Slashdot Mirror

One issue that an all-women space crew could have is that some of them could be too small to fit into space suits. Women under 5’5" can’t wear NASA’s current model, the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMUs), because they are not made small enough.

http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
http://www.npr.org/templates/s...
http://www.businessinsider.com...

Planet Money did a great segment on automotive dealerships and should answer most of your questions:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...

Where did you read that? At least per this NPR article:

Beginning in 2015, HBO will offer a streaming service to cord-cutters and other nonsubscribers on an a la carte basis. It should be noted that the announcement HBO released to the media does not explicitly say the service will be HBO GO (or that it won't), only that it will be "a stand-alone, over-the-top, HBO service." And, of course, it doesn't say how much the service will cost. It doesn't even say it will carry every HBO show, let alone what archival material will be available — HBO GO has a lot.

The announcement says HBO will "work with our current partners" and "explore models with new partners," but it seems inevitable that an arrangement like this will unsettle cable providers who have been able to use legitimate access to premium networks like HBO as one of the remaining barriers against cord-cutting, the practice of declining to have a cable subscription in favor of watching online.

Emphasis mine. While that incredibly vague part about partners could suggest tying it to ISPs, the straight-up statement of "stand-alone" contradicts such an idea.

But, even if it was a package deal, that's not new to ISPs: many have bundles with anti-virus subscriptions and some might do Hulu or Netflix trials. None of these are big pushers, however, and HBO would be a game changer in that.

Further discussion on the topic: Planet Money Podcast - Should we kill the $100 bill?

No, not really. There are various ways to poll weather "most people approve of what R&D are doing" but Congressional approval at 14% and presidential approval around 50% (with some pretty significant drops), I don't know that you could safely take the approval of the majority as a foregone conclusion. The general tone I'm seeing is that people are getting increasingly discontented(sp?) with their government, Occupy style. There are two realistic choices, and I think the argument could be made they are both similar enough to be considered functionally equivalent (think Bush / Obama actions). To a large degree, they are also not what the people want.

But where is the evidence of a pandemic? It's only a few thousands at this stage.

The evidence is continued exponential growth of Ebola to recent past. It appears that the rate of infection may be slowing down in the worst of the three primary countries of infection, Liberia. If true, fears of pandemic are overstated.

If instead, cases continue to climb exponentially, but patients are staying away from hospitals, then you still have the eventual pandemic problem looming on the horizon.

They benefit in at least three ways:

1) Direct contributions.

2) The Revolving Door

3) Trading on insider information.

There are many other ways I'm sure, smaller and more subtle. But these are the big ones AFAIK.

Like this, or this, or this.
besides, if your going to lie like an idiot. You might as well just run for office.
IMHO, if you work for the government, you're assumed to be a scumbag until proven otherwise.

a number of death from health workers in Africa were infected because all they did was touch a baby that was not displaying symptoms.
NPR.org
The problem is a little more complicated and can spread far easier then you think, even with protections in place.

The 101st Airborne is getting a crash course in this right now in preparation for deployment to Africa.

Ebola is about as contagious as Hepatitis C. It is less contagious than HIV, SARS, Mumps, and Measles.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/02/352983774/no-seriously-how-contagious-is-ebola

Ebola has been around since 1976. Before now, deaths have rarely numbered in the hundreds, and quite often in the tens during "outbreaks".

Has anyone contracted Hep C, AIDS, or SARS via a brushed glove against the face, as is the suspicion with an Ebola infection in Spain?

Get back to me when we have some actual hard numbers of large Ebola outbreaks to solidify this, because right now it's nothing more than a theory that has NEVER been actually seen widespread in nature. Let's hope neither nature nor mankind takes this bastard airborne through mutation.

