Slashdot Mirror

That's obviously not what he means. Let's dispense with the straw man arguments, okay?

Except that's a fundamental talking point among the pro-diversity crowd. Disagreement = violence. Disagreement = hate speech. And so on. There's a thing among the social justice groupies that likes to redefine words, actions, and so on. Here's one I ran across the other day in reference to a male rape victim. They were told and to paraphrase: "You aren't a rape victim, you're a victim of forced sexual intercourse. Since rape can only be committed by people in positions of power. So only white men can rape." Enjoying that logic? It's not any different then the social justice advocates stating that it's impossible for a black to be racist, because racism requires privilege+power.

The memo claims that women are more neurotic. It claims that this is biological. ... What shockingly ignorant, backward thinking set of concepts.

It's factually accurate too, and it is biological -- hit a search engine you can find it across nearly every society to boot. So you're arguing against science now, and something that's been been backed up by decades of studies. To flip it around, I wouldn't have had a problem with him stating that men are more aggressive when it comes to negotiations either. Because that's factually correct too.

So far every single "rebuttal" from google and outside, every autistic screeching, every angry tweet and call for his firing and public outing simply confirms what he said.

Instead to tackling the deep issues of PC culture they are trying to kill the messenger. The very existence of a VP for diversity at an engineering company should be a wake up call. And lets not even get to her asinine "arguments" that are anything but. Sara Meis response is even worse actually (not that I thought it could be possible). Instead of citing data that disproves his arguments (protip: does not exist, neither does the wage gap) she puts words in his mouth ("conclusions that favor his ego") and implies that he did not arrive to those conclusions by observation but apparently HAD to work backwards.

Why makes you think they don't exist?

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

I remember reading many an article like these and these.

why would I spend money on something that *might* segfault and for which the vendor isn't going to provide a solution to *everyone*

You're dreaming if you don't think you run a similar risk with Intel. The only difference here is the proximal news cycle.

Tomorrow's Market Probably Won't Look Anything Like Today

The recency bias is pretty simple. Because it's easier, we're inclined to use our recent experience as the baseline for what will happen in the future. In many situations, this bias works just fine, but when it comes to investing and money it can cause problems.

Well, I suppose there are worse problems in life than paying 20% more for 20% less because of an edge case.

Unless you make it a habit, and it begins to consume larger fish, like your 401(k).

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/06/upshot/do-oil-companies-really-need-4-billion-per-year-of-taxpayers-money.html

They have been doing this in Japan and some northern European countries for at least a decade.

They have also been used in America. Philadelphia started using them in 2008. Philly uses virtual pyramids like in Japan, rather than the virtual humps used in London.

It's an odd feeling, you know they are just painted on but feel like you want to slow down anyway for some reason.

Short term effectiveness has been shown. But I couldn't find any data about how effective they are over the long term, as people get used to them. Can anyone cite long term data?

I spent my youth and college years bettering myself. Working the summers for experience and studying when not working. Then I immediately transitioned to a full time job and worked my ass off. You then expect me to feel sorry for someone who spent that time partying, having a grand time, taking copious mini-vacations and partying on weeknights because their job doesn't require much of them

No, we expect you to "feel sorry for" the people who also spent their youth and college years bettering themselves, but did not have your luck.

Because those people vastly outnumber the ones like you who did get lucky.

Want an example? My career as a software engineer exists because I graduated college near the beginning of the dot-com boom with a degree that isn't directly related to computers or software (still a science discipline though). Companies were desperate enough that they gave me a shot. By the time the dot-com bust happened, I had amassed enough experience for my degree to not matter much.

If I had been born 5 or so years later, I would have graduated into the bust. And that would have crippled my ability to start my career, most likely to the point where it could not have happened - it's not like I could afford to go get a second degree in CS and still eat.

That difference has nothing to do with working hard. It is luck. And I'm absolutely sure delving into your history you could find examples where your current situation is dependent on a roll of the dice. That friend/acquaintance who gave you an internship or other start. The cop who let you off with a warning instead of planting evidence. That time a close relative did not get sick and need you. And so on.

The Calvinism behind the philosophy of the US, where working hard means you will succeed, has a giant flaw: It ignores luck. Largely because acknowledging the affect of luck requires admitting that it's not all about hard work. Sometimes the hard workers get screwed. And sometimes the successful are handed their success with minimal effort.

Reminds me of the U of I "Laser Building".

Branstad pushed for it at the time because Iowa State University got their Molecular Biology building funded, so U of I had to have something too. I learned early in life how much to trust politicians. This Freedman guy - he ran because he knew his call was coming due.

The raids themselves were terrifying. In anonymous interviews, victim after victim described to me the pounding on the door, the rush of officers into their homes, the investigators strutting about, taking their personal belongings, and ordering them to be silent, or else.

Again, if this is true then I do sympathize with these people because that sounds like it sucks. BUT, to act like it is the biggest injustice the police have ever done is astoundingly tone deaf. Read about no-knock warrants and how people have woken up to police literally busting into their homes unannounced in the middle of the night to search for drugs (a non-violent crime). Multiple innocent civilians have been killed by police recklessness, a baby was put in a coma when the SWAT team landed a flash bang in his crib. Imagine waking up to literal home invaders but defending yourself against them puts you in jail for assaulting an officer.

