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Here's a list of 547 banks that have failed since 2000.

Maybe it's just the ones that didn't donate enough to those in political power. You know... the ones that weren't too big to fail.

But those who are can sometimes be very clever.

They were all bought from the fake Apple Store.

http://www.forbes.com/pictures...

Close to a quarter of a billion by 2013. Probably considerably more by now...

It has been official republican strategy to block his nomination until the election so that there would be a chance that the next president might be a Republican and they could get a more conservative court instead.

That the Republicans then talked of further delaying for the next 4 years should Clinton win sends an even more ominous message that they care more about politics than the Constitution, the Country and *all* of its people.

Obama's fault for not trying to appoint anyone to the Supreme Court

Speaking of living in an alternative reality...

Obama nominated Merrick Garland three quarters of a year ago. It has been official republican strategy to block his nomination until the election so that there would be a chance that the next president might be a Republican and they could get a more conservative court instead. A strategy that ultimately paid off.

For more details, Wikipedia has a full article on the fight, with 88 references.

Keep saying they're poor. While they destroy our economy.

You're the one who wants to let them destroy our economy by putting our heads in the sand and not reacting. You CANNOT sustain a $365 billion trade deficit. It will destroy your economy.

If China wants, they can replace the $X worth of goods we send them with local manufacturing. If we do the same, our prices double. Theirs won't.

Guess what, even without a trade war, China IS replacing that $X of goods with local manufacturing, slowly but surely. That's why their manufacturing increases every year. They do more and more stuff. That's why our trade deficit with China grows every year. And they're transitioning from manufacturing cheap crap to more complex stuff.

Your "down side" to a trade war is already happening. I mean open your eyes. Check out this article http://www.forbes.com/sites/ke...

The American 1880s electric components manufacturer is turning to China. Even if that requires partnering with their nuclear scientists who may one day eat Westinghouse’s lunch not only in China, but in the U.S. and the rest of the world too.

[...]

In 2008-09 it signed a technology transfer agreement with the State Nuclear Power Technology Corp (SNPTC) to build the AP1000 and its Chinese spin-off called the CAP1400.

According to the World Nuclear Association, that tech agreement is what got them the contract to build the reactors in China, the latest and greatest in Westinghouse nuclear technology.

[...]

Jack Allen, then president of Westinghouse for Asia, told the Financial Times in 2010 that the company had no guarantees of its role in China after the four AP1000s were built with their Chinese partners. That was the year they handed over 75,000 documents to SNPTC, which might as well have been titled How to Build an American Nuclear Power Plant.

“We don’t know what will happen. We don’t expect to walk away after the completion of those units and not participate in (China’s) nuclear program,” Allen says. “But there are no guarantees.”

So please, tell me more about how we have a wonderful mutually beneficial trading arrangement with China currently, and only a loony trade war will ever make China produce the stuff that we currently produce. Please.

I don't know why people didn't see this coming. I suspect a lot of Americans have a rude awakening in store regarding our position in the world.

An article over on Forbes already looked into this.

The TL;DR version is that Tesla's autopilot has 1 fatality per 130M miles driven, while the US average of all vehicle-related fatalities comes out to about one per 94M miles. That's 94M miles under all roads, all conditions, compared to Tesla's autopilot being driven almost exclusively on highways.

Uh, that's been Trump's position for nearly a year. But hey, I guess Obama has to crow about something good coming of this, so taking credit for a position staked out 10 months ago works!

Voters LOVE the rich. Most politicians they elect are rich. Most POTUS from both parties are/were, including the next one. Candidates will SAY they are a man of the people, an outsider, etc. but almost all of them aren't. Trump is actually one of the few exceptions who really never had previous experience in political office.

This is an example of observation bias. The poorest person who ran for president from the major parties this last cycle was Bernie Sanders who has $700,000 in wealth, Marco Rubio who had $100k in wealth, and Martin Oâ(TM)Malley who had a flat zero. Everyone (17 people!) else was a millionaire. Randomly picking a person will get you someone with at least a million dollars in wealth.

In addition, 8 of the 20 had $10 million or more. So that's 40% chance just out of the box, that you'll get someone with that much wealth.