Ebola is about as contagious as Hepatitis C. It is less contagious than HIV, SARS, Mumps, and Measles.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/02/352983774/no-seriously-how-contagious-is-ebola

I heard this interesting interview over the weekend on NPR (transcript in link). In it, the interviewee has this gem:

I was meeting with the vice president of the Communist Party in Shanghai, and I said, well, you know, what's your plan, sir? And he said, well, our five-year plan is to ensure that every man, woman and child in China has, at the very least, five megs of connectivity. And in all the top 10 cities, everyone's going to have one gig a second of connectivity. So I said, you know, sir have you thought about, you know, the unexpected side effects of giving 1.3 or 1.4 billion people a gig a second? And he says OK, I know what you're saying, I know where you're going, but here's the thing - the future of the human race, at least in this century, is ultra-high-speed Wi-Fi everywhere all the time. And it's going to happen whether you or I don't want it to happen or not. And because it's inevitable, we might as well get there first.

I live in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the US, and my only viable choices for internet connectivity are 3mbps DSL or Cable internet which is supposedly much faster, but capped at 250GB/month. The cheapest option of the two is $50/month. There are no signs of this changing in the next few years. At the current rate we're going, the US is pretty much doomed to be at the back of the line when it comes to internet connectivity. Think of the effects this will have on our economy in the medium to long term and gnash your teeth.

He went on to claim that Duncan had been sent home from the hospital, despite showing symptoms of the disease, "because he didn't have insurance".

Source

Officials at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital now say Thomas Eric Duncan wasn't honest with them either. When asked if he had been around anyone who had been ill, Duncan told them he had not.

For those who haven't read it, John Varley's "Press Enter" is what a series of internet murders could really look like. It reads like a blueprint or how-to.

I'm not sure of the providence of this citation but it looks authentic.

It's a paper from 1980 about a haulout event in 1978.

The highlighting is done by a person in the pay of the heartland institute, so it likely to be pushing a particularly unscientific agenda. But the paper exists in the scholarly literature. You can often check out the provenance of scholarly papers if you have an internet connection and access to google scholar.

Consider that this might be a normal behavior pattern amongst walruses.

From the first line of your linked paper: In October-November 1978, several thousand living walruses came ashore in at least four localities on St. Lawrence Island where they had not been present before in this century.

There's a strong implication in that that it is not normal behavior.
Note also that the Walruses themselves were not normal: Nearly all of the dead were extremely lean, having less than half as much subcutaneous fat as healthy animals examined in previous years.

I am quite humble about my understandings of their natures. You would do well to be equally humble.

Okay, The scientists at USGS have said that this is due to the retreat of the sea ice, and you humble claim that this is wrong?
I'm not sure that you're using this word "humble" correctly.

It appears for example that this walrus statement comes mostly from the WWF.

It appears to most people that it comes from the US Geological Survey. But the initial findings were by scientists working for NOAA's Aerial Surveys of Arctic Marine Mammals.

That is not a scientific organization but rather an environmental activist organization.

WWF fund and perform a lot of conservation science. But it was the USGS, which is a scientific organization that published the link to climate change.

I am not saying they are wrong but they have a history of very biased analysis.

Such as?

The most extreme example I think would be the application of the Drake Equation to species extinction rates.

I must have missed that press release. Do you have a link to it?

The author of the equation itself disavows it.

I didn't know that. Where did you read that?

That is how you get numbers like "5 million species extinct this year." They're using the drake equation. No organization that uses that equation with a straight face can be taken seriously. Period.

It's not obvious how the Drake Equation, which calculates the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which radio-communication might be possible, could be made to yield "5 million species extinct this year." And that number seems about two orders of magnitude greater than the largest of estimates I've seen. The WWF speculates that we might be losing [10,000 per year](http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/biodiversity/biodiversity/), which is nearer three orders of magnitude lower than that number.

So I look forward to you pointing me to this press release that makes all their other work not to be taken seriously in your eyes.

Because I can't find it.

Realistically though, even if you somehow got hold of a nuke or two it's doubtful that you could take down the government that way. The government is prepared to survive a massive nuclear assault from a foreign country, so your efforts will be like a mosquito bite.

