlation does not imply causation" keep saying the "evidence" is overwhelming (again there is none). Is the climate rising? There is evidence to support that claim but it is hardly overwhelming and there is also research that seems to contradict (no I'm not talking about THAT "research") these findings. So without any factual research to tie humans to the research supporters of the theory turn to name calling anyone who calls them on their BS "climate-deniers". While there are a select few who simply deny climate is changing the vast majority do not. We simply refute the CONCLUSION that it is caused by human action. And rightly so. Show me some proof and I'll listen. When there is money to be made and politicians involved take everything you hear with a ton of sodium. Take a look at how much money Al Gore made buying and selling carbon credits which weren't even a thing in the US until his inconvenient lie prompted congress and the EPA to create them.

You're an idiotic partisan hack. Do you really think that the people working on these studies don't know the stats 101 meme you're using as a crutch?

The effects of CO2 etc. are very well understood.

To date there is ZERO proof climate change is affected by humans. And yet the scientific community which keeps reminding us that "correlation does not imply causation" keep saying the "evidence" is overwhelming (again there is none). Is the climate rising? There is evidence to support that claim but it is hardly overwhelming and there is also research that seems to contradict (no I'm not talking about THAT "research") these findings. So without any factual research to tie humans to the research supporters of the theory turn to name calling anyone who calls them on their BS "climate-deniers". While there are a select few who simply deny climate is changing the vast majority do not. We simply refute the CONCLUSION that it is caused by human action. And rightly so. Show me some proof and I'll listen. When there is money to be made and politicians involved take everything you hear with a ton of sodium. Take a look at how much money Al Gore made buying and selling carbon credits which weren't even a thing in the US until his inconvenient lie prompted congress and the EPA to create them.

Great! So recruit like crazy from NZ and IS! How many programmers in SV are from those countries, as opposed to the US? Given that the population of both countries is about equal to the population of the Bay area, I would submit very few SV programmers are from NZ and IS. And if the difference is cultural - and I am completely willing to accept that - then the solution probably isn't to adjust on the output of the school system, but the internal workings of the school system. So given the population you're most likely drawing from, is it surprising there is an imbalance in who goes into CS?

Of course, I submit that it's already been skewed too extreme, given than women greatly outnumber men at universities. Perhaps we need more "get men into colleges!" programs?

Here's an interesting read on it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...

I wonder where the cables will run through north Africa? A lot of unstable regimes there, would be easy for terrorists to cut/blow up the cables, whether overhead or underground. Not good for energy security.

You're right. But the current situation is that much of Europe's energy is supplied by Russia, which, in the current geopolitical climate, is even worse for energy security because it gives the Kremlin the power to strongarm the Union by threatening to raise prices or close the gas flow entirely.

If only there was a mineral of some sort in the ground that could be used to generate energy via nuclear fission that was safer per kilowatt than other energy production sources,and if only someone had devised ways of storing the radioactive waste safely...

But because radiation is scary to people who do not understand the difference between modern reactors and Chernobyl/Fukushima, my fellow Europeans seem somehow terrified by it, even though countries like France have been using it to generate over a third of all their energy for long.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying nuclear is the perfect solution. It's not. But it's a whole lot better for energy security and for the climate than continuing to use coal, oil and natural gas while we try to figure out cleaner solutions that work even in less sunny areas.

Why makes you think they don't exist?

Have you actually tried looking for evidence to the contrary of your beliefs?

The wage gap you mean?

http://www.washingtonexaminer....

http://time.com/3222543/wage-p...

Or data that would disprove the fact that women chose to avoid stem-related fields when they get a chance?
The original was an article about the development in east germany after the wall fell and suddenly all the girls stopped being interested in STEM-related fields even though now they were not assigned to their future job (and thus university subject) but could chose freely. Turns out that many chose more "fulfilling" but lower paying jobs. Its possible that this article was in german, hence why google is not finding it when I search for it using english words.

In the meantime I found something similar:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/q...

Sorry for the bad link. I copied it right out of my browser; I blame the Forbes site.

This is a good URL, I tested it:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/drillinginfo/2016/02/22/debunking-myths-about-federal-oil-gas-subsidies/

P.S. If this link somehow fails, search for "Debunking Myths About Federal Oil & Gas Subsidies by Len Tesoro"

I keep reading web pages debunking the idea that oil companies get special subsidies, and I haven't ever seen an actual list of the special subsidies, so I'm curious what they are.

As far as I know, I agree with you, but your argument is undercut by linking to a Forbes article on... paint, as far as I can tell.

Could you please provide a list of the "special tax and other benefits" given to oil companies every single year? Since you are saying that there are billions of dollars worth per year, it should be pretty easy to find an example or two.

I keep reading web pages debunking the idea that oil companies get special subsidies, and I haven't ever seen an actual list of the special subsidies, so I'm curious what they are.