Let us note that Sanders gave Clinton a hard run too. Her wealth didn't come close to protecting her from him.

Let's also keep in mind that most people don't know squat about people's wealth. I suspect Clinton would have had an even harder time getting elected if people commonly knew she had $45 million in wealth with over half of that ($24 million) earned in 2014. After all, how does one get that much from being Secretary of State?

In the Crimean election there was a 30% turnout, and of that, the choice to annex was 50/50.

Total hogwash. The turnout was 81% and the vote was over 96% in favor.

Yes, those were the public numbers that the Russian Occupation released. No observers were allowed to be present to monitor.
The website of the President of Russia’s Council on Civil Society and Human Rights accidentally released, then took down an analysis that contradicted the official Kremlin report.
You are doubly a fool if you think that a hostile armed invading force leads to a fair election where voters feel they can turn out and vote as they feel. It does feed into the Kremlin rewriting of history that Crimeans were Russians who wanted to break off and join Russia again.

Actually, the majority of Wal-Mart shoppers are Democrats. The demographics changed over the last decade, it used to be mostly Republicans shopping there, but the depressed economy and expansion of Wal-Mart in the West led to the change.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jo... (warning, AdBlocker blocked)

Ok, I get it, you're an advanced case of Trump Supporter. The problem with Trump supporters is however: they may be angry but they're really, really uninformed. I don't have the time to walk you down the list, but take health insurance now.

Go to "interstate insurance" says you. Alas ... that won't work.

See e.g. http://www.forbes.com/sites/br... and here http://www.naic.org/documents/...

Healthcare is expensive. And no matter how you slice the cake (just Google "risk pools"), those slices adds up to the same total. Cost has to be met through insurance premiums. That's how insurance works. And inter state insurance was already a possibility (states allowing). So unless you can drive costs down it's only a matter of spreading the burden, Ok? You'll end up paying the same as under the ACA. Read: your premiums aren't coming down.

How about trying to drive costs down then, eh? Well, you may have a point there. US health care is inefficient. See e,g, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Besides which, about one third seems to go to administrative overhead. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... So there clearly is scope for improvement. Go to a single payer system? Nope: that's Bernie Sanders idea ... and both Democrat and Republican voters closed that line of approach very firmly. Democrats preferred Clinto and Republicans vetoed anything but privatised insurance. Wanted market mechanisms. Hence the "exchanges" we're all so wild about. Got any other ideas? Lets hear 'em !

Operating costs then? Let's see how we might get there.

Hospitals in the US are still mostly non-profit. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... But they're being privatised, and with it implementation of health care. So you're losing a bit of leverage there. Now what could you still do?

Drive down nurses salaries across the board? Really? You're going to need a lot of illegal Mexicans (or robots) to accomplish that. Wait ... your other objective was not to push working Americans out of their job? Hmm ... that's a problem.

Reduce doctors' salaries? Won't get you there 'cause they're not the biggest expense.

Reduce hospital costs? They're either privatised or not wildly unreasonable in cost/benefit terms. People have tried for decades. So: good luck with that.

Reduce the amount of money going into advanced medical technology accessible to collective insurance? Really? Tell people they're going to get second-class care unless they pay extra?

Reduce the potential for medical liability claims? And undermine the most entrenched checks-and-balances mechanism in US law?

Exclude people who are likely to incur more costs? Well, that's the medical insurer's traditional way. Just don't smoke, don't be obese, don't be old, don't have hereditary diseases ... and above all don't get ill and you'll be just fine.

Cap insurance coverage and let people who are uninsured or insufficiently drop dead? Well ... that seems viable. We're doing a bit of that already. Simply set the premium you think people should pay, multiply by the number of people, and there's your budget. Limit care to match the budget. Wait ... did anyone say: "Death panels"?

If anyone can come up with a working solution that isn't the ACA I'll cheer. Only I don't see one. People have been looking for only 20 years now. Pardon me if I'm the tiniest bit sceptic ab

LAIR. Not that you would ever care about the market or money (real vs fiat) - but the MARKET is up 1.39% as of now.

The MARKET tanked last night as investors were expecting a Hillary win.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurengensler/2016/11/09/trump-wins-election-markets-live-blog/#7bffd8149397

LIAR. YOU are the god damned wreckers - why wouldnt you want jobs in the USA? why wouldnt you want to try something besides obamanomics which has the labor force collapsed and part time and multijob and gig jobs for everyone?