You're so full of shit your eyes just have to be brown. They can't even keep unauthorized motherfuckers out of the White House at the moment; do you really think that the government would survive if a 100kt nuke went off in DC when Congress is in session and the president is in town? Given that they can't keep a rentacop who was packing firepower in the very same elevator as the President in check, do you really believe in the succession plan in the event of a nuclear hit?

What a cosmic dumbass you are.

Because the inadmissable sample is a much cheaper lead that can be done before spending money on the real thing.

Alright buddy, I look forward to your response to this. Occam's razor is a funny thing--it bends every which way depending on how uninformed the user is. After the Deepwater Horizon spill, BP launched a $200 million whitewashing campaign, including a now-defunct youtube channel full of propaganda videos--
http://www.prwatch.org/news/20...
--but there's no way any of that would go towards paid trolls! Oh wait, there totally is.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

The slashdot summary doesn't even mention the death threats sent by BP agents in the original article.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indep...
"Billie Garde, BP's deputy ombudsman, in a letter to the Government Accountability Project dated December 18, 2012, stated clearly that "BP America contracts management of its Facebook page to Ogilvy Public Relations" and added, "Ogilvy manages all of BP America's social media matters". According to BP America, Ogilvy has a group of 10 individuals in different time zones that perform comment screening of the page," wrote Garde.

In spite of this, you want to tell me that, even though Samsung pays trolls:
http://www.techmtaa.com/2013/1...
http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/...

Even though telecoms pay trolls:
http://www.vice.com/read/troll...
Even though non-domestic propaganda contractors like Leonie Industries pay trolls to troll domestically:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetw...
"USA Today reports that in his campaign against the reporters, Chidiac created "fan sites" with URLs matching the names of the reporter and editor who worked on the stories and then filled those sites with content that criticized the journalist's past reporting."

...even despite all this, you somehow think that Exxon-Mobil, the second richest corporation in the world, wouldn't pay trolls for the purpose of PR cleanup?
If you don't think opinion here makes a difference, then ask yourself why every topic about the NSA is full of endless "fuck beta" comments and huge blobs of meaningless text with bolded sections telling you how to configure your router. Maybe it doesn't make a difference, but it seems like there are many with deep pockets who do not agree with you.

Regardless, you have a lot of reading to do before you're fit to tell anyone about occam's razor re: paid shills.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allte...

Why would you need to worry about directional shifting? Pump water up in one pipe, release water down in another pipe that contains a turbine. No directional shifting necessary. There was a nice article on NPR the other day about a Spanish island doing exactly this: http://www.npr.org/blogs/paral...

Finally someone hits the nail on the head. Men ask for a raise, even demand one, far more often than women do.

I speculated about that argument a couple years back on another forum, and the other guy challanged the premise.

I googled back then and found a study that confirmed it. I don't have the link now. But here's an article that discusses it.

I highly recommend to everyone reading this discussion to listen to this 16-minute NPR Money Matters story:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...

Them if you have some time, This American Life tells the dealer's side of the story:
http://m.thisamericanlife.org/...

I'll warm you now that your blood may boil, and you may turn into a rage monster thinking about the sheer absurdity and stupidity of the car-buying process.

Cue the bozos, who, due to Slashdot hivemind, are now required to post "So, exactly like the USA!"

Would you like your unnecessary transvaginal ultrasound with or without lube? Or maybe your textbooks without without evolution?

There are some very ignorant people in this country -- as anyone who's visited a WalMart (at least in the south...but that's why I've lived the majority of my life) can attest. You should be glad you don't have to deal with them.

perhaps computer science is a liberal art...
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/...

If it were true, the U.S. government would have already come after them full force. No one tells the U.S. government "No" without serious consequences. Just ask Yahoo.

I used to live in a city with about 80,000 people. My choices were cruddy comcast service or slower DSL. Netflix was always buffering.