This is one of the dumbest articles I've ever seen on Slashdot, and that's saying a lot.

1) SpaceX has been saving the US government a huge amount of money versus its formerly monopolistic competitor, ULA, which even still gets paid even when it doesn't launch anything. SpaceX charges a tiny fraction as much per launch as ULA does, and this before they get to widespread rocket reuse.

2) The federal EV credits were basically designed by GM, for the Volt. The credit is per-kWh and maxes out precisely at the pack capacity of the Volt (gee, what are the odds of that?). Furthermore, it expires on a per-manufacturer basis. This has the perverse effect that manufacturers of popular EVs - such as Tesla - get no credits (Tesla's phaseout starts next year), but their competitors who make less popular EVs will continue to be subsidized for years to come.

3) Tesla's reservations are in place despite the fact that its US customers know that most of them will be getting a partially-phased-out credit if any at all. That's because even without credits and without accounting for savings in energy and maintenance costs, the Model 3 outcompetes other vehicles in its class (BMW 3-Series, Audi A4, etc) on performance and features for its price point.

(Cue the Slashdotters rushing to pretend that there's no difference between standard features and performance in a midrange sedan and, say, a base-model Yaris. Because that's what these conversations usually devolve to ;) )

4) Tesla Motors did get - like the Big Three - government loans during the auto bailout. But unlike some of the Big Three, they paid theirs back 100% with interest - and more to the point, years before they were due.

In large part, the subsidies that affect Tesla's products have had the perverse effect of hurting the company, giving them artificially supported competition. Musk frequently complains about them.

I noted you provided no links for your revisionist lies - Hillary provided uranium to Russia, that is a fact, end of story.

The link you failed to provide was probably Snopes, and if you are so stupid as to believe a known mouthpiece for Hillary over the NYT and Forbes - well I don't know what to tell you. Actually I do, it's think for yourself, but I know you will not so why bother trying?

Turns out there's more than one horse in the barn. You don't leave the barn door open just because one got out. We've not had any problems. Every impact so far? Great, we've survived them. Heck, hundreds of people survive a drunk drive every night. We still try to stop them if we can. And no, the serious people looking have done more than just guess or blow smoke.

Don't conflate them with the people full of shit.

I'm so glad that we abandoned air travel after early deadly crashes showed how unsafe the technology was (really? people flying in heavier than air vehicles - absurd and obviously stupid).

I'm sure some people who continued to dream of air transport claimed that the technology would only get better and safer. Perhaps some even made absurd claims such as "In less than one hundred years, we may see more than a five year span where no one died in a crash of a United States-certificated scheduled airline operating anywhere in the world" which, of course, would have been an absurd prediction. Fortunately, we largely ignored such idiots.

Forbes has a policy of not including "rulers and dictators" on its various lists of the Worlds's Billionaires.

...Forbes has long separated rulers and dictators from our annual rankings of the World’s Billionaires, distinguishing between personal, entrepreneurial wealth and wealth derived largely from positions of power, where lines often blur between what is owned by the country and what is owned by the individual. That is why rulers such as the King of Thailand, the Sultan of Brunei and Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum are not listed among the world’s billionaires, though we have estimated that each controls an 11-figure fortune.

source

So, you can't assume anything from his absence. And since Putin's declared wealth is so paltry, proving the existence of Putin's secret nest egg is likely to be difficult and dangerous.

Here's another article - https://www.forbes.com/sites/p...
I could go on and on and on. Stop believing the leftist press. Did you know *ANYONE* can be a news reporter? At colleges if you flunk out of everything, you can STILL go into journalism. They're the dumbest of the dumb.

The Federal Poverty Level of a single person is ~$11,800/yr. At that rate, that poor bastard would need to work at the same wage for 16,949.15 YEARS to just earn the difference between Jeff and Bills net worth ($200Mil). Hell, at $100K a year for a working professional, that's 2,000 years.

  Further perspective, Land owners like Ted Turner made $1.7Billion (in the 1980's) and owns 590,823 acres - just shy of 3 Rhode Islands. Not sure how much Ted spent on his land, but imagine a ranch 45 times that size... or nearly 150 Rhode Islands.

"you buy from amazon for the convenience and the pre-paid 2 day shipping you signed up for with amazon prime"

Yes, and the painless returns. You have to shop smart, but Amazon has one of the best direct/3rd party systems. Have you seen the dumpster fire that Newegg has turned into, or - God forbid - have you every looked for something at Sears/Kmart or Walmart online? Those last two are case studies in making a 3rd party marketplace a total clusterfuck on your site.

I agree that Amazon has the logistics down "pat".

Newegg always WAS a dumpster-fire. I haven't tried to order online from Kmart/Sears, but Walmart isn't THAT bad. Nice touch that you can avoid shipping costs if you have a Walmart nearby.