You shouldn't believe everything you read on Facebook.

Forbes (Warning: source is anti-adblock and WILL serve ads with MALWARE):

TFTFY.

Also, Forbes, used to be a business magazine. Not really a authoritative source on science an technology.

Just get rid of daylight savings time, but no chance in hell is this silly idea of coordinated UTC going to catch on!

When Bush extended the DST by 4 weeks in the USA, the idea was to save energy by reducing electricity used for lighting in the evenings. (There is ample debate if that worked: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ke...). But there were also proposals at the time to move to permanent daylight savings time to save even more energy and remove the hassle and "$1.7 billion of lost opportunity cost [in the USA]" from the time changes.

So we could debate whether the extinction of DST should mean permanent DST or no DST, but either way, it would solve the nuisance and confusion caused by the convention.

Stop the presses! Toyota to jump into the EV market.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/be...

The references I've seen show it as being surprisingly affordable, and the additional costs provide services above what the standard package is, so it's not paying for health care twice. This is in contrast to the US, where most working folks can't afford to pay for health care once.

Europeans pay about half as much per capita as Americans for health care, but also at substantially lower incomes. The difference between what people get for their money isn't something you can fix with add-ons. Getting US-style healthcare in Europe is disproportionately expensive, and in many cases involves simply leaving the country.

Furthermore, the problem in the US isn't lack of single payer; the US already has a huge single payer system accounting for about half of all health care spending. The problem is that the US single payer system is much more expensive per patient than the private system; moving more people onto it would increase per-capita health care spending in the US, not decrease it. The reason the US single payer system is so inefficient is that US politicians aren't willing to impose cost controls, and that willingness doesn't increase when more voters depend on the system. European healthcare systems spend less per capita because governments are willing to impose strict controls on them, something that is politically impossible in the US.

Wealth concentrates anyway. A wealthy person is free to figure out how to best invest money for income in the long term, while a poor person has to get money right now. A wealthy person can accumulate capital, unlike a poor person, and use that to attain greater wealth.

The term "concentrates" is misleading because it incorporates a zero-sum assumption. And that wealthy person is in competition for returns with other wealthy persons, so the only people who increase their wealth are those who know how to use it for the benefit of society (by investing in the right companies). Furthermore, that wealth usually does not get passed on for more than one or two generations in the US.

Wealth concentration and dynastic wealth occur when the political system gets corrupted, it switches from rewarding skill and performance to redistribution, and puts in place laws that created hereditary dynasties. That's the situation in much of Europe, but we don't yet have it in the US. And under such systems, even the poor do more poorly, again, as we find in Europe. Wealth and inequality are actually significantly higher in Europe than in the US; all Europe is doing is putting a layer of redistribution in place that largely affects the lower and middle classes and reduces the post-tax Gini index.

As for the US, income and/or wealth inequality may or may not actually be increasing, but what is clearly increasing is the fraction of first generation billionaires among all billionaires. By now, the great majority of billionaires are self-made in the US.

von Bismarck was trying to make Socialism look less attractive. Now, given historical hindsight, you and I realize that a Socialist revolution was not going to be good for freedoms anyway, but it was awfully tempting to lots of people at the time. People did have some freedom then.

Quite right: Germany was an autocratic, repressive state under Bismarck, and he bribed people with positive rights in order to stay in that system. Later, the communists and fascists bribed people with positive rights to accept their totalitarian systems. See a pattern there? The promise of positive rights is used to convince people to accept autocratic or totalitarian rule.

The promise of the classical liberal and Enlightenment, namely a state that offers only negative rights, has a hard time competing, both because people are afraid to take responsiblity for their own li

• * Has the price of the stuff that YOU buy gone up or down?
• * Why did you buy that stuff?
• * What do you actually need to buy to survive?
• * What do you need to buy to be content?