I moved into the countryside about 10 miles out of town. Comcast doesn't provide service here but there is a small regional cable company. As a result, my service 2-3x faster, and costs 60% of what I used to pay Comcast.

The real issue is that cable companies are not considered common carriers. In the UK they do the common carrier thing and there is massive competition, better service, cheaper prices: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...

Now, about that "US is so big" bullshit. The US is like half a dozen regional Japans or Frances or Sweedens. In the middle of nowhere WY -- yeah, you aren't going to have fiber. But what about the I-5 corridor from Portland to Seattle? That's densely populated. Or WA DC to NY City -- that's major density. No reason you couldn't have 10x the speed at 1/10th the cost in any of those types of places.

Let's just link it: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/... [npr.org]

Ultimately I think the article writer needs to define what he even means by science. Saying that you reject the idea that science is logical is like saying you reject the idea that scissors are logical. It implies that he's using a synecdoche and expecting everybody to follow. Maybe you can reject the idea that scissors are logical choices of weapons to equip on Roman soldiers. Similarly, he probably rejects the logic of science...something...I'm not going to speculate here. There must be a name for the rhetorical device used here; I'll call it strawman-baiting where he invites us to figure out what he means so that, if we make a good point, he can dodge and say that isn't what was meant because he never actually said what he meant. He may not be using it consciously or maliciously, it's just a common thing people do when they like being right.

Nice one Your.Master! lol

Here's the text of that comment, just in case. If you like it, consider voting it up on the NPR page.

GravitasShortfall Friday, September 12, 2014 5:52 PM

Wow, talk about a strawman. Where exactly are all these "Spockists" that you're talking about?

Good science *is* logical and purely rational. Anything that isn't is *bad* science. Morally, science isn't anything. Science is a tool. No more, no less. A very useful tool, to be sure, but so is a wheel, and I don't think anyone would describe a wheel as "morally good". Religion is morally bad, because it suppresses free thought, but that's a different discussion entirely.

And I'm not aware of anyone claiming that science has proved the nonexistence of God, either. It's proved God unnecessary, and then philosophy (namely Occam's Razor) is used to conclude that postulating a god is silly, but disproving God with science is a nonsensical notion because you can't measure something that doesn't interact with the Universe.

"For in a Spockian universe there is no such thing as nature, there is just material process, particles and fields, in the void."

Pretty sure nature is part of the material process. I defy you to find a single atheist who denies the existence of nature.

"Nor, for the Spockian, is there any such thing as wonder, not really; for what is an emotion, but a conjury of particles in the nervous system?"

That's *your* conclusion. Just because *you're* incapable of finding wonder in a material world doesn't mean everyone else is.

"Atheists, in so far as they are followers of Spock, have an explanatory burden that religionists don't carry — that of explaining how you get meaning and value out of particles, or alternatively, that of explaining why meaning and value are an illusion."

There's a whole field devoted to that called neuroscience. It's not complete, but it is finding answers. Now how does the religionist explain where meaning comes from? The mere existence of a God in no way whatsoever automatically implies meaning. I've yet to hear a good explanation of how a universe with a God is any more meaningful than one without.

Let's just link it: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/...

Ultimately I think the article writer needs to define what he even means by science. Saying that you reject the idea that science is logical is like saying you reject the idea that scissors are logical. It implies that he's using a synecdoche and expecting everybody to follow. Maybe you can reject the idea that scissors are logical choices of weapons to equip on Roman soldiers. Similarly, he probably rejects the logic of science...something...I'm not going to speculate here. There must be a name for the rhetorical device used here; I'll call it strawman-baiting where he invites us to figure out what he means so that, if we make a good point, he can dodge and say that isn't what was meant because he never actually said what he meant. He may not be using it consciously or maliciously, it's just a common thing people do when they like being right.