Compared to that, and the MANY other injustices done to poor people by the police, these activists in Wisconsin can stop crying about how traumatizing it was for the police to go through their stuff. I know this is a relatively small point, but I feel it exemplifies how the right has an astounding lack of perspective. Things are only important when they happen to you personally, otherwise fuck all those poor people. Oh shit, now the police are coming to my house? Government overreach!

Including the New York Times

Donald Trump inaccurately suggests Clinton got paid to approve Russia uranium deal

So move on to your next talking point, Vlad.

Trump trolls really don't take it well when their little black balloons get pricked, and sometimes they have mod points. Downmodding is so much easier on the brain muscle than actually thinking about a rebuttal. They can easily do it in the time it takes to have a shit, a big selling point.

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

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

Seattle Misery: Together with Microsoft and bad city management, Seattle is a miserable place:

Traffic: Seattle one of the worst U.S. cities for traffic congestion, tied with NYC (March 31, 2015) Quote: "An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic may not sound like much, but when it adds up over a year it becomes 89 hours." (Whoever wrote that must be accustomed to Seattle misery. An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic sounds HORRIBLE.)

Slow internet: Many areas of Seattle have poor internet connections. See the article, These places have the slowest Internet in the country. (June 25, 2015) Quote: "... Seattle ... CenturyLink (CTL) customers trying to access particular sites from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. will have unbearably slow speeds."

Amazon: Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (February 23, 2014)

Amazon: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (August 15, 2015) Quote: "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."

Amazon: Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany (February 19, 2013)

Microsoft: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book (May 23, 2012)

Those guys never do time

There was only one bank which ended up getting prosecuted for the '08 mortgage crisis. A tiny Chinatown family-owned bank that discovered one of their loan officers taking bribes and making fraudulent mortgage applications. The managers of the bank promptly reported him to regulators -- for which the managers were indicted, with the fraudulent loan officer becoming the star witness for the prosecution against the bank.

http://www.npr.org/2017/05/18/...
"As it happens, Abacus didn't deal in subprime. The Chinatown-based bank also didn't package its mortgages into the sort of financial instruments that made The Big Short's machinations so arcane. In fact, the bank had one of the lowest default rates in the country."

Some other articles on the prosecution of Abacus:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/1...

Those guys never do time

There was only one bank which ended up getting prosecuted for the '08 mortgage crisis. A tiny Chinatown family-owned bank that discovered one of their loan officers taking bribes and making fraudulent mortgage applications. The managers of the bank promptly reported him to regulators -- for which the managers were indicted, with the fraudulent loan officer becoming the star witness for the prosecution against the bank.

http://www.npr.org/2017/05/18/...
"As it happens, Abacus didn't deal in subprime. The Chinatown-based bank also didn't package its mortgages into the sort of financial instruments that made The Big Short's machinations so arcane. In fact, the bank had one of the lowest default rates in the country."

Some other articles on the prosecution of Abacus:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/1...

The whole reason the Electorial College was set up was so one state with a huge population could not control elections.

No, it was not. The reason the Electoral College was set up was because they couldn't come up with an agreement over how to elect the executive, so they parceled it out to the states in a haphazard and mistaken fashion that was procedurally broken. Seriously, check out the election of 1800 and 1804, and the 12th Amendment.

It's still bad, but it was originally worse. And really, if you check it out, it didn't even have universal popular vote until after the Civil War, and technically that is an option, not a mandate.

It's a broken, arbitrary system that is cobbled together into a semblance of performance, nothing more.

It made smaller less populate states equal voice.

What they do need to get rid of is the winner take all electoral votes to the winner.

I hope you're not suggesting using the gerrymandered legislative districts idea that has been put forth and is used in two states.

That would be bad.

Because in states like California New York, etc who have winner tske all it does make votets of the other party nor vote because they now in the end their vote won't count.

Why do you single out California and New York? That just discredits you. Because in ALL states, except Nebraska and Maine in the very limited narrow selection of Electoral College votes, when it comes to elections, Winner-Takes-All makes it so people's votes don't count, unless you count the jungle primary of California, or the requirement in states like Louisiana or Georgia for a run-off in non-Presidential contests.

I could possibly believe you were genuinely concerned about the flaws in the electoral system of the United States, but your reliance on false premises and singling out two particular states, is a hindrance to my believing that about you.

But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, enough to suggest you consider a more conscientious reform.

in a world where you could put eight miles of new subway line in a major city without checking to see what's there first. But after hundreds of years of development, most without the benefit of geographic information systems, you can't be certain what kind of weird shit (or people) down there.

The author seems shocked that it'd take ten years of planning before you could start workers digging. The reality is you need to figure out the impact on water, sewer, gas, electricity, telecom, peoples basements -- and chances are none of that stuff is all on one map; a lot of it is likely not mapped at all, or mapped incorrectly. Ten years before your break ground seems very reasonable to me.