In specific, only you can answer these questions. However, there are some common general trends:

• * The measure of inflation published by the US government: http://www.usinflationcalculat... will be different from the measure of inflation that you experience. The pressures to influence the rate of inflation published by the US government are different from the pressures that influence YOUR purchasing. A couple years ago, Forbes had an interesting opinion piece that pointed out some of the pressures on the US government to manipulate the published rate of inflation: http://www.forbes.com/sites/pe...
• * It is very hard to interpret the published US rate of inflation, because they change their methodology ALL THE TIME: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpi_met...
• * In general, these changes in methodology tend to minimize the published rate of inflation. Older methods, yield a much higher rate of inflation: http://www.shadowstats.com/alt...
• * If any of the things that YOU buy experience higher rates of inflation, then it's costs will dominate your budget. This is particularly compelling when the item is a non-optional part of your expenses, such as food, housing, clothing, medical, maintenance of income, community interaction, or interaction with family.

To add an insignificant personal data point, every time I have measured the increase in the expense of food, housing, medical or maintenance of income in the last 30 years, my results have traced the US methodology used back in the early '80s instead of current methodology. For the last 35 years, I have held jobs at the same university in the leading edge of IT. Back then, my monthly salary was about $35K. If my salary increases had matched the cost of living according to the methodology used in 1982, my current monthly salary would exceed $250K. The current actual costs of food, housing, medical and maintenance of income would be about the same percentage of my budget NOW as they were then. Instead, my salary has trailed the actual published inflation rate, and my current mandatory costs are crippling me.

Again, read what I wrote4. I never said that there is no such thing as corrupt unions, just that they're needed to counterbalance the power of corporations in our current oligarchy. And even Jimmy Carter admits that the US is an oligarchy - which was inevitable with the Citizens United judgment. You now get the best (if you're a business owner) government money can buy.

Also, you are either incredibly naive or incredibly stupid to write "Once a union has achieved the purpose for which it was formed, it should be disbanded". If that were the case, we could disband the fire department once there are no fires, the police department once we go a while with no crime, the FAA when we go a year with no crashes, etc. Companies do not miraculously have a "come to Jeebus" moment and go forth and sin no more.

And no, it's non-union companies that have a short6er lifetime, because there are so many more of them. They never achieve the critical mass to have a union, but that doesn't prevent them from closing up shop because they're simply not competitive. 8 out of 10 businesses fail within 18 months

According to Bloomberg, 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start businesses fail within the first 18 months. A whopping 80% crash and burn.

We don't here of most of them because they're (1) small, (2) haven't been around long enough to make a dent in the market, (3) are shoestring operations, which never get to the point where the operators see the need for incorporating because it's not doing well enough to even bother making that investment.

As for stating "What good does that serve any worker?" - I was a member of the steelworkers and they definitely negotiated better working conditions and pay, and the company not only survived, it grew. Also, I was one person away from the legal minimum to receive legal recognition as a programmer's union. I failed because others were afraid of reprisals, even though there are fines for reprisals, etc., and compensation paid to affected employees. Most programmers are chicken-shit; serves them right when they have to train their overseas replacements to take over their jobs.

Quotation needed. And no, Ukraine does not count. They had a vote and voted to be part of Russia; that's a far cry from rolling in the tanks and taking it by force.

They did send in their military, that's who the "Little Green Men" were. Even Putin has publicly admitted this. The "vote" was held under occupation, not internationally recognized, boycotted by significant segments of the population, and even Russia at one point accidentally released the "real" numbers from the vote which didn't match the official ones.

Do recall that Russia is a country where Chechnya "voted for" United Russia (Putin's Party) 99% in 2001. Some parts of Grozny voted for "The Butcher of Grozny" by well over 100%. You seriously think that's legit?

Amazing how many apologists for Russia there are here. False equivalencies are clearly alive and well.

When these selfdriving cars have accidents because of not having been made good enough for some driving condition, or just because glitch, who's responsible?

That has already been answered presented on every major news page, including Slashdot.
Spam, spam, spam and more spam.

Nobody cares about the content of those talks, least of all anybody at Goldman Sachs. She could have stood at the lectern and read Rod McKuen poems for all they care. The issue is that the money Goldman gave her for those "speeches" are in fact bribes paid on spec, against the contingency of her getting into the white house.

-jcr

You ever attend a professional sports game? Part of it is to watch the performance, part of it is see your heroes in person.