The average price of a new car in the US is $30K nowadays. A BMW 3-series starts at $32K, and given that Tesla started out going after the market dominated by things like the BMW 7 series, S-Class Mercedes, Audi A8 and Lexus LS, it's not surprising that the next market(s) they would go after would be similar -- the SUV will compete against things like the BMW, Mercedes and Lexus models and the smaller car will compete against the 3-Series, Audi A4 and Lexus models. The luxury auto business has higher margins and people who can afford those higher margins tend to want more of the latest anything -- phone, computer, tablet, clothes, thermostat, food/drink, etc. It would probably not be unreasonable to assume that the buyer Tesla is targeting is someone who likely has a fairly recent smartphone, luxury car less than five years old, owns a home, is married, and is in their late 30's to early 50's. They likely have a fairly established career, a family, and an income around $150K before taxes. They aren't going after the people who are shopping the Ford Fiesta, Toyota Yaris and Honda Fit, or recent college grads, or people with their first job. They are pretty much going after the same people Audi did when they were rebuilding themselves.

As someone who is shopping in the $15K range for my next car, and who is very close to hitting 200K miles on the current one, I largely agree with you. I have come around to the point where I'm aggressively eliminating all debt that I possibly can, with the eventual goal of being debt free. Pouring 40K into something that's going to be regularly doused with road salt, snow, rain, mud and will eventually wear out entirely seems like a waste of money. I need a car to get around, get to work, visit family and friends -- for my lifestyle there is definite value which owning an automobile provides, there is no denying that. But at this point in my life I can say that I'd rather spend $15K on a compact sedan that will accomplish all I need it to do than spend $40K on something that largely does the same thing. That extra $25K can go towards retiring debt, funding college for the kids, paying down the mortgage, etc.

Sources on the 30K price:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mo...
http://www.autoblog.com/2012/0...

Sources on Audi:
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/29/...
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...

The average price of a new car in the US is $30K nowadays. A BMW 3-series starts at $32K, and given that Tesla started out going after the market dominated by things like the BMW 7 series, S-Class Mercedes, Audi A8 and Lexus LS, it's not surprising that the next market(s) they would go after would be similar -- the SUV will compete against things like the BMW, Mercedes and Lexus models and the smaller car will compete against the 3-Series, Audi A4 and Lexus models. The luxury auto business has higher margins and people who can afford those higher margins tend to want more of the latest anything -- phone, computer, tablet, clothes, thermostat, food/drink, etc. It would probably not be unreasonable to assume that the buyer Tesla is targeting is someone who likely has a fairly recent smartphone, luxury car less than five years old, owns a home, is married, and is in their late 30's to early 50's. They likely have a fairly established career, a family, and an income around $150K before taxes. They aren't going after the people who are shopping the Ford Fiesta, Toyota Yaris and Honda Fit, or recent college grads, or people with their first job. They are pretty much going after the same people Audi did when they were rebuilding themselves.

As someone who is shopping in the $15K range for my next car, and who is very close to hitting 200K miles on the current one, I largely agree with you. I have come around to the point where I'm aggressively eliminating all debt that I possibly can, with the eventual goal of being debt free. Pouring 40K into something that's going to be regularly doused with road salt, snow, rain, mud and will eventually wear out entirely seems like a waste of money. I need a car to get around, get to work, visit family and friends -- for my lifestyle there is definite value which owning an automobile provides, there is no denying that. But at this point in my life I can say that I'd rather spend $15K on a compact sedan that will accomplish all I need it to do than spend $40K on something that largely does the same thing. That extra $25K can go towards retiring debt, funding college for the kids, paying down the mortgage, etc.

Sources on the 30K price:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mo...
http://www.autoblog.com/2012/0...

Sources on Audi:
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/29/...
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...

CBC's article is just a Canadian take on things. The original article (just as scary) is here:

Well, yes. But it's hardly "original" -- this is a problem that has been profiled extensively for years, yet few people seem to realize how far it extends. A couple of times over the past year, when posters on Slashdot mentioned random forfeitures that happened to them, they were met with comments saying, "You must have done something suspicious" or "What's the rest of the story," and I tried to provide links to point out the systemic problem, but have been met with ignorance and resistance.