Likewise he's mortified that the Chesapeake Bay Tunnel project had to spend two years on geological and environmental impact studies before breaking ground. That's a twenty-three mile long complex of causeways and tunnels across the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, one of the most important fisheries in the country as well one of the world's busiest shipping routes. Two years of study! He calls this a "run-of-the-mill highway". Sure, anything seems easy if you no abso-frickin' nothing about engineering. Bridges and tunnels are the most prestigious projects for a civil engineer to work on because they're ridiculously complex. Just look at all the pieces of the thing. Two years of preliminary geological and environmental study to build the thing sounds outstanding.

This is just Dunning-Kruger run amok. These aren't cases of preliminary studies holding back engineering. Assessing the feasibility and impact of a project is a *major part* of civil engineering. Sure, you could start digging and hope you don't rupture a gas line, breech a high pressure water main, start a plague of rats in Manhattan's Upper East Side (average annual income $180K), damage a fishery that that brings in 290 million dollars per year, or find out the soil you're tunneling through won't support the weight above it. And then you'd be forced to stop and figure out how to fix it. In fact you'd almost inevitably be forced to stop and redesign your project.

A basic principle of engineering project management is that it's waaay cheaper to anticipate a problem than to figure out what to do about it when you're halfway done.

We could also have stayed out of it till ISIS and Assad had fought to the end, then knocked out the now weakened winner.

Hillary Clinton could also have not assassinated Qaddafi, which left Libya a failed state and a terrorist haven. Qaddafi was not one of the good guys, but he was keeping all the local terrorism in check.

Intelligence sources brought the opportunity to Hillary while she was SOS, and also noted that killing him would be a bad idea and predicted the rise of terrorism and [something similar to] ISIS if he was killed.

Hillary overrode that decision and had him killed anyway(*).

Nah, that's a false dichotomy. USA backed Syrian rebel forces, until Trump switched to backing Assad due to his Russian links. So he's currently ended CIA training of Syrian Rebels.

He doesn't like Assad one bit (he's said as much), but he's also trying to stop the terrorism. Lesser of two evils and all that.

You know - the terrorism that was enabled by Hillary's assassination of Qaddafi.

(*) My personal view is that she did it because she wanted a "win" during here stint as SOS - something that would show leadership and decision making in her upcoming presidential run. Boy, *that* decision sure turned out to be a bad move for the rest of us!

Look, I don't like Hilary Clinton. But I like you much less. You are a slavering right wing rumor mongering nut who disgraces all technologists, if you even are one.

The NYT article you linked lays out some interesting and potentially troublesome background, yes, but does not accuse Clinton of wrongdoing. There was an FBI investigation, but apparently based on a book written by a Breitbart editor: some New York agents were feuding with the Justice Department and basing their investigation in part on media accounts[46] and in particular on the book Clinton Cash, written by Peter Schweizer, a senior editor-at-large for Breitbart News. The NYT clarified their position in an editorial that states Does the new batch of previously undisclosed State Department emails prove that big-money donors to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation got special favors from Mrs. Clinton while she was secretary of state? Not so far...

So you can get down from your trump horse now. Unlike Hilary Clinton, who was investigated multiple times and cleared every time, Donald Trump is a notorious scofflaw who stands a good chance of going down in history as the first president to leave office in handcuffs.

Every claim he made in the above post was true.

Nope, in fact they were quite refutable. Not only that, you do realize it was trying to defend another post, with yet more falsehoods, don't you?

If you can't see that the Republicans cleaned house this election, you are mathematically challenged.

Unlike you, I can pay attention to the data, not just make the conclusions I want to believe are true, so recognizing that turnout was down, the actual numbers were relatively close, and only the distorting effect of gerrymandering and malappoirtionment misleads certain people into thinking that there's actually a substantial gap.

The "more people voted for Clinton" argument only shows your ignorance of our election system.

The argument, in case you don't remember, was regarding the American people, thus your denial of that factor shows your ignorance of the conversation. We're not talking about the electoral system. We never were. We're talking about something else. Your defensive deflection underscores the weakness of your argument, because you are desperately trying to evade the rebuttal of the original point being made.

Either that, or you are just innocently confused and mistaken. I doubt it.

I'm sure Trump's average golf score is lower than Hillary's but if Trump lost the election you wouldn't see me bringing his golf score up. You care to know why? Because both golf scores and number of votes mean fuck all in our election.

Indeed, I don't care how he scores on the Golf Course. I do, however, care that he rushes off to the Golf Course at the cost of millions of dollars, even after proclaiming that he wouldn't do that, nosiree, he'd stay on the job.

Of course, if he had lost the election, he'd be screaming tirades to get attention, but at least it'd be on his own dime.

The only thing that matters is electoral votes and Trump is better at scooping those up.

No, that doesn't really matter in this conversation, we were actually discussing something else in this post and you're merely trying to derail the conversation since factually this defense was mistaken, as pointed out already.

Cry about the game all you want but both parties knew the rules to the game before election day. If you can't understand this, please stick to spreading cream on your sore butt hole and bugger off with the "Hillary had more votes" line.