Now imagine you're a rich bank having a company event, spending a few hundred thousand dollars for an A-list politician to give a speech and even answer a few questions makes a lot of sense. Your employees are happier (better recruitment and retention) and it makes your company look that much more successful and prestigious (more business in the future).

Oh, and if you think the Clinton speeches were bribes, then why people bribing Donald Trump in 2006 and 2007? Because Trump made a hell of a lot more than Clinton.

Twitter's business model has been non profitable pretty much since its inception. They were aiming for a LinkedIn and no one is taking the bait.

Wonder if we're reaching the end of the second dotcom bubble...

Socialized Heath Care is more efficient too. The waiting rooms double as morgues!

Socialised health care is not perfect, but it typically has a much better outcome for the average patient - both per dollar and absolutely. The US is neck and neck with Cuba in health care effectiveness (see e.g. this Forbes article). It spends 17.9% of the GDP on health care - Cuba spends 10% And since GDP per person is around US$55000 for the US, US$6700 for Cuba, the Cuban system is about 15 times more efficient.

I mean, it seems pretty weird to "not give up on Trump" at this point. You really genuinely want a republican president so badly that you're willing to elect a kiddy fiddler?

Heh.

That is sooooo far away from important to me that it doesn't even register.

Important to me is turning away from globalism, making the government work for Americans, and fixing some of our obvious problems.

Of those, the most important to me is the globalism thing. If you look at economics from a math perspective (specifically: game theory, and I'm a math person) you see that economics is based on flawed rationalizations. It's patently obvious that the rationalizations are true and correct given their assumptions, but that the assumptions are wrong.

The thing that made America great in the last half of the 20th century was the ability for citizens to build and keep wealth. Many people could get an education with little-or-no money, find a job, buy a house and raise a family.

People are finding that they can't do that any more, largely because of globalism. When a wealth-building country partners with a non-wealth-building country, all the wealth flows out of the great country and into the poor country.

England can partner with Germany or Norway and would do well. England partnering with Poland, Spain, or Greece is a disaster - Greeks can move to England and take high-paying jobs, but the English can't do the same in Greece. Greece is full of corruption, which limits personal wealth building.

To take a clear example, Clinton wants a 65% estate tax. This is a clear burden on creating and keeping wealth, it's double taxing, and it will be a disaster.

Farms can't be left to children, they'll have to be sold to pay the taxes. Family-owned businesses too. And houses.

And if there's no one interested in your farm, or business, or house at the time you need to sell it, it'll be sold for a lot less than it's worth just to pay the taxes.

That's only one example, but there are a ton of others. Pretty-much everything Clinton is for will pull the country down into poverty.

Yes, I'm for Trump simply because he wants to reverse that trend.

I don't care if he's Sithrak the blind gibberer in his private life.

If he's not Clinton, he's better.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ka...

They should have hit Disney with a bigger fine for killing Han Solo GRAPHICALLY - ON SCREEN - BY HIS OWN SON in front of an audience including six year old kids. Giving that movie a PG-13 rating was pretty fucked up. PG-13 sounds like 'Parental Guidance for children under 13' but if you read the go to the MPAA's web site their fine print it says "PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned) – Some Material May Be Inappropriate For Children Under 13." Guess Disney didn't want an R rating to scare away families so they pulled strings at the MPAA

Are you angry because it's probably aimed at your company?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ji...

Automakers With The Lowest (And Highest) Recall Rates ...Toyota/Lexus/Scion led the pack for the second year in a row with nearly 5.3 million cars and trucks recalled, followed by the Chrysler Group at around 4.7 million and Honda/Acura with nearly 2.8 million models recalled. While these would seem to be staggering numbers, as NHTSA points out theyâ(TM)re not weighed against sales, and as such arenâ(TM)t necessarily a predictor of a given model lineâ(TM)s inherent safety or its long-term reliability.

A critical part failure in a human controlled vehicle is bad enough.
I submit that there are at least an order of magnitude more potential points of failure in an autonomous vehicle. Perhaps it's wise to move a little more carefully before this becomes widespread.

It is not true that it is illegal to lose your drivers' licence -- where on earth did you get that idea? It is illegal to drive without a licence in your possession but you are not breaking the law merely by losing your licence.

