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Indeed. On Azure:

An 8 core 32GB VM is $668 USD/month

16 core 448 GB VM is $7044. (Four hundred forty eight gigabytes of random access memory.)

And for revenue:
Q1 2018 Cloud Revenue for Microsoft is $6bn; for AWS its 5.4bn and IBM it's 4.2 bn. Seriously, the 3rd placed provider is clearing the threshold twice - and doing it in only a QUARTER of the year.

Yeah, $2bn / year sounds like "keeping kiddies out of the adults swimming pool". But it doesn't make sense as Oracle themselves say they are pulling in 9.8bn per year.

People really need to read the original comment from the link given. I'll save you a click and post it here.

It should not be difficult to fathom that much of the pollution in most every part of the world is from burning coal and liquid petroleum fuels. This is primarily from generating electricity and transportation. People don't burn these fuels because they want pollution, they burn them because they are cheap and convenient. To get cleaner air we need energy that is not just clean but also cheap and convenient. How shall we do this?

To get an engineering plan start with the cheapest electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Geothermal comes out on top. Natural gas is second. What's the next three, tossing out dirty coal? Hydro, nuclear, and wind.

While not a pollutant I'll take a short diversion and look at CO2 output of the different energy sources for electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The best three on that list is hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and solar make a good show as well. Natural gas isn't great but it is far better than coal.

Let's look at the energy sources with the best energy return on investment, because long term this will reflect on the cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If we toss out dirty oil and coal we again get the same top three, hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and natural gas make a good show as well.

Let's look at the safest energy sources, because even if we clean the air for health reasons it doesn't help if people are dead.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
Hydro, nuclear, and wind top the list, solar certainly does well, and there's a wide margin to the rest. Geothermal is not on the list for some reason. Natural gas isn't great but better than coal and biomass fuel.

By my estimation we need to use hydro, nuclear, and wind for electricity. Until I can see more about geothermal I can't recommend it. Solar simply costs too much, is not very convenient/reliable, and isn't all that great on safety, so I can't recommend it unless all others are unavailable. Wind and nuclear need a little help to load follow and hydro works well for this. If there isn't enough hydro around then the obvious choice is natural gas.

When it comes to transportation we should electrify as much land transport as we can, cars and trains mostly. What do we do about vehicles where electricity is not practical? Mr. Pickens has a plan, natural gas.
http://pickensplan.com/the-pla...

Pickens admits that that natural gas is a bridge fuel. A bridge to what? Maybe synthesized fuel from hydro, nuclear, and wind, that's my guess. Natural gas burns far cleaner than gasoline, diesel, and marine fuel oil. Natural gas is a proven technology, cheap, plentiful, and can be adopted fairly quickly. At least adopted quickly for most transportation on land and sea. For air transportation we'll need to continue with kerosene until we find something better.

Natural gas is as convenient as electricity and gasoline combined for personal cars. People can fill up at a filling station in minutes like gasoline, and at home if you have natural gas service for heating and cooking. Maybe the best could be from a natural gas/electric hybrid.

At sea we can adopt more nuclear, beyond just warships. Perhaps even resurrect the windjammers, sailing ships built in the last days of sail using steel hulls and other modern materials.

I keep seeing articles on the problems

Indeed, states like Arizona and Alaska have their own natural solutions to homelessness. And remember when Nevada was caught shipping their homeless to California?

And despite that, California and other blue states continue to subsidize the red states. If that stopped, blue states would be awash in cash and red states (except Texas) would have some very difficult choices to make, like when Kansas nearly bankrupted itself under conservative tax policy. And then the new federal caps on mortage interest and state tax deductions will only increase the flow of money from blue states to red states, by design.

Of course none of this excuses California's rate of poverty and homelessness. There's plenty of money in the state, it just isn't distributed very well. And that's self-defeating for Democrats because poor people tend vote less than wealthier people and when they do, they tend to vote Democrat.

Well, 66% of millenials think the Earth is not round. As such, forgive me for not taking people's opinions on what they think as fake or false news as incontrovertible fact.

It should not be difficult to fathom that much of the pollution in most every part of the world is from burning coal and liquid petroleum fuels. This is primarily from generating electricity and transportation. People don't burn these fuels because they want pollution, they burn them because they are cheap and convenient. To get cleaner air we need energy that is not just clean but also cheap and convenient. How shall we do this?

To get an engineering plan start with the cheapest electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Geothermal comes out on top. Natural gas is second. What's the next three, tossing out dirty coal? Hydro, nuclear, and wind.

While not a pollutant I'll take a short diversion and look at CO2 output of the different energy sources for electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The best three on that list is hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and solar make a good show as well. Natural gas isn't great but it is far better than coal.

Let's look at the energy sources with the best energy return on investment, because long term this will reflect on the cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If we toss out dirty oil and coal we again get the same top three, hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and natural gas make a good show as well.

Let's look at the safest energy sources, because even if we clean the air for health reasons it doesn't help if people are dead.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
Hydro, nuclear, and wind top the list, solar certainly does well, and there's a wide margin to the rest. Geothermal is not on the list for some reason. Natural gas isn't great but better than coal and biomass fuel.