Cry about the electoral college all you want, but the rules of that broken, flawed, system, were known to be so long before election day in 2016. In fact, you might review a little history instead of trying to emulate a certain fool who can't even admit he lost the popular vote but has to proclaim without evidence, that the election system was broken enough to allow millions of illegal votes.

Which, of course, would invalidate his election, as well as the thousands of others on that day, but do you think he thinks about that? He still lies about a landslide.

Sorry, you lost again

Including the New York Times

Donald Trump inaccurately suggests Clinton got paid to approve Russia uranium deal

So move on to your next talking point, Vlad.

Including the New York Times, that bastion of Conservative Attack Media, right?

I'm coming to the realization that the Democrats are actually corrupt(*).

I was reading about the DOJ slush fund [breitbart.com](**) and it struck me just how deep and insidious the corruption has been in this country.

Why not Teapot Dome, Credit Mobiler, Iran-Contra, Enron, and Bernie Madoff?

This is paired with the IRS selecting conservative charities for intense scrutiny

And liberal ones. Who both needed to file proper reports to meet their non-profit status.

Even Congress had to admit it was all proper in the end.

11 California counties have more registered voters than adults

You can't blame California for Steve Mnuchin, Tiffany Trump, Jared Kushner, and Steven Bannon, who nonetheless, remind us, it's not a crime. Despite false claims otherwise.

And let us not forget after the election, leftists pleaded with the EC delegates to be faithless,

I pleased with the EC delegates to quit myself, it might be the only thing that gets us past that broken system.

then pleaded with the supreme court to invalidate the results,

No, the Supreme Court acted in 2000, unlawfully overriding state courts for their own partisan gain.

then pleaded with the U.S. military to step in and prevent the inauguration (wtf?),

Like those massive crowds of people that Trump (falsely) claimed were there, huh?

leaked secret and sensitive information - not to expose crimes, but for political slander,

Oh wait, you mean when they leaked Trump's fake pictures of Time Magazine covers, right?

and rioted for weeks

No, that was Chicago celebrating winning the World Series.

For example, Hillary made no statements condemning the riots,

Also she didn't condemn the sugar plum fairy.

and most of the left blamed the rioting on Trump.

Trump called for it himself.

blocking reasonable voter registration,

No, that was the GOP.

and suppressing the military vote.

sure man

There's a sub-conversation on the net that holds that the Democratic party *won't survive* once all the corruption has been rooted out.

Sure man, and what else are they discussing? Why they can't find the dead bodies in the Pizza Parlor?

The Democratic ideals are so far from what people want that they require all the extra boost they get from a tilted playing field.

Is that why they keep getting more voters?

I'm not sure I believe that bit about the Democratic party not surviving, but after reading about the DOJ thing, and knowing the level of effort we're putting into the Russia probe while ignoring some seemingly obvious evidence [dailysignal.com] on the Democratic side, it makes me wonder...

Actually, the Republicans in Congress are still busy chasing their tails over Hillary.

I gues

I'm coming to the realization that the Democrats are actually corrupt(*).

I was reading about the DOJ slush fund [breitbart.com](**) and it struck me just how deep and insidious the corruption has been in this country.

Why not Teapot Dome, Credit Mobiler, Iran-Contra, Enron, and Bernie Madoff?

This is paired with the IRS selecting conservative charities for intense scrutiny

And liberal ones. Who both needed to file proper reports to meet their non-profit status.

Even Congress had to admit it was all proper in the end.

11 California counties have more registered voters than adults

You can't blame California for Steve Mnuchin, Tiffany Trump, Jared Kushner, and Steven Bannon, who nonetheless, remind us, it's not a crime. Despite false claims otherwise.

And let us not forget after the election, leftists pleaded with the EC delegates to be faithless,

I pleased with the EC delegates to quit myself, it might be the only thing that gets us past that broken system.

then pleaded with the supreme court to invalidate the results,

No, the Supreme Court acted in 2000, unlawfully overriding state courts for their own partisan gain.

then pleaded with the U.S. military to step in and prevent the inauguration (wtf?),

Like those massive crowds of people that Trump (falsely) claimed were there, huh?

leaked secret and sensitive information - not to expose crimes, but for political slander,

Oh wait, you mean when they leaked Trump's fake pictures of Time Magazine covers, right?

and rioted for weeks

No, that was Chicago celebrating winning the World Series.

For example, Hillary made no statements condemning the riots,

Also she didn't condemn the sugar plum fairy.

and most of the left blamed the rioting on Trump.

Trump called for it himself.

blocking reasonable voter registration,

No, that was the GOP.

and suppressing the military vote.

sure man

There's a sub-conversation on the net that holds that the Democratic party *won't survive* once all the corruption has been rooted out.

Sure man, and what else are they discussing? Why they can't find the dead bodies in the Pizza Parlor?

The Democratic ideals are so far from what people want that they require all the extra boost they get from a tilted playing field.

Is that why they keep getting more voters?