It is also not true that it is illegal to lose tax receipts from the last seven years. The Cohan Rule famously applies. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ro...

If you're going to analogise, you need good analogies.

Clinton is the "stay the course" candidate, and Trump is the "make changes" candidate.

A bit over half of Americans are on the brink of poverty, so a lot of people are looking for things to change.

The other slightly-less-than-half people think things are going pretty well, and don't want anything to change.

Add to this the fact that corporations don't want changes that benefit the American people because of the expense, a media that feeds on emotional investment (for advertizing clicks), and a political party that uses emotional involvement and guilt to gain support (refugees, illegal immigrants, and so on) and you have the situation of today.

Half the nation is hurting badly with no end in sight, the other half thinks that any change whatsoever would be bad for their personal selves.

Even though the Clintons are complete crooks and disgusting people, Trump is even worse. We need to stop this witchhunt. President Chelsea Clinton will get to the bottom of it when she is elected.

The problem with this statement is that it's hollow - there's nothing to back it up. Trump isn't worse, at best he's an unknown.

Trump has been called a narcissist, which is probably fair, but a narcissist is exactly who would make the best president. The one thing that matters most to Trump is his brand.

Trump wants to be the best president in the last 100 years, and if possible the best one ever.

Everything about him points to that one aspect: he wants to win, he wants to be the best at everything.

He's stated in so many words that he wants to change things for the betterment of the people.

Clinton just wants to stay the course.

Please cite your long list of examples of these toys being used in such a dangerous way

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-drone-near-miss-lax-20160318-story.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregorymcneal/2014/07/08/two-drones-nearly-collide-with-nypd-helicopter-operators-arrested/#1294615f1db8
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/09/travel/unmanned-drone-danger/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/dec/23/champion-skier-marcel-hirscher-has-near-miss-as-drone-falls-out-of-sky
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-30369701
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/11/europe/uk-drone-near-miss/index.html
http://www.wsj.com/articles/faa-reports-more-aircraft-drone-near-misses-1417025519
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/05/29/ny-bound-pilot-swerves-to-avoid-collission-with-drone.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3251543/Drone-owners-forced-register-devices-tracking-database-four-near-misses-aircraft-past-month-alone.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12180261/Number-of-near-misses-involving-drones-and-aircraft-quadruples-in-one-year.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-37042796
http://gothamist.com/2016/09/20/man_maybe_arrested_drone_crash.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/us/white-house-drone.html?_r=0
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/05/25/drone-crashes-hits-2-people-during-marblehead-parade/
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/22/world/drug-drone-crashes-us-mexico-border/index.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/drone-crashes-stands-u-s-open-article-1.2348324
http://denver.cbslocal.com/2014/07/02/drone-crashes-in-brighton-mans-backyard/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/07/drone-crashes-into-yellowstone-hot-spring/13721055/
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/drone-crash-university-kentucky-football-game-could-land-student-hot-water/
http://abcnews.go.com/US/drone-crashes-empire-state-building-man-arrested/story?id=36729221

This article is about a proposed drone operation law in California. The law is poorly written, but the author of the article has, what I think, is a good compromise. He suggests that drones should be able to operate at between 350 and 500 feet over private property. Anything below 350 feet, without authorization, is fair game for the shotgun crowd. The graphic depicting this is at the bottom of the article.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gr...

We currently spend stupendously huge amounts of money on healthcare, education and infrastructure.

Education "more than any other nation in the report' (per capita, roughtly $15,000 per student, approximate $1 Trillion):
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us...

Healthcare "$3.2 Trillion" (over $10,000 per person):
http://www.forbes.com/sites/da...

Infrastructure "$416 Billion":
http://usa.streetsblog.org/201...

That's approximately $4.5 Trillion

user melted gave a short answer, but lets go:
1.0 - Washington's Man Yatsenyuk Setting Ukraine Up For Ruin
1.1 - Ukraine: One ‘Regime Change’ Too Many?
2 - Syria: From the Global Intelligence Files in 2011, about the US financing anyone available to fight against Assad (read terrorists/"rebels"), and being interested in a big humanitarian disaster. Quotes from the e-mail:

they said without saying that SOF teams (presumably from US, UK, France, Jordan, Turkey) are already on the ground focused on recce missions and training opposition forces. One Air Force intel guy (US) said very carefully that there isn't much of a Free Syrian Army to train right now anyway

So there were no rebels to train, but they were there and training them anyway.

the idea 'hypothetically' is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces, elicit collapse from within

They dont believe air intervention would happen unless there was enough media attention on a massacre, like the Ghadafi move against Benghazi. They think the US would have a high tolerance for killings as long as it doesn't reach that very public stage.