By my estimation we need to use hydro, nuclear, and wind for electricity. Until I can see more about geothermal I can't recommend it. Solar simply costs too much, is not very convenient/reliable, and isn't all that great on safety, so I can't recommend it unless all others are unavailable. Wind and nuclear need a little help to load follow and hydro works well for this. If there isn't enough hydro around then the obvious choice is natural gas.

When it comes to transportation we should electrify as much land transport as we can, cars and trains mostly. What do we do about vehicles where electricity is not practical? Mr. Pickens has a plan, natural gas.
http://pickensplan.com/the-pla...

Pickens admits that that natural gas is a bridge fuel. A bridge to what? Maybe synthesized fuel from hydro, nuclear, and wind, that's my guess. Natural gas burns far cleaner than gasoline, diesel, and marine fuel oil. Natural gas is a proven technology, cheap, plentiful, and can be adopted fairly quickly. At least adopted quickly for most transportation on land and sea. For air transportation we'll need to continue with kerosene until we find something better.

Natural gas is as convenient as electricity and gasoline combined for personal cars. People can fill up at a filling station in minutes like gasoline, and at home if you have natural gas service for heating and cooking. Maybe the best could be from a natural gas/electric hybrid.

At sea we can adopt more nuclear, beyond just warships. Perhaps even resurrect the windjammers, sailing ships built in the last days of sail using steel hulls and other modern materials.

I keep seeing articles on the problems of dirty, CO2 emitting, dangerous, and expensive energy. Let's talk solutions. Here's my solution... Wind, hydro, and nuclear with a little natural gas.

Air Pollution Causes 'Huge' Reduction in Intelligence, Study Reveals. The research was conducted in China but is relevant across the world, with 95% of the global population breathing unsafe air. It found that high pollution levels led to significant drops in test scores in language and arithmetic, with the average impact equivalent to having lost a year of the person's education.

Fortunately, this isn't much of a concern for the US:

Americans are blessed with clean air. The vast majority of the United States experiences “good” air quality. Even in the isolated areas without “good” air quality, air quality is merely “moderate.”

It's more of a concern for Europe:

European air quality isn’t too great, either. For all the hype about “green” energy programs in Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, and other European nations, “good” air quality is rare outside of Scandinavia. Central Europe fares worst, with the UK, France, and Germany not far behind.

As an aside, expressing intelligence in terms of "years of education" is questionable because intelligence cannot actually be increased significantly by education.

They covered large portions of Japan with radioactivity that will remain there for hundreds of thousands of years?

Hundreds of thousands of years? You know what has a half life of 100,000 years? Calcium. Calcium-41 to be precise. It exists in your bones, and is spread all over the environment. That's just one example of many isotopes in the environment that have long half lives. They pose no real threat because a long half life means a low radiation flux from it. Many isotopes of plutonium also have half-lives of hundreds of thousands of years. That doesn't mean it's necessarily safe since it is a heavy metal that can accumulate in the bones but unless you have a habit of licking spent fuel rods or nuclear weapon cores the threat to your health is pretty minimal.

The problems from accidents like Fukushima and Chernobyl were mostly from radioactive iodine, that has a short half life which makes it dangerous but also means it was all gone in a month. If incidents like Fukushima and Chernobyl frighten you then you not only have a poor grasp of the chances of it killing you but you also fail to realize that no one builds reactors like it any more. You are far more likely to die from a windmill falling on your head than any radioactive contamination from a nuclear power plant. Here's some proof of that:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

New nuclear is far safer than new windmills. I'm quite certain my saying this and linking to that article won't convince you of anything but I thought I might at least try.

Forbes claims to know how deadly each energy source is to people.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

Nuclear power is by far the safest energy source we have available, that's especially true in the USA. There hasn't been a major incident in the USA with nuclear power since Three Mile Island, and no one died from that. Problems in Japan and with old Soviet reactors are not indicative of anything being built today in the USA. Even so the death count from Fukushima is zero, or so close to it that it's just noise on top of the signal from the tsunami that started it all. A once in a century tsunami that hit a reactor older than Chernobyl is not the metric we should use to measure the safety of nuclear power. Certainly not Chernobyl, a reactor with no containment dome and operated by drunken bureaucrats instead of properly trained technicians.

The question isn't if we should use nuclear power, we don't have much choice not to. The question is how quickly we should be building new nuclear power plants. The nuclear power reactors we have now are getting old and we need to replace them with something. It's going to be nuclear power or the lights will start to go out. Or, at least the lights will go dim. We can build devices to collect energy from wind, water, and sun, but that will never be enough for a society that wants to keep airplanes flying, and explore beyond the atmosphere. In space there is no wind, and even on Mars the sun gets pretty dim.

Using wind, water, and sun for energy might mean survival. Using coal and natural gas will mean continued air pollution. If we are going to keep Earth clean, and go even as far as low earth orbit, then we will need nuclear power.