I'm not sure I believe that bit about the Democratic party not surviving, but after reading about the DOJ thing, and knowing the level of effort we're putting into the Russia probe while ignoring some seemingly obvious evidence [dailysignal.com] on the Democratic side, it makes me wonder...

Actually, the Republicans in Congress are still busy chasing their tails over Hillary.

I gues

I'm not talking about multistory apartments. I'm talking residential homes with coax strung everywhere. Between that, power & phone lines, it looked like hell, but it was effective.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0...
http://www.panoramio.com/photo...

Six people have been arrested in connection with the theft this week of a truck carrying highly radioactive waste in an episode that caused an international scare and raised concerns about the transporting of nuclear material. The group was arrested Thursday night and taken to a hospital in Pachuca, 60 miles north of here and not far from the small town where the truck and the material, cobalt 60, were found Wednesday after armed robbers stole them Monday. One of the people, a 16-year-old boy, was vomiting and had signs of possible radiation sickness, while the others were taken to the hospital as a precaution before all were cleared and released in the late afternoon and turned over to the federal police.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12...

http://www.express.co.uk/news/...
and
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

not as long as lenders discrimnate against equally qualified minorities.

https://www.usatoday.com/story...

http://www.denverpost.com/2016...

and refuse to even call back equally qualified minorities for rentals and leases.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0...

Be careful what you take in your mind. They are tying to convince you that Unions are the enemy and Unions must go. You took part of the bait. I'm glad you were lucky and had your grandfather to talk to you.

The theory of unions is just fine. The history of unions is important, their achievements great. However do not confuse these things with the state of unions *today*. Today many unions are corrupt and work for the interests of the union itself, not for the workers they represent. Today many do not uphold the standards of the industry, the craft, making sure members live up to the standards of quality of the industry. Do not confuse the unions of the "golden era" with those of today. They have little in common. Many of the rights and benefits workers receive today are due to law, not union membership or contract. Yes, laws brought about by the unions of that "golden era", but law never the less.

You have no idea of how hard Washington and Corporations want to kill unions. That way you will have absolutely no defence against what they pay you, treat you, or anything they want to do to you.

Other than the law of the land?

For instance: Take having "The right to work.in your State. The true statement is "The right to work for less pay". People find out about it later..much too late. What you said about Unions in the 70's is true. They got too greedy and made a lot of idiot mistakes. (So do politicians to this day). I think Unions realized their mistakes and have changed for the better. But today you can be part of a Union and not pay dues! This is their way of crippling Unions.

The first hand accounts I've heard from the late 1990s show little difference from the 1970s.

The United States Post Office is one of the biggest Unions to exist. Why do you think they wanted them to pay retirement benefits 75 years into the future?? They want to kill the post office and it's Union. They are also under the illusion that privatizing the post office will bring a profit to them. It will in the city, but be a huge loss in the rural areas.

Government employee unions are a separate topic, and a trouble idea to begin with.

"“It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”
That wasn’t Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul, or Ronald Reagan talking. That was George Meany -- the former president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O -- in 1955. Government unions are unremarkable today, but the labor movement once thought the idea absurd."
"The founders of the labor movement viewed unions as a vehicle to get workers more of the profits they help create. Government workers, however, don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this “unthinkable and intolerable.”"
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfo...

""All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," he wrote. "It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management." Roosevelt didn’t stop there. "The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations," he wrote. When Walker claimed FDR said "the government is the people," he had Roosevelt’s next line in mind. "The employer," Roosevelt’s letter added, "is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, pro

By the way, I just thought I'd mention that I think Brad Plummer has been doing a super-cool job of doing intelligent, technically astute coverage of issues related to energy and the environment. Hiring Brad Plummer is one of the best moves the New York Times has made of late. It almost makes up for hiring Bret Stephens. Almost.

In general the New York Times has been doing a good job of reporting on these issues, for example about a month ago there was an excellent take-down of Mark Z. Jacobson based on a new National Academy of Sciences report: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

(My prediction: once Mark Z. Jacobson is discredited it will not change the public stance of the anti-nuke/pro-rennies crowd one iota-- they'll just quietly stop quoting him, and move on to some other cherry-picked "expert".)

People are more than willing to pay more for energy sources that don't produce CO2.

1. Many people are NOT willing to pay more, hence the election of our current president.
2. The people that are willing to pay more don't have to, since wind is already cost-competitive with FF and solar will be soon.

"Standardized" nukes like the AP1000 were supposed to lower construction costs and reduce maintenance. But so far they have NOT lowered costs, and appear to be worse in every way. There is no path forward for nukes in America, but to go with a complete redesign, and no one wants to pay the NRE for that.

My prediction: Hinkley Point will also be cancelled before it goes live.

Here is an alternative link since TFA is paywalled (at least for me).

In a country where you die from illness if you're not rich, Internet should not be your priority.

Canada then huh? Because that does happen here. Happens in the UK too, and in many other countries with socialized medicine because healthcare is rationed and in some cases it's rationed so badly that ambulances are turned away from hospitals because the ER shutdown due to funding shortages. If you want to see the wait times for Ontario, you can click here then search by various areas. Seeing half a year for cancer treatment to start, or 200 days for a double bypass isn't uncommon for example.