Also, there is a very interesting interview with the former head of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency):
Who is to blame for the rise of ISIL. Here is a link to the most important part: Former DIA Head Concedes US Deliberately Backed Extremists in Syria.
Finally, listen to Putin talking about the subject, most relevant part about ISIS starts around 1:30.

Racing his motorcycle on a track - in the interest of science.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/li...

From the article: "Kim was testing his Ducati in a controlled environment at a reputable race track, which he says is the safest place to ride a motorcycle. In an attempt to avoid a collision with another vehicle, he hit a row of sandbags in the track’s runoff area."

The exact numbers vary by source, but all sources agree that Cisco's market share in ISPs, in core, and in enterprise are all about three times as much as Juniper.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gr...

[...]
There are plenty of articles about how it is failing, once you get outside the green press. Like this, for example: http://www.forbes.com/sites/re... That's an article from 2013, and it's gotten even worse since they've shut down their nuclear[...]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany#Statistics

installed capacity and consumption of renewable energy increases in germany on yearly basis... so how it is getting worse exactly?

Increased efficiency is fine, but will never make up for decreased capacity, and will ultimately only stall any future growth. Nordic states - like Iceland, for example - are in the same boat as costa rica: they are relying on geothermal and hyrdroelectric. (Which I like, by the way, but it's just not practical here.) Germany's green energy is turning out to be a myth. There are plenty of articles about how it is failing, once you get outside the green press. Like this, for example: http://www.forbes.com/sites/re... That's an article from 2013, and it's gotten even worse since they've shut down their nuclear. Look, I get it: you feel the dream. You believe in a green friendly utopia with windmills and solar panels and shiny happy people holding hands. But I'm a firm believer in math - aka reality - and to replace our grid capacity with solar and wind would require paving over most of the southwest, and limit any growth to current levels. What we need is nuclear - fusion or fission, I don't care which. A tiny nuclear fission reactor like on our aircraft carriers could power a small city cleanly and safely for decades, for relatively low cost. The technology is here, it is well-understood, and could be implemented quickly. But as long as the green movement says no, we are on a trajectory to the stone age. I know this isn't a popular opinion round here, and it always costs me karma, but I'm just being a realist.

That's exactly what they're not allowed to do under the EU treaty. Not by handing over the money, not by reducing tax.

Bull Shit. It's only a problem when it's a us company.

So far, the US government has launched a massive campaign against VW, looting billions of dollars and severely damaging the company's until recently almost spotless reputation. However, there is plenty of evidence that most other car manufacturers, including the 2.5 US domestic majors, have been pulling similar tricks for years. Except from a few stern words from the German transportation minister and a few 'voluntary' recalls, there have been exactly zero consequences. No suits, no fines, no withdrawals, no buybacks, no criminal prosecution, no exaggerated claims from government officials, no media outcry. Nothing.

The other manufacturers seem to get away with it scott-free, even though the cheating is often relatively easy to detect and the NOx emissions are in many cases several times larger than from the VW EA189. The simply continue to deny even after getting caught, or they attempt to cover it up, and government authorities let it pass, or even help covering it up. Meanwhile, they all get to steal sales from the scapegoat, the only manufacturer that actually admitted and recalled the affected vehicles (except in the US, where the authorities are dragging their feet) and, ironically, makes the cars with the lowest real-world NOx emissions.

The anti-VW campaign has nothing to do with the environment and everything with economic interests. The Americans found something and exploited it to the maximum extent in every possible way, just like they did with Toyota's 'sudden unintended acceleration'.

Why is that wrong? I live in the USA. I am an American citizen. It is wrong for the government to have policies that benefit its own citizens instead of those of other countries?