Is the voting history the standard stuff, not including actual candidate selection?

I have to assume so unless people are voluntarily providing this. Per the article below public information can include:
* Name
* Street address
* Party affiliation
* Elections in which you did (or did not) vote
* Phone number
* Email address

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

I have to assume that's what is available, then aggregated with other information since the summary referred to dozens of data points.

Frightening that such data could be public to be honest.

I just read the article, pretty scary shit, people should stop participating in surveys or any sort:

"For example, the data includes fields that might score an individualâ(TM)s believed views on immigration, hunting, abortion rights, government spending and views on the Second Amendment."

A certain Mr Malthus was not only wrong, but his prognostications have been the justification for some truly heinous policies.

https://www.scientificamerican...

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

"Peak oil" has been predicted at least a dozen times - still not true.
World population has gone from the 800 million of Malthus' time to 7 BILLION today, and even now the problem isn't starvation from a lack of food, it's starvation because of political barriers to food distribution. The main medical problem of the developed-world's poor is indeed obesity.

The "well known" market failure in investment in science and technology? How do you explain that the most capitalist of countries on Earth are also the most scientifically advanced?

Your sort of Cassandra is pathetic.

Have all nations drop their emissions together.

I agree, but that's not a "how". That's not an engineering plan.

We need to get to the levels of Denmark and Finland .

Okay, let's look at how Finland does it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
They get 25% of their electricity from nuclear, 20% from hydro, and... 22% imported? That doesn't sound like a plan. That's just exporting your emissions.

Let's look at Denmark.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
They get 75% from natural gas, and 25% from wind. Not a bad plan in my opinion. Though I would like to see them adopt some nuclear power like Finland. Natural gas produces about half the CO2 output of coal, and wind a tiny fraction of the CO2 output of natural gas.

To get an engineering plan start with the CO2 output of the different energy sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The best three on that list is hydro, nuclear, and wind.

Let's look at the energy sources with the best energy return on investment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If we toss out the carbon heavy sources we again get the same top three, hydro, nuclear, and wind.

Let's look at the safest energy sources.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
Wow, look at that, the same three come out on top, hydro, nuclear, and wind.

Cheapest energy?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Well, the pattern is broken, geothermal comes out on top. What's the next three, again tossing out the carbon heavy sources? Hydro, nuclear, and wind.

I believe we have a start on an engineering plan for lowering the worlds emissions. Let's start with hydro, nuclear, and wind. If you want to sprinkle in some geothermal and solar then that's fine by me. Just so long as we start with hydro, nuclear, and wind. You know, like Denmark and Finland did.

The problem you have is that the perpetrator of pizzagate actually killed someone and cited Alex Jones for creating the conspiracy. You have parents of Sandy Hook victims receiving death threats because he called them crisis actors. So while he doesn't tell people to go and kill or harass directly he definitely incites it. This is perfectly legal however so that is why Alex Jones is not in jail.

On top of all that You have his health products which are dubious and the real goal behind his rhetoric. He is using all the conspiracy talk to get interest which he then uses to sell his actual products. This is bait and switch at its finest which against is still legal even if it is dubious.

If you'd like a summary of his actions they are easy to find. He repeatedly casts victims in some seriously harsh light calling them actors. This is going to incite groups of people to react in some very severe ways. If there were any truth to it then it would probably be fine but it is blatantly false.

Not only has millions of tonnes of greenhouses gases been produced due to mining

Where did THAT come from?

There were a couple of articles about Bitcoin and emissions last year.

• Nature
• Forbes
• The Guardian/
• Wired

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in-the-world/

well-verified models that have been vetted and analyzed

The models have consistently over-predicted temperatures.

to the contrary, the models have fit the data to well within confidence limits, and continue to do so.
(links [1] [2] [3] [4])

False. They don't even fit the "adjusted" data very well.

This is the typical way deniers argue: I post a links to data, and the deniers simply deny. That's it, no data, no nothing. Whatever it is, just deny it.

That's why they're called deniers. If they had any actual information, they'd be skeptics, but the deniers don't even care about actual information. Whatever it is, they'll just deny it.

I'm not sure why you bothered to respond. However, for predictions, I posted this to a different subthread:

Here's an article from Forbes about the very first Global Climate Model, Manabe and Wetherald 1967, looking back at how well their predictions from fifty years ago compared to data: https://www.forbes.com/sites/s...

well-verified models that have been vetted and analyzed

The models have consistently over-predicted temperatures.

to the contrary, the models have fit the data to well within confidence limits, and continue to do so.

Here's an article from Forbes about the very first Global Climate Model, Manabe and Wetherald 1967, looking back at how well their predictions from fifty years ago compared to data: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/03/15/the-first-climate-model-turns-50-and-predicted-global-warming-almost-perfectly/

And here are graphs, showing that the prediction from fifty years ago (red line) fits the data (blue line) almost exactly. https://climategraphs.wordpres...

Later models have refined Manabe and Wetherald 1967, incorporating other effects than simply carbon dioxide and water vapor, but haven't changed the answer. Here is the Berkeley Earth page comparing climate models used in the IPCC report against data: http://berkeleyearth.org/graph...