Let's be realistic. Obamacare is a complete fucking disaster, and if on a scale of 1-whatthefuck it's somewhere around ohfuckweredoomed. Most states by next year will have zero providers, healthcare plans have gone up over 100%. Friends of mine took the penalty because they can't afford the plans that were their other option. You know the $900/mo with $8k deductibles for a family of 4. Going to be interesting here in Canada too, because it appears that the failure of Obamacare and increase in health costs has driven more Americans over the border to get healthcare here at the cost of taxpayers. This was an "issue" in 1993, it's a serious problem now. Depending on who's numbers you want to look at, it's anywhere between 1/8th to 1/3 of the cost of the entire medical budget in each province.

But here's how you fix "slow internet access." You require the last mile to be nationalized. All ISP's pay into the pot for maintenance, and people can pick whatever provider they want to hook up. While we don't have nationalization of the last mile here in Canada for that, leasing the last mile is a requirement here. Many other countries have this as a requirement as well. I can get Teksavvy in Ontario, and I can get it in Alberta. But if it was like how the US is now, or how it was ~10 years ago in Canada. I'd be stuck with Bell, Rogers, or Bell and Rogers.

Here, read this - http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01...

Smack yourself in the face. Wake up.

That doesn't at all disprove what I said. AS I mentioned, Monsanto does sue people. It is a well known and undeniable fact that they do. What I said is that they have never been documented to have sued someone for simple cross pollination, and that the cases I know of were justifiable, and could have been avoided had patents not been intentionally violated. I somehow doubt that the Center for Food Safety mentioned in your link, a group well known for their anti-GE activism, goes out of their way to mention those inconvenient details in their reports.

Your link also mentions the Bowman lawsuit, which was ongoing at the time that article was published. That was not one of the cross pollination cases (more of someone trying to get circumvent patent law with a perceived loophole), however the Supreme Court would later unanimously and in my opinion justly rule in favor of Monsanto.

... address the elephant in the room.

...more than 60 percent of the nation’s 30,000-plus gun deaths each year are acts of suicide, not accidents or homicidal attacks.

You have to read very closely, but unintended fatal shootings in the US from 2005-2010 resulted in 3800 deaths, or roughly 760 per year.

You need to read more carefully as there are known flaws with the reports.

As a frame of reference, approximately 250,000 people die from medical mistakes at hospitals every year, yet there aren't any politicians trying to ban hospitals or regulate doctors.

WTF man? Banning hospitals wouldn't solve the problem, but instead create a whole new one (not that Trump isn't willing to cause hospitals to shut down, mind you..) and there's a shitload of regulation of doctors. Including programs to reduce medical mistakes.

(as evidenced by the fact that gun ownership is at an all time high, but accidental shootings are at nearly the lowest they have been ever).

Sorry dude, we don't have any rigorous data collection on that. Sure, there's Gunfail, but its author notes the lack of actual substantive reporting.

Instead, the errors are well known.

As with any tool in this imperfect world, there are accidents, misuse and abuse, but we must weigh the cost vs benefit of guns, something that the fascist progressives and Dims refuse to do (and have prevented the FBI from collecting statistics on; there is a very cynical reason that you can't find statistics on incidents where citizens save lives or property using their lawfully owned firearm, you can only find "gun deaths").

Nope, it's actually something that the Republicans and the NRA are known to make up numbers/a> about, and furthermore, it's well known that they refuse to let data be collected on gun injuries.

Maybe if you didn't lie so much, you wouldn't have so many problems.

Oh no, you're saying that the assault was second-hand smoke?

You're an idiot. Pot is illegal in Minnesota. Drugs makes people act irrationally.

. Philando said he wasn't reaching for a gun, the cop kept shouting, and ended up firing his gun seven times.

Oh, ok. I'm reaching but say I not reaching for it. That makes it ok? Sorry that is a stupid thing to do. He wasn't listening to the cop and with his irrational behavior put the cop in a situation that was threatening. How was the cop supposed to know what he was reaching for? You are assuming Philando was acting rational and it is known that he was high on drugs. People on drugs don't act rationally.

I watched the video multiple times and the cop gave plenty of time for Philando to stop reaching but he kept reaching and disobeyed the cop.

assertion made was that the police were attacked.

No. The assertion was that Philando was disobeying the orders of the cop to STOP REACHING FOR THE DAMN GUN. The gun was in the glove box where he was reaching. How was the cop supposed to know? Philando was high on drugs, acting irrationally, and disobeying the orders of an officer while armed. That is a recipe for disaster no matter who you are or what color of skin you have.

we have a fearful police officer who fired his weapon after merely being informed by the man itself that he had a weapon.

No you are a liar. The cop was calm up until Philando disobeyed the orders to STOP REACHING multiple times.
Philando said i'm armed.
Coped said "Ok, don't reach for it." Cop was calm.
"Don't pull it out." Calm but louder and faster.
"Don't pull it out." Louder almost shouting and then the shots were fired.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

You are a lying sack of shit with your "merely".