For a sample of past coverage, here's an extensive piece from The New Yorker a year ago, a piece from Reason in 2012, a piece from Forbes in 2011, pieces in Slate and The Economist from 2010, a detailed piece on NPR from 2008, etc., etc., etc. Here's an extensive account of problems with the system from PBS almost 15 years ago (around the time that legal reform forced money to go to local municipalities in many cases rather than the federal government). The ACLU has been fighting this for decades.

I know some people here may be well aware of this problem, and others may find this shocking and new. Regardless, it's very sad that it may take other countries' shaming us into taking action to fix an unjust assault on our citizens that has been going on for many years.

Medical mistakes kill nearly 100k people a year in the US, and you think removing ACID from your data store is beneficial? Where do you work - I want to know what to avoid. mistaken fatalities

top getting your news from shitty sources. On NPR news, this doesn't happen.

You mean this NPR?:

http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/07/11/how-climate-change-exacerbated-the-drought/

The problem is that the FAA is trying to exert influence into an area where it has no authority. This is a good intro to the controversy: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...

• Methane and the risk of runaway global warming
• BBC on Runaway Methane Warming
• Methane Causes Vicious Cycle in Global Warming
• Methane's Impacts on Climate Change May Be Twice Previous Estimates
• Fracking Would Emit Large Quantities of Greenhouse Gases

Wild boar absofrickenlutely love human habitation.

http://www.npr.org/2012/11/06/...

~80% of current Native Americans are direct decedents of Clovis people.

http://www.npr.org/2014/02/13/...
http://news.ku.dk/all_news/201...

"Ferguson was a town in which most of the population was black...One of the main sources of income for the town was stopping black motorists and giving them traffic tickets"

Statistically speaking, it stands to reason that if a population is majority black the majority of ticketed individuals would be black. Unless you have evidence that blacks were routinely given higher fines for similar offenses committed by white people or that no whites were ever ticketed in Ferguson, your statement is a bit of a reach.

There are many news stories like this:

http://www.npr.org/2014/08/25/...
In Ferguson, Court Fines And Fees Fuel Anger
August 25, 2014 5:56 PM ET

To understand some of the distrust of police that has fueled protests in Ferguson, Mo., consider this: In 2013, the municipal court in Ferguson — a city of 21,135 people — for nonviolent offenses, mostly driving violations.

A new report released the week after 18-year old Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson helps explain why. ArchCity Defenders, a St. Louis-area public defender group, says in its that more than half the courts in St. Louis County engage in the "illegal and harmful practices" of charging high court fines and fees on nonviolent offenses like traffic violations — and then arresting people when they don't pay. The report singles out courts in three communities, including Ferguson.

Thomas Harvey, who started the organization to provide legal services to the poor in the St. Louis region and is the lead author of the report, says residents, especially in Ferguson, have come to see the use of fines and fees as a way for courts to collect money from residents who are often the least able to pay.

"Folks have the impression that this is a form of low-level harassment that isn't about public safety. It's about money," he says.

The ArchCity Defenders report argues that this resentment is justified. Last year, Ferguson collected $2.6 million in court fines and fees. It was the city's second-biggest source of income of the $20 million it collected in revenues.

People who can't pay their fines and fees go on payment plans. But then there are extra fees, sometimes interest — 12 percent on felonies in Washington state — and, if poor people fall behind on payments, they may go to jail. Courts often ignore laws, Supreme Court rulings and protections that outlaw the equivalent of debtors prisons.

Just like around the U.S., these municipal court fines in Ferguson are for low-level offenses, usually traffic violations. Harvey calls these "poverty crimes." Typically, he says, someone gets stopped for a rolling stop at a stop sign, or for a broken tail light. Then police find other problems.