The problem with the deniers, on the other hand, is that they don't have a prediction. They don't have an alternative model, they don't have anything.

You are a fucking idiot. You have your head so far up your ass you think Trumps done something other than enrich himself and a bunch of .01% who already had a majority of the wealth in this country.

https://www.macrotrends.net/13...

That's Trump riding Obama's coattails.

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

I get it... you like sucking Trumps dick. You don't have to remind us of that by lying every time you make a post.

MAGA is a hearkening back to the latter days of Coughlin when he went fascist, when conservative white guys were in charge of everything and they didn't have to worry about being displaced by anyone else. Racism, bigotry, nationalism, military dick sucking, authoritarianism, and anti-intellectualism.... that's MAGA; nothing less than fascism. Sadly, we have a lot of complete fucking idiots in this country too damn stupid to understand that.

losing billions to sell thousands...

Yes, and $4B x 4 is $12B/year. So they are losing billion to sell BILLIONS (not "thousands").

Revenue growth is up - and so are costs, and the losses.

Yes, sacrificing profitability to increase market share might sound crazy, but it is business as usual in . . . business. For Tesla, it is a small price to pay to start dominating an entire segment of the car market. . .>, and its marketcap would tend to agree. . .

Do.... people in Germany really care about how NewYorkers and Midwesterners get to work?

What they care about is portraying their country as a model, a country that strikes the perfect balance between rational policies, social responsibility, and freedom. And they want to spread that to the rest of the world. It's a cultural trait stemming from a deep insecurity and fear of inferiority, and it is independent of the form of government Germans happen to have at the time.

People also use public transportation because it's... faster, cheaper, simpler, and more convenient. ...In big cities like NY.

Yes, but like all public transit systems in the US, it's a cesspool of corruption and rent seeking that requires massive infusion of taxpayer dollars from taxpayers who will never see the benefits. Even if it was a good idea and we wanted to, the US cannot pull off even a public transit system like Germany has.

Europe has a better rail system.

Better in what sense? The US has a rail system that's bigger than the entire EU's combined, and the US rail system is utilized nearly 100%. It simply happens to be utilized what rail systems are really good for: freight. Europeans have turned their rail system into expensive leisure travel for the elites while European highways are clogged with dirty, dangerous trucks.

I hear Europe's buses aren't quite as low-class.

Not surprising. In the US, only the very poor have to take buses for financial reasons. In Europe, a car is a significant burden for even many people in the middle class.

Right, and in the USA we subsidize the oil&gas corporations to the tune of $4.6 Billion/year [cbo.gov]

Correct, and I think we should abolish that. But you need to see that in relation to the energy produced. Fossil fuels are subsidized to the tune of $0.05/MMBtu, while solar is subsidized to the tune of $17.38/MMBtu. Abolishing fossil fuel subsidies would have no effect on the market, while abolishing subsidies for alternative energies would kill the alternative energy market.

because they have our economy by the balls.

No, it's because there is simply no economically feasible alternative, and there won't be for another 10-20 years. And "they" don't have anybody by the balls: there is a huge global market in fossil fuels.

So the cost of road upkeep is socialized in the USA, while gas tax pays for the roads in Germany.

Last I checked, federal gas taxes roughly cover federal highway maintenance, plus or minus a few billion.

In any case, the US built its inefficient, government-subsidized, environmentally harmful federal highway system following the example of German fascists. Maybe we should take a hint from history and stop copying what the Germans do rather than compounding one bad idea (the federal highway system) with yet another (massive gas taxes)? How about privatizing both federal highways and public transit?

It looks to me that if Apply were to only pay $56 million in taxes for 2017-2018 they would have committed tax fraud indeed... I think this probably needs to be $56 Billion (that is billion with a B)... Still on the low side at 25.8%, but a pretty large sum of money... [source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/c... ]

No, that's how much they paid in taxes to Santa Clara county. You could try readying the whole summary where it says Apple is the largest tax payer in the county, not country.

Ah ... so that Universal Service Fund is being looked after by the FCC. Well, we know there are no worries about THAT, right?

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

And this:

One market perception issue AMD had with first generation Ryzen was that lower resolution or older DX9 games didn’t perform as well competitively. I'll admit, I was even a bit surprised at launch. This go around, AMD worked very hard to improve performance with older DX9 games and games at lower resolutions like 1080P. This is an area where gamers will see tremendous, double-digit improvements of 2nd gen Ryzen versus 1st Gen Ryzen, significantly cutting most of the lead Intel had here. Gamers can thank Ryzen’s increased clocks and lower latency for this improvement. Net-net, at 1080P and 1440P, I’m not expecting to see many experiential differences between AMD and Intel.

See, 2700X is roughly even across the board with i7-8700K for games, and demolishes it in multicore, for $53 bucks cheaper. If you think that AMD desktop/gaming market share isn't still increasing right now then you have brain damage. And it gets worse from here, i7 doesn't even have multithreading next product cycle, you have to pay i9 prices to get that. Just brilliant.