Philando Castile, merely warned the police officer that he had a gun in the glove compartment.

You are a liar. Not only did the cop smell pot, it was found in the car, and there was THC found in the blood from the autopsy. But also that Philando kept reaching toward the gun when the cop kept saying "stop reaching". Watch the video again and see how many times the cop says "stop reaching for it". The cop didn't know where the gun was didn't know what Philando was reaching for.

Sorry, someone acting irrationally while high on drugs isn't a good defense. Reaching and disobeying orders to an officer when he knows your armed is a stupid thing to do. It's not the cops fault that Philando was high, disobeying orders, and reaching toward his gun with his family.

Scroll to the bottom to get the facts like always with NYTimes hiding important information at the bottom after they crafted their narrative.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

I'm not going through your entire list but that one example is enough to dismiss it because you are lying. "merely" my ass.

Google bought Boston Dynamics, then got bored with them and attempted (and failed) to sell them again.

Google has now successfully sold Boston Dynamics to Softbank.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/business/dealbook/boston-dynamics-softbank-robots.html

Nope. It was done by executive order which means it can be undone by executive order. No legislation required.

Even Franklin Fucking Delano Roosevelt never had the balls to refer to them as "my Generals".
Reply to This

Truman did. I'd bet that many other presidents have, FDR included.

I'm not endorsing Trump or his policies. But criticism should be directed at substantive matters, not attention-grabbing irrelevancies. What's the point in yet another tempest in a teacup while the world burns?

Apparently, both are so dirty that they're ultimately going to be banned in parts of the world. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

The opposite should be true. After all, the "woman are wonderful effect" is very well known. Both men and woman have an unconscious pro-bias towards woman as well. Ranging from social to material interests. But you can look all over society and find cases where this isn't true because of the problems it brings.

And those problems? You can thank false allegations, socjus, fake sexual harassment, cases like this or Ellen Pao and the ability of a woman to destroy your career and life over a false claim. I'll bet that nearly every person that reads this comment and is currently working in a corporate environment of some kind has seen the shift where men leave doors open, or have one or more individuals in the same room with them when talking to a woman. There's a reason for it.

And it's to the point where that even if proven false in the court of law that a man's choices are commit suicide or try to work through it, by picking up and moving to another part of the world to try and start over. It's not worth the trouble, and this is a result of people trying to limit and protect themselves from a potential fallout. I'm sure someone is going to bring up a "but it really doesn't destroy them..." No? Find anyone who's been the subject of a false claim, and you'll find a person who's lost friends, family, career, connections, and are ostracized even when innocent, the person recanted, or was dismissed by the courts with prejudice against the accuser.

The set of players posthumously tested by Dr. McKee is far from a random sample of N.F.L. retirees. “There’s a tremendous selection bias,” she has cautioned, noting that many families have donated brains specifically because the former player showed symptoms of C.T.E.

But 110 positives remain significant scientific evidence of an N.F.L. player’s risk of developing C.T.E., which can be diagnosed only after death. About 1,300 former players have died since the B.U. group began examining brains. So even if every one of the other 1,200 players had tested negative — which even the heartiest skeptics would agree could not possibly be the case — the minimum C.T.E. prevalence would be close to 9 percent, vastly higher than in the general population.

Sonic boom wasn't the biggest problem. Concorde was measured at takeoff and landing at over 126 dB in 26 of 37 monitored tests, which is twice the permitted/advertised limit of 110 dB.

For a quick comparison, that makes Concorde four times louder than a 747 at takeoff.

It used to be that we didn't use the word "AI" for every single fucking algorithm, but that's what you're supposed to call every single algorithm for doing anything, however you do it, now. If you aren't calling your software "AI" yet, then get with the program. (Of course, I mean "program" in a very old, pre-software sense. What we used to call "programs" in more recent times, the 1960s and later, are now called "AI"s. BTW, I am typing this right now in an editor where the AI figures out that I want to wrap my words without me having to press enter at the end of each line. Oooh, fancy!)

Now that that sub-flame is taken care of...

I think Musk's view might be that good decision-making is power. When you look at the hot businesses these days, which doesn't include just Silicon Valley "tech giants" but pretty much any business which happens to be doing well at the moment, what they have going for them is that they make good decisions. (Duh. It's so basic.)

Good decisions about little things. Your local grocery store is better about having what you want to buy be available, than it was 20 years ago. And your ads are more targeted, and also went to the highest bidder instead of the space having to get less money for "remnant." Wall Street tradebots do their thing. And ok, spambots are doing their thing too, and you know for a fact that they do sometimes successfully persuade people.

Humans always wanted to do all of this. Software systems aren't going anywhere (that we see so far) that humans haven't already tried. But they're getting better, and to impress upon you how much better they're expected to get, we have suddenly started calling all of them "AI" (shit, I already did that sub-flame above. Sorry.). But the new language is also sincerely intended to give people a clue: take it more seriously than you used to.