Racial Disparity In Ferguson Traffic Stops

Data from the Missouri state attorney general's office show that black drivers are stopped in Ferguson in disproportionate numbers, even though Ferguson police are more likely to find contraband when they stop white drivers.

Blacks make up 67 percent of the city's population, but are 86 percent of motorists stopped by police. Whites make up 29 percent of the population, but 12.7 percent of vehicle stops.

"However, this data seems at odds with the fact that searches of black individuals result in discovery of contraband only 21.7 percent of the time, while similar searches of whites produce contraband 34 percent of the time," the ArchCity Defenders report notes.

Ebony says she's been arrested before after she didn't pay off all her fines — the last time just two weeks after she had given birth.

"My son was 2 weeks old and I was under doctor's care, and Ferguson still locked me up and left me in jail for a week — over traffic tickets," she says. "Even when my lawyer was calling and saying that I'm under doctor's care, I just had a baby, and they still didn't care."

Police and city officials in Ferguson didn't respond to our requests for an interview.

Stay the course
Mission Accomplished
Thanks Obama!
Tough on crime
Think of the children
Taxed enough already
Hope and Change
Obama* (Obamacare, Obamaphone)
Corporations are people too my friend

You have heard of hundreds and just have not realized it. The standard political practice of this generation is to pounce on opportunities and take the credit, not actually make things happen*. Political campaign managers usually take what other people have said and run with it if it is beneficial to them. NPR did a brief story about it a couple years ago.

*They do the same thing with wars too.

> transmission of a vehicle's location, which comes with privacy concerns.

We already had this debate when they mandated installing lights on vehicles, which also transmits the location of a vehicle and raised privacy concerns. In the end, the ability to not crash into invisible cars beat out the privacy concerns, IIRC.

Quite a bit different, depending on how far the transmission can be received.

For example, if your vehicle is equipped with OnStar, your location is Tracked and possibly SOLD, even if you have elected to NOT subscribe to the OnStar "Service".

Apparently, only pulling the fuse (or chopping the antenna wire), stops this ridiculous intrusion.

And worse yet, since OnStar isn't a Governmental Agency, by definition, it (technically) CANNOT abuse your Constitutional Rights, PERIOD.

That point of view is being argued. Read "The statues that walked" by Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo. They postulate that rats introduced by the colonists did most of the damage. The Easter Islanders dealt with this by eating the rats.

NPR article: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulw...

Insider trading is not legal for Congress:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsal...

Yes, yes, the article is about rolling back parts of the STOCK Act. But look at the bottom: insider trading is still illegal for Congress under the reformed law.

As a manager at a company that does to hire the best and the brightest, I can say that people calling for more H1-B visas are full of s#!t.

The biggest users of H-1Bs are consulting companies, or as Ron Hira calls them, "offshore-outsourcing firms."

"The top 10 recipients in [the] last fiscal year were all offshore-outsourcers. And they got 40,000 of the 85,000 visas — which is astonishing," he says.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allte...

Here is the break-down of my reports.
15 - born in the USA.
3- naturalized citizens when I hired them.
2- from Egypt on L1 visas (we have an office in Cairo)
2- from Korea that had green cards when I hired them
1- from China that was a grad student that we supported. F1 students visa changed to H1B by obtaining a sponsorship position with an H1B sponsor company.
1- from India that was a grad student we supported. F1 students visa changed to H1B by obtaining a sponsorship position with an H1B sponsor company.

It is fairly easy to convert F1 visa for a student that has completed graduate school in the USA to an H1B, and as far as I can tell there is no limit.
(I am not an immigration lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.)

If tried to hire highly qualified individuals from outside the US and was told that I would not be able to get them H1B visas because they were all taken (by the body shoppers). These people had PhDs from prestigious Universities and years of relevant experience. They made the unfortunate mistake of not attending a US
graduate school.

So the solution is quite simple. Stop giving H1B visas to "consulting companies".