Then the 7nm parts arrive.

>"It's damn near impossible to game the system for long."

I don't know much about welfare fraud, but suspect it is pretty high in many ways; although the worst problems with it are designed right into it. But Social Security "disability" fraud is rampant and probably far more worthy of investigation. I know people that have been on it for many years who are perfectly able to work, some who even work under-the-table. Almost anyone who is denied just gets a lawyer and "presto", approved... complete with back payments.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/r...
http://www.reformssdinow.org/w...

"$6.3 million supporting fundamental measurement dissemination, including the shutdown of NIST radio stations in Colorado and Hawaii."]

The NIST is under the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, who is a cryptkeeper who only stays alive through daily applications of graft and corruption. Here's an article about just how corrupt this ancient swamp thing really is.

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

The $6,3 million saved will pay for a lot of KFC Gravy Bowls on Air Force One. Plus, Colorado and Hawaii voted for Hillary, so fuck them libs, amirite? Trump is just that kind of petty degenerate..

Care to explain to me how it is that I own an apartment in Stockholm, which I'm about to sell for roughly double what I paid for it?

(Yes, I'll have to pay tax on the gain, but I'd have to do the same if I sold a home at a profit in the US.)

Not if it's your only home... your homestead capital gains are typically not taxable in the US.

No, SS is not self sufficient, that is a lie.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

SS is not people putting money away, and then getting that money. There's no "account" of what you've paid in. SS is a shell game where today's workers pay for today's retirees.
One doesn't need to deep-dive the numbers to see that the demographic bulge will have more retirees than workers by 2030. Further, when SS was implemented that retirement age was basically the cohort's life span...now with retirees drawing on SS commonly for TWENTY MORE YEARS than planned, the thing is a botch.

Personally, I disagree with the defense budget increase. I think we could sufficiently fund our forces with a far lower focus on big-ticket luxuries (or stupidities like the Littoral Combat Ship). But it's tendentious and mendacious to suggest that defense spending is anywhere near the first priority to have some fat trimmed - the biggest savings are going to be in marginal improvements in the biggest PRORAMS: entitlement and social spending.

[Gender diversity bringing a variety of perspectives to the table that can help foster new and innovative ideas] is bollocks. In my experience at least, fresh perspectives and innovative ideas are fostered by - surprise, surprise - intellectual and cultural diversity.

Your experience doesn't mesh well with the research. While cultural diversity does provide more value than gender diversity, both are still valuable. A McKinsey report shows that companies in the top quartile of gender diversity are 21% more likely to have better than average profits. Just because top quartile cultural diversity companies are 33% more likely to have better than average profits doesn't mean gender diversity is not important. Both seem to provide significant value.

While this is just one study, a quick Google search will show plenty of research showing the value of gender diversity.

And the higher up you get, the smaller the difference seems to get.

Actually according to the study linked to above, the benefit is even more drastic at the board of director level. So it appears the higher up you get the larger the difference seems to get.

Keep reading and you'll see that artificial scarcity (what the scalper does) can also cause a shortage.

The Wikipedia article on artificial scarcity says otherwise. Could you point me to the text you are using that claims scalpers cause artificial scarcity? Usually the original seller is blamed for encouraging scalping by setting prices so low like what Nintendo does.

Yep. Not very friendly at all. Imagine how much bigger it could be if the State was business-friendly? Many companies stay in spite of the business climate, because other intangibles are beneficial (like climate, for example).

IOW, CA has figured out what right wing cranks can not - there is more to economic prosperity than low taxes and weak regulation.

As for being even bigger - CA is resource limited and already crowded, largely with economic and cultural refugees from “business friendly” places.

But I love the argument - “Sure, California is kicking the ass of ‘business friendly’ states. But imagine how much harder they could be kicking ass if they adopted the losing strategy!”

Yep. Not very friendly at all. Imagine how much bigger it could be if the State was business-friendly? Many companies stay in spite of the business climate, because other intangibles are beneficial (like climate, for example).

not necessarily, they are starting to invest heavily into renewables https://www.forbes.com/sites/m...

The problem with climate change isn't so much as our planet breaking but everything we depend on breaking. Somewhat wacky that nuclear reactors aren't designed to handle this heat but then again I would have never imagined the crazy kind of temperatures Europe has skyrocketed up to. So one has to wonder, what other stuff is going to break?

Nuclear reactors can handle high temps just fine. Only in places where there is limited cooling water and cooling releases rise above local environmental limits are they cut back.

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

In Germany, recently, nuclear was a steady producer while wind was barely producing.

https://www.energy-charts.de/p...

Turns out, it's false. That whole consensus thing was a lie. But a rather effective one, I do admit!

Nuclear is the safest.

Solar and wind cost more. Electricity prices in a country tend to increase as solar and wind deployments increase. Not really a good solution, is it?

Shanghai, the neighborhood in Mattaponni, Virginia, isn't actually part of China. I guess the very first statistic on that page you looked at didn't top you off:

Total Population 658

$13K and change is what the China government reported to the World Trade Organization.