For "tech" stuff, I often prefer B&H Photo over Amazon these days. Generally better prices, no sales tax, often free shipping, fast service (they even shipped something ON July 4th!), and there doesn't seem to be the issue with "counterfeit stuff" that is getting to be rampant on Amazon.

For example, Apple recently studied all the supposed "Genuine Apple" AC adapters and cables on Amazon, and I think they found that some 90% of them were counterfeits.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/a...

OTOH, B&H is a much smaller target for those people, and has been in the mail-order business since the mid to late 1960s, at least, decades longer than Amazon; so, IMHO, they have as much, or even more, experience in this business, at least as applies to "tech" items. As for groceries...?

Yes, yes, ignore the actual documented problems that were

I didn't ignore them. I say they are anecdotal crap that liberal judges buy into.

Yes, yes, you are totally trying to ignore them. That is the reason you gave earlier for ignoring them. And it's bogus.

Almost as bogus as claiming you aren't doing so. Talk about redoubling your efforts.

No. Adults who want to vote have to go and get an ID. No one has to go hand it to them.

Nope. States that want to demand ID for voting ought to go and provide it to the residents. Even if the Governor himself has to walk the streets. It's the only way to be sure they're not trying to rig the system.

If they can make it to the polls they can make it to get an ID.

If polls were as widely scattered as the sites that provide ID in my state, that'd be a serious problem.

Now if you want to make EVERY polling site also required to provide ID, that'd be something to consider.

But that's not what happens.

I do appreciate it.

The mayor is not however walking door to door. People still have to take action

The State of New York isn't requiring ID to vote. If they did, I'd set the same burden on them. I wouldn't even mind if they DID increase their efforts to provision voters with ID, unlike the states that are making it harder.

Irrelevant comment

Your own fault for making yet another disparaging remark. I'm just not very impressed by it. It's laughable. Of course, I've seen the same complaints about disaster supplies, so, again, not impressed.

Yes, yes, blame the voter, a common attitude, except the state's legitimacy only exists with the provision of the vote. Treat it accordingly.

Also irrelevant

And this hurts you even more. Provision of voting is a mandate on the state, and the center issue here.

Denying it, is a mark against you. Really you should at least try to show some more integrity.

I bet if Social Security started doing photo ID, there'd be massive protests and objections about the mark of the beast.

More irrelevance.

It's a true story. You just don't like what it says about why a national ID system isn't happening.

Same reason you have a problem with being believed here. You just keep trying to ignore problems. If you'd started with making sure that the state was guaranteed in providing ID first, I'd respect that, but you didn't, instead you won't even admit that it should be an obligation on the state. You just keep coming up with ways to disparage and attack people because you're not willing to admit there is a problem, so all you've got is sneering contempt.

And that's why even ignoring the history of abuses literary tests, poll taxes, and other mechanisms, you just aren't believable. You're too resistant to fixing the real and evident problems and too hellbent on ignoring them.

Why don't you fix your own problems? You could reclaim the moral high ground if you behaved in a different way. It wouldn't even be hard. I know why Mashiki can't, but surely you can see the better option?

These court cases are crap and I'm sick of this argument that people are just incapable of getting an ID somehow.

Yes, yes, ignore the actual documented problems that were substantiated in a court of law. This is the biggest issue with the legitimacy of your argument, you rail and rant at the concerns, instead of solving them.

I said this to Mashiki, but you should realize it as well, a little contrition is what you need, not obstreperousness.

I didn't ignore them. I say they are anecdotal crap that liberal judges buy into.

Everyone should have an ID.

Then make it an obligation for the state to provide it, even if the Governor of the State has to walk around in EVERY single neighborhood with a camera and a printer.

No. Adults who want to vote have to go and get an ID. No one has to go hand it to them. If they can make it to the polls they can make it to get an ID.

Here's a list of reasons why, provided by the NYC government:

Yes, yes, there are good reasons to have ID. Which is why the City of New York set up a Municipal ID program, thank you for appreciating them.

I do appreciate it. The mayor is not however walking door to door. People still have to take action

If those vans were giving out free phones people would have waited on lines for hours.

Yes, yes, there were protests over providing people with phones too.

Irrelevant comment

Voters are supposed to be adults. Treat them accordingly.

Yes, yes, blame the voter, a common attitude, except the state's legitimacy only exists with the provision of the vote. Treat it accordingly.

Also irrelevant

I bet if you needed a photo ID to collect social security benefits the person named in that lawsuit would have had one for 20 years.

I bet if Social Security started doing photo ID, there'd be massive protests and objections about the mark of the beast.

More irrelevance.

These court cases are crap and I'm sick of this argument that people are just incapable of getting an ID somehow.

Yes, yes, ignore the actual documented problems that were substantiated in a court of law. This is the biggest issue with the legitimacy of your argument, you rail and rant at the concerns, instead of solving them.