If you go by Adam Smith, in a voluntary exchange, both sides win. The university could argue that it has a fiduciary duty to spend taxpayer money as efficient as possible, and if they can buy the same service abroad cheaper, that's the way to maximise the amount of education it can provide for a given budget. So they can either give a better education to their students or increase the revenue of US companies. And the universities job is education, not subsidising the economy.

And on a national level, if the university needs fewer local IT people for comparatively low-paying jobs like IT infrastructure maintenance and help desks, that leaves more well-trained US people to go to Silicon Valley and invent the next high-value product. iPhones are made in China, but only 1.8% of the price stays with Chinese labourers, while nearly 60% are profits realised by Apple in the US. If Apple made the iPhones in the US, they would probably go broke, and neither side had any of the revenue (or phones).

From http://www.forbes.com/sites/le...

"Apple set up some Irish subsidiaries a mere four years after it was founded. Foreign sales, which account for 60% of Appleâ(TM)s profits, are routed through these Irish subsidiaries and taxed nowhere. How is this possible, when the intellectual property that supports the value of Appleâ(TM)s products is in the United States?

Apple has an Irish holding company with no operations or employees at the top of its foreign operations. This company also serves as a group finance company. Apple Inc., the U.S. parent of the whole group, pays U.S. tax on the investment earnings of this company. Otherwise, the holding company pays no tax to any government, and has not paid tax for five years. It claims tax residence nowhere."

I would suggest that given the the low levels of product quality and worker satisfaction indicate that those driven to be bosses have great skill at getting to be bosses. However, by and large, those skills seem to be incompatible with good management skills. This same pattern applies to politics. Those driven to be in power are woefully incompetent at managing the reins they control as witnessed by the current state of the world and its direction. Which points to the electorate being part of the issue in electing those in power.

First, thank you for engaging! I could not agree with you more about tax manipulations by governments. Tax Peter to pay Paul soon gets Peter pissed off. So governments raise rates on all but give unequal deductions to hide the redistribution. BUT if you pursue equity you must come to court with clean hands. EU is as dirty as they come. Apple sets not one but two high hurdles for the weasels in Brussels. FIRST prove that something was available to some firms but not others. SECOND then show how Ireland is acting any differently than the EU itself. See for example http://www.forbes.com/sites/lo... See, EU wants "flexibility" in its own dealings but not have to face competition from others. "It's not cronyism when WE do it..."

I assume it can be fixed out of the regular user-interface if one really want it.

I doubt companies HAVE to deal with this shit for machines which absolutely can't have it.

These seem pretty bad since they kinda disable it, I know know if anything have changed with Anniversary update (previously I could at-least pick a date and time when I wanted to upgrade - I'm not allowed to any longer.)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/go...

Seem like when a restart has been scheduled one can go in and change Restart options to a different day now too under update status. I don't seem to be able to have that the default though.

No idea if this old tips work:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/d...
http://answers.microsoft.com/e...
http://tweaks.com/windows/6573...

I'm not sure the later actually work, then again considering the number of hits and that it should be possibly somehow for some people to actually refuse it ...

Guess if nothing else one could block the network connections to Microsoft for checking for updates ..

"[...] now doing a big chunk of the work that high-priced human talent used to do [...] people with little or no coding or software engineering background -- known in the business as "citizen developers" -- can create apps, both for use in-house and for clients."

And some people are wondering why general sw quality keeps getting lower. I have some popcorn set aside for the days when these citizen developers will "develop" with tools made by other citizen developers and we can all watch their house of cards rattle.

Here, a good source for getting goosebumps, some are genuinely proud of this feat, e.g.: "QuickBase prides itself in the extent to which business users can build applications all by themselves. "92% of QuickBase citizen developers have no coding background"" (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2016/05/16/citizen-developers-low-code-is-now-enterprise-class/#4a654381ecfb)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ka...
http://www.washingtonexaminer....
http://fortune.com/2016/04/12/...

But hey, you need to keep the plebes riled up.

So you're now claiming that Tim Cook perjured himself in front of Congress when he testified that Apple pays US taxes?

I know, it's shocking that someone might try to minimize their tax liability; I'm sure you pay a bunch of unnecessary taxes and don't bother with any deductions when you file. Wait, you do? Why the double standard?