Sometimes satire is obvious, sometimes it isn't.

Why Doesn't America Read Anymore?
April 01, 2014

Congratulations, genuine readers, and happy April Fools' Day!

We sometimes get the sense that some people are commenting on NPR stories that they haven't actually read. If you are reading this, please like this post and do not comment on it. Then let's see what people have to say about this "story."

Best wishes and have an enjoyable day,

Your friends at NPR

As you might expect, a lot of people commented on that without clicking through.

I consider satire to be something of a public service.
If you don't bother to check the source of your information,
you deserve the embarrassment (or misinformation) that follows.

TLDR: Credulity is not a virtue.

This story from 2008 suggests that the citizens support censorship.

This story from a few months ago says most don't believe it is being censored/monitored.

I think you're really a special kind of stupid.

I think we'll let others decide that.

First of all, a company doing business in a country must respect and obey the laws of said country. That goes without even saying, moron. Apple has registered subsidiaries in China, nevermind their huge manufacturing sourcing business in mainland.

Show me where there is a law saying that Apple must store its encryption keys on-shore. Guess what? There isn't one. See, Apple isn't breaking the law because it isn't IN China, it just does business there. But there's more to this... very much more.

As for "gradually been bringing its manufacturing back home" this means you are too stupid to cross the street. No consumer IT / electronics company in the US, Apple included, can bring manufacturing back to the US

Yeah? How about this? And this? And this? And this?

And many, many more. Hmmm. It seems just maybe I knew a bit more about it than you, eh?

Agreed. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thepr...

OMG you ignorant fuck. Tesla batteries are made of wonderful shit like Nickel. A fire in such a plant could loft heinous amounts of contaminates which would promptly precipitate out in the vicinity downwind of the plant.

Do you want cancer with that battery?
January 19, 2014

Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy undertook a study to look at the environmental impact of lithium-ion batteries for EVs. The study showed that batteries that use cathodes with nickel and cobalt, as well as solvent-based electrode processing, have the highest potential for environmental impacts, including resource depletion, global warming, ecological toxicity, and human health. The largest contributing processes include those associated with the production, processing, and use of cobalt and nickel metal compounds, which may cause adverse respiratory, pulmonary, and neurological effects in those exposed.

This is what CA is throwing it's precious regs under the bus for; it's politically correct industrial golden boy.

You know what the worst part of all this happy horseshit is? At the end of the day all we're really doing is off-shoring our impact. The elements that Tesla is going to need to feed this "giga" factory are going to come from Africa and Asia, far beyond the reach of EPA, DOE, OHSA, NLRB and the rest of the gang;

Tesla’s Gigafactory: Needs 6 new graphite mines, but where will cobalt be sourced?

Nickel refining is particularly heinous. It's worse for the environment than copper mining and refining. Downwind of a third world nickel mine or refinery is a dead zone. That's why we won't tolerate it near ourselves anymore.

And yeah, doesn't this story just put the lie right to the Left when they argue how environmentalism and economy aren't in conflict. And what happened to Tesla here? Playing one state off against another for regulatory wavers? Tsk tsk.

All these regs and legislated morality have a price. It really does. I'm sorry about that. A magic fairy wand would be nice, but we don't have one. Get that through your la-la land head and grow up a little.

the local service industry has to pay more to get people to work, so prices go up even more, until everyone making under $100k/yr has to commute 2hrs just to get to work. The city panics and start enforcing rent control so people can at least afford an tiny apartment. For an example, see Manhattan.

NYC has come up with a solution to this issue: Poor Doors, so the goodly rich inhabiting luxury apartments don't have to sully their eyes with visions of the lowly proles who serve them.

considering that the recently passed 'state secrets' law in japan effectively gags anyone from talking about fukushima in an honest way, the fact that this is being released at all probably means it's just to warm up the public for the real shoe to drop..

oh, and in case you don't know the law... here it is.