If you prefer to pull numbers from the popular press, China Daily reports Shanghai users of the career web site Zhaopin (think Monster.com) average 9,802 yuan per month, which is $17,218.68. Obviously fast food jobs and such aren't advertised there, so it skews high.

Forbes reports $13,620
https://www.forbes.com/sites/k...

> Posting wrong numbers to Slashdot isn't going to do a lot. If

Yeah, it just makes you look silly when you confuse a neighborhood of 658 people with a city of 24 million.

Tell you what, if you stay away from the ad hominems and aggressive attitude, I'll try not to make you look like a complete moron. Deal?

...a 0.1% reduction in car emissions is much better for the total environment then if all emissions were eliminated from leaf blowers, lawn mowers, construction vehicles, etc.

A slight bit of critical thinking would do you a world of good.

A slight bit of researching the issue is also a great idea.

Motor scooters with 2-stroke engines pollute about three orders of magnitude more than a modern gasoline car. There are enough of these scooters that in many cities they are now a worse problem than gasoline cars yet they remain barely regulated.

Two-stroke scooters are a dominant source of air pollution in many cities

Scooters: Europe's Pollution Machines

If the scooters by themselves are enough to be a problem, it can only be worse if we add up all the 2-stroke engines of all sorts.

I pretty much hate 2-stroke engines. I am in favor of allowing them where nothing else will do, like professional chain saws. But modern battery tech has gotten to a place where an electric scooter ought to be a practical replacement for a 2-stroke scooter and I'd like to see the 2-stroke scooters aggressively taxed or outright banned.

Also, I am now very dubious about the value of additional restrictions on cars. If the goal is to maximize the net benefits to society, then it's better to take old clunkers off the road than to have the new cars pollute 0.1% less.

It's literally true that one old clunker pollutes more than dozens of new cars. (A study found that the worst 25% of cars produce over 90% of pollution!) If you can get clunkers off the road, and their owners start driving anything even remotely modern, it's a huge win for air quality. Making new cars more expensive will only encourage people to keep their clunkers running as long as possible, so I am dubious about anything that makes new cars more expensive. Is it better for new cars to cost $3000 more each but pollute 0.1% less? Or is it better to leave the standards alone, let the car makers get their factories well set up to make cars to that standard, and let the costs of new cars gradually fall over time? My gut instinct says the latter is preferable.

I first started thinking along these lines when I read this essay in 2009: https://keithhennessey.com/2009/05/19/understanding-the-presidents-cafe-announcement/

On the other hand, if the government forces insane emissions standards, the only way to meet them will be electric cars. So companies like GM that make the minimum number of electric cars they can get away with will be forced to make more electric cars. So maybe it's better in the really long run?

Just as I'd like to ban 2-stroke scooters I would like to see aggressive taxes on old clunkers that make them no-longer-affordable to run. However, I am well aware that the burden of those taxes would fall on the poorest people in our society. That's a problem. But it's also a problem that old horribly-polluting clunkers are exempted from emissions standards.

P.S. I don't actually care if the Trump Administration wants to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. If it's the right thing I want to stand back and let it happen. IMHO, leaving standards where they are is the right thing.

if you look at "expensive phones", Apple has a _huge_ part of that, probably 60%

I'm not sure exactly what the share is in that sector, but it's not as high as that. Samsung's and Google's phones are expensive too

Yeah, but they don't sell as well. Probably because they are just as expensive. Heck, Google`s phone sales were always tiny, and probably even intended to be low. Anyway, here's some "old" news from Q4 2017 that doesn't actually prove you wrong - it's just better than anything you've provided thus far: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2018/04/18/8-of-the-top-10-most-profitable-smartphones-on-the-planet-are-made-by-apple/#69a94a4adb18

Ultimately Ford is a fiscal conservative and leans social libertarian.

So what GP said: a Trumpette. "fiscal conservative and leans social libertarian" is an apt description of the basis of most Trump policies that could be compared to Ford (I mean, can't exactly compare's Trump's military policy and foreign policy to a provincial leader)

Or are you some kind of racist who thinks any mention to Trump is just a slur on the person's character and not his policies?

Safe injection sites don't help the poor, they hurt them, increase crime, and spill over into other neighborhoods.

I love how you accuse the other guy of spewing talking points, but these sound like talking points to me. Do you have any citations? A quick search landed me quite a few links saying the opposite.

https://www.themarshallproject...

https://torontosun.com/2016/07...

Ask BC how it's working out.

One of the first links from my searches: looks like they think it's great and wants to expand it
http://mynorthwest.com/869125/...

And it's not just BC that's been doing it. Rest of the world has been experimenting and researching the results.

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

The Forbes article mentions that in absence of government action, private groups are trying safe injection sites themselves. Read: the idea isn't some from big bad government top down, there's a grass roots free market movement for it - so I think a social libertarian like Ford would approve.

But keep going and telling everyone how it's all Ford's fault, not McGuinty or Wynne.