I said this to Mashiki, but you should realize it as well, a little contrition is what you need, not obstreperousness.

Everyone should have an ID.

Then make it an obligation for the state to provide it, even if the Governor of the State has to walk around in EVERY single neighborhood with a camera and a printer.

Here's a list of reasons why, provided by the NYC government:

Yes, yes, there are good reasons to have ID. Which is why the City of New York set up a Municipal ID program, thank you for appreciating them.

People object no matter how easy the local government makes it.

People object because the state government doesn't make it easy, hence the court claims you blithely dismiss, and when a local government does it, the GOP puts up roadblocks anyway.

People objected even when they were sending mobile voter ID vans into neighborhoods to make it easy.

Really, they never sent those vans around here, but maybe those vans weren't around at convenient times, maybe they weren't well-advertised, maybe they weren't doing the job properly. Maybe people still had the issues with having the documentation. Just because you say you do something, doesn't mean you do it right.

If those vans were giving out free phones people would have waited on lines for hours.

Yes, yes, there were protests over providing people with phones too.

Voters are supposed to be adults. Treat them accordingly.

Yes, yes, blame the voter, a common attitude, except the state's legitimacy only exists with the provision of the vote. Treat it accordingly.

I bet if you needed a photo ID to collect social security benefits the person named in that lawsuit would have had one for 20 years.

I bet if Social Security started doing photo ID, there'd be massive protests and objections about the mark of the beast.

Citation needed on the anti-nukes being funded by the fossil fuel industry, though.

Here is one from just a few weeks ago. https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... Friends of the Earths was founded by an oil tycoon. The sierra club, greenpeace, national resource defense council and union of concerned scientists all receive funds from the fossil fuel industry. There are a lot of smaller anti-nuclear groups funded by local fossil fuel companies. Many anti-nuclear politicians such as Jerry Brown have connections to the fossil fuels industry that go back decades.

Citation needed on the anti-nukes being funded by the fossil fuel industry, though.

Here is one from just a few weeks ago. https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... Friends of the Earths was founded by an oil tycoon. The sierra club, greenpeace, national resource defense council and union of concerned scientists all receive funds from the fossil fuel industry. There are a lot of smaller anti-nuclear groups funded by local fossil fuel companies. Many anti-nuclear politicians such as Jerry Brown have connections to the fossil fuels industry that go back decades.

"For starters, there has never been one built that was on time, on budget, delivered electricity at the promised cost and met its maintenance targets."

There have been several; https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

"And when you don't externalize the cost of dealing with uranium tailings, transportation and storage of waste, you don't get a lot more energy out than you've put in generating it."

The dealing, transportation and storage (which is done mainly underground) requires very little energy. I'm surprised you made this argument, and not one with 'work' or 'costs'... but in regard to energy, it's several orders of magnitude more that a nuclear plant delivers, than all what you describe together.

"we're now paying sky-high electricity rates, mostly to pay for maintenance of nuclear plants"

Germany pays even far higher rates, and it's mostly due to subsidizing wind- and solar energy . They subsidized their nuclear plants as well, but during whole that time, energy prizes were relatively low and stable. The prices skyrocketed there, when they *closed* the nuclear plants, and had to subsidize massively the 'neue wendung' with all the 'alternative' energy-sources (primarily wind).

Just saying: it's not all that clear cut. And I think the greens should at least be open to a mix where nuclear plants still play a role - being one of the few energy providers that can deliver a stable base load and isn't pumping CO2 in the air.

The 21st century recessions were due mostly to federal government pressure to loan to insolvent home buyers. That pressure was a result of Democratic party policy then in place, that Republicans were unable to end.

This has been thoroughly debunked.

The result was inevitable and had nothing to do with your jealousy of rich people.

It was all about the jealousy of rich people, for other rich people. We can call it greed.

The people who gained insurance coverage under Obamacare were mostly people who didn't want insurance, and with the end of Obamacare will be free to once again do as they please. You, however, think it's OK to point government guns at their heads and proclaim "Your money or your life."

From 2012; The ACA bars the IRS from bringing a criminal enforcement case against someone who refuses to pay the non-insurance penalty. And it makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for it to enforce a tax lien. Law professors Jordan Barry and Bryan Camp have a nice piece in Tax Notes explaining it all. That leaves only one tool—the IRS can subtract the penalty from any refund it owes a taxpayer. But that applies only if the IRS happens to owe somebody a refund. These days, two-thirds of taxpayers get one, but it is usually their choice. Only low-income households who receive refundable credits, such as the Earned Income Credit, always get refunds. But the ACA specifically exempts most of them from the tax because their income is so low. Bottom line: Notwithstanding the nutty Internet rumors that the IRS is hiring 20,000 revenue agents to collect the tax, most people who really want to game the system will probably get away with it.