I don't see GP blaming Ford for what happened (the past). He's saying what will happen under Ford (the future). I don't know if his accusation/prediction will be true, but I see no relevance in the rest of your post rambling about the past.

It gets worse. There are scheduled shutdowns for 10 nuclear power plants in the next 5 years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/m...

The common claim is that this shortfall in nuclear will be made up with more wind and solar. The problem is that growth in solar and wind is not keeping pace with the planned shuttering of nuclear power. This means that the balance will be made up with coal and natural gas.

But this isn't about the environmental impact of electric cars, this is about the future profitability of Tesla.

Tesla will soon lose their federal subsidies while other electric car manufacturers will keep them.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/g...

Maybe Tesla can weather this long enough for the playing field to level as other manufacturers lose their subsidies as well, through name recognition, a larger profit margin, and less cost sensitive luxury car buyers. If only the virtue signalling types knew that electric cars aren't so great for the environment, then maybe they'd buy a "green" gasoline car instead. That is unless we get more nuclear, if we see more nuclear power then their "green" status symbolism is restored.

It gets worse. There are scheduled shutdowns for 10 nuclear power plants in the next 5 years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/m...

The common claim is that this shortfall in nuclear will be made up with more wind and solar. The problem is that growth in solar and wind is not keeping pace with the planned shuttering of nuclear power. This means that the balance will be made up with coal and natural gas.

But this isn't about the environmental impact of electric cars, this is about the future profitability of Tesla.

Tesla will soon lose their federal subsidies while other electric car manufacturers will keep them.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/g...

Maybe Tesla can weather this long enough for the playing field to level as other manufacturers lose their subsidies as well, through name recognition, a larger profit margin, and less cost sensitive luxury car buyers. If only the virtue signalling types knew that electric cars aren't so great for the environment, then maybe they'd buy a "green" gasoline car instead. That is unless we get more nuclear, if we see more nuclear power then their "green" status symbolism is restored.

Football/basketball pays for the rest of the sport programs.

I do hope you're kidding:
28 Top tier Div1 teams spending more than they make
Schools prop up their football programs with student fees
Only 8 schools broke even or better in a 5 year period
Schools play loose with numbers to show athletics programs as more profitable to the university when those "profits" are really earmarked for athletics scholarships

And finally, just to blow the entire set of "profitability" out the window, note that most universities don't include a whole host of associated costs into the calculation of whether their programs are profitable. That last one basically calls into question any previous studies that do not explicitly account for a host of expenses that should be rolled into any sports program. Essentially regular students/parents/loans are paying for the sports programs at all universities with the potential exception of less than a literal handful.

What happened there was not real socialism, it was corruption and stupidity using socialism as a facade, just like in USA we don't have real capitalism, we got corruption and stupidity using the word freedom as a facade.

So if it's impossible to have "real socialism" (because all the failed efforts weren't "real socialism"), WHY THE FUCK DO IDIOTS KEEP PUSHING FOR IT???

You can't win the argument by saying all failed attempts at socialism weren't "real socialism" - because what you're really saying is "real socialism" can't reasonably be attained.

Or you're just trying to fool people: TRUST ME! IT WILL WORK THIS TIME! AND IF YOU LIKE YOUR DOCTOR, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR DOCTOR!"

We do have real socialism. We have Social Security, and Medicare, and Medicaid, and SNAP, and unemployment insurance, to name a few programs. They work quite well, as long as people in government don't work against them. For example, the Republicans like to tell people that Social Security is unaffordable and will go "bankrupt". It's not true but it works to turn people against a system they have opposed on principle from the start.

Socialism works fine as long as it is properly regulated, just like Capitalism. Unfortunately, people who don't want the public to understand that government can work for them have been funding propaganda efforts for decades to convince people that Socialism doesn't work, and is the same thing as Communism, which is the same thing as the Soviet Union, which everyone knows was really bad.

Your experience is a stark contrast to this writer at Forbes (WARNING: may contain auto-playing video fuckery). I can tell it's been a while since you've used Linux because issues with sound or networking not working out of the box are rare these days.

1) If there was life on the surface of Mars early on, the atmospheric changes were gradual enough that we have reason to believe it could have evolved to find a suitable niche where it may survive even to the present day.
2) If we decided to terraform Mars by artificially creating a dense atmosphere, it would survive for many millions of years today before we needed to replenish it.

Caffinated Bacon/Crimson Tsunami, you are a constant liar and a true coward.

Let's be real: 99% of Windows revenue comes from companies who don't care about Android, ChromeOS or any other OS in their AD- fueled desktops.

Good thing that segment of employees is shrinking so they can lay off some of those fat ass point and click Windows sysadmins.

And when K12 and Android users get a job, they will also use.. a Windows desktop.

See, that's the point, a lot of them won't because email isn't how you do things now, and Microsoft doesn't do a whole lot more of value. They don't even do a great job on email. So many businesses running on Gmail now. You don't need to accept my prediction, it's already a thing, and it's getting bigger fast. Why do you think PC sales are tanking?

Because that is your Nuclear Ideology, it is your ism, your belief system that wants to make us believe the sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing when it is hot.

That's not what I claimed and you know it. I stated that wind and solar have reduced output in a heatwave, just as nuclear power has reduced output in a heat wave. I suspect you know this otherwise you would have provided a citation on that. I did some searching and found that PV panels can see a 10% to 35% reduction in output in high heat. If you don't believe me then I'd like to see what you believe a more accurate number would be.

Solar Thermal is an immediate, viable, long term, economical and technologically underdeveloped base-load replacement for nuclear power.

Yes, I've seen that. The claim is that the sun can heat a molten salt, used to heat air in open or closed cycle gas turbines, do so without the use of water as a heat sink, and therefore perfect for use in hot arid climates. This allows for long term storage of energy (long term = hours or days, not months), load follow capability, as well as waste heat suitable for desalination and other industrial processes. I do not dispute this. Want to know why I don't dispute this? Because this exact same technology is what is planned for in future molten salt nuclear reactors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Go ahead, bring on the molten salt solar thermal power. That will prove the technology for use in nuclear reactors. You think energy storage only helps wind and solar? It helps nuclear power just as much, if not more. Here's where nuclear beats out solar on the molten salt storage, it doesn't take multiple square miles to achieve 1 gigawatt of power. It might take the area of a medium sized airport, but that's mostly to provide an ample security buffer around a vital civil asset, no different than that around a water reservoir, hydroelectric dam, or... well, an airport.

Domestic Solar is the perfect peaking solution to replace nuclear power. Wind is a new type of power generation mechanism with a vastly more dynamic upgrade cycle than anything we've see so far, it has massive promise to replace nuclear power.

I'll believe it when I see it. Since nuclear power provides 20% of the electricity consumed in the USA, and you claim that wind and solar are going to replace it, do I really need to provide a citation for you on the current viability of nuclear power? It seems you've admitted to that already.

Maybe it's more of your rhetoric. As you said of nuclear "they still produce power" the only difference is solar and wind don't explode and cause mass evacuations like a nuclear plant does when they overheat, they just make less power.

Wind and solar kill more people than nuclear. Citation:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
https://ourworldindata.org/wha...

If you want to reduce nuclear accident deaths further then stop evacuating people needlessly. Citation:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/w...

Unlike Nuclear power, wind and solar plants are upgradeable.

Then explain this list of articles on nuclear power plants getting upgrades:
https://www.power-eng.com/nucl...

Unlike Nuclear, coal and everything else developed in the 19th and 20th century that produce heat, solar and wind is a 21st century solution that reduces the heat load

Someone gets uppity, freeze their ability to spend money. Want to know what someone is buying, where they are going, what their habits are? If they do it all with credit card, you can! Forget wall street, the prime beneficiaries are fascist governments.

Governments hate cash because they make it easy to do business they don't like without them knowing about it. The government you've got today may not be the government you've got tomorrow, so you shouldn't hand them that information.

Use cash whenever possible.

And this has actually happened.

Soon after Wikileaks released the gulf war information, including the "collateral murder" video, the credit companies froze their accounts, effectively cutting them off from donations and keeping $11 million in donations already in account.

Say what you will about Wikileaks, its activities are legal and it serves a valuable purpose in keeping certain governments in line.

At the time people kept saying "this isn't censorship, credit card companies are private companies and can choose who they do business with".

Oh please, this tripe is getting old. Obama oversaw the worst recovery in history. His administration changed the U-3 calculation for unemployment to stop counting those who stopped working and then sat back and watched the labor participation rate fall to lowest since the 1970's. As explained at Forbes what was reported during his administration was distorted by not counting those who gave up. They reported lower unemployment rates even while the number of unemployed persons went up.

Some additional facts highlight how misleading the reported unemployment rate, and the political rhetoric around it, can be. One year ago, 99 million Americans were unemployed or otherwise not working, and the unemployment rate was 9.1%. Today, while the reported unemployment rate is 8.3%, over 100 million Americans are unemployed or otherwise not working.

He had an average GDP growth at around 2.1% whereas the average GDP growth since 1949 was well above 4% for the 10 expansions that occurred prior to the supposed expansion under Obama. Recall his comments about this is the new normal? Guess the message was lost considering GDP numbers today are 4.1% for the last quarter.

Likewise, wage growth barely breached 2% during his expansion whereas historically it grew at around 4%.

So the recovery was pitiful compared to every other recovery in modern times, including the Great Depression. And good portions of what there was of a recovery can be credited to Tarp, the Feds and the European Central Bank.

A big point in his failure was domestic investment dropping because of the 13.4 percentage point tax increases. From 1960 to 2008, relative to GDP, the aggregate of all investments in the US, Net Private Domestic Investment (NPDI), was 7%. That average was 7 to 8 from 1960 to 1990 and 6.5 in Clinton and Bush years. For Obama that number was 2% of GDP. Because of his policies of tax increases and Obamacare, investment dried up, wages stagnated, a record number of people were on food stamps or dropped out of the work force.

So real great momentum there for sure.