So what? There's nothing wrong with people getting more powerful! That's always been humanity's dream. More power means more certainty there will be a meal on your table and a roof over your head tonight. More power is more leisure. Whatever it is that you want out of your life, there's probably some way in which you wish you had more power, whether it's to directly go after your goal, or just to provide the basic economic security so that you can divert your own attention to your goal instead of those mundane things like getting the bills paid.

But you have adversaries. We don't like to talk about it, but it's true. It's not just that all our goals aren't the same -- that's an easy situation for any freedom-lover to handle. It's that our goals are not compatible, and sometimes you winning means I must lose, or vice-versa. As you damn well know, humans have preyed upon one another since long before we had computers too. But now we'll be better at preying on one another.

Any bad thing people can do to each other, they can do better (i.e. worse) now, thanks to compu-- shit, I mean-- AI. So do you have the checks and balances in place? What are you going to do when someone evil has power?

America can't even handle a situation where We get to choose whether or not to elect a retarded president. If we can't even do that right, why should anyone believe we know how to put in checks and balances against adversarial software power? We constantly show that we can't handle responsibility but we're headed into situations where we need even more than we had before.

So of course anyone who sees the potential of power, is scared. We already have more than we've shown we can handle. I'm not saying we need to be weaker, but it's either that or else we need to grow the fuck up. Which will it be? Does anyone see signs of us growing up? Are we even trying? Guns are fine for grownups, but if you're not going to be a grownup, then maybe you shouldn't have a gun, even if that means you can't hunt quite so well. Maybe your hunger will help you grow up, and we can revisit the gun decision later.

There are many, many other defects in Amazon management. Every web page, for example, tries to sell you something else before giving full information about a product.

Playing games with prices is EXTREMELY self-destructive. People buy much more from companies they know they can trust. When a company can't be trusted, customers must spend time thinking carefully about every item before buying.

Amazon abuses employees, according to news reports:

Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (Aug. 15, 2015)

Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (Feb. 23, 2014)

Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany (February 19, 2013)

Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, owns a spaceflight company, Blue Origin. Would you fly into space with a company whose owner makes abusive web pages?

I remember posting about it back when VW diesel cheating was making rounds.

The article is mixing up two different things, and pretending that they are connected. Der Spiegel says that the automakers met in secret to discuss “the technology, costs, suppliers, and even the exhaust gas purification of its diesel vehicles." Then, separately, VW implemented a cheating system to dodge the emissions testing, with other automakers doing similar things, although to lesser degrees.

But the article implies that these two things are connected. Documentation, however, pretty well shows that the original plan of VW was to buy a license for the Mercedes "blueTec" technology, but they abandoned this plan when the Chief Operating Officer changed, who favored using their own developed technology (TDI). TDI didn't work as well as expected, necessitating the cheat.

Der Spiegel attempts to imply that the collusions were to agree on how to cheat, but from the evidence, it looks like the "collusion" was exactly the opposite of what Der Spiegel implies: the "collusion" was to collaborate on technology to avoid producing emissions, but when that collaboration fell apart, they shifted to cheating.

New York Times article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/1...
Wall Street Journal article here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/v...

and the robot/drones become (practically) useless or they have enough autonomy to kill on their own? (Which may be violation of some new UN rules on autonomous robots used in war).

Either way, it's not good. Is it likely that an adversary would be able to cut off communications? I'm wondering if there is a failsafe method of communicating with autonomous drones and robots outdoors with a clear line of sight to the sky directly above them. What you need is a satellite with a high powered maser (microwave laser) being able to cut through any jamming and the robot/drone having a high gain directional antennae pointed at the satellite. (If they also had masers on board then presumably could talk back.)

Of course this would only work when the satellite is viewable but if they had enough assets in space (like the GPS satellite constellation) maybe at least one satellite would be in view at a time. Bandwidth, of course, could be quite limited compared to local transmitters but as a backup system it might keep the system from becoming completely helpless (or completely deadly).

This is just speculation of course but perhaps Elon Musk's super constellation of 4000 internet satellites could carry these masers as well. Then they'd almost assuredly have a relatively un-jammable connection (and if his constellation is really going to provide internet for the entire world, they'll have plenty of bandwidth). Maybe if he cuts a deal with the U.S. military, they'll subsidize his constellation in order to put these masers on each satellite.

[I'm assuming that this system would be pretty un-jammable because, with the drone/robot's antennae pointed a a single point(s) in the sky, local jamming would be pretty ineffective. It's a twist on the idea behind the "Northpoint" communications system, but the signal you want to get would be from space not from the ground (the Northpoint system was the other way around). http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04...

Of course the enemy could knock down the satellites or use a nuke-powered EMP blast to fry all the electronics but in that case I think we would be worried about much more than some drones and robots on a battlefield.

His mother was 100 percent white.

Nope.

He called himself black http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04... to race-bait and pander.

Yes, yes, blame the black man for being black. He should have told us he was as white as a lily.

Probably the most racist thing he accomplished during his presidency was to deny his white ancestry.

But he didn't. In fact, he accepted a certificate of them.

So how the heck is his blackness part of why could couldn't achieve his goals?!?

Ask the people who resisted anything and everything he did, including the Birther in Chief. You do realize that it was not about Obama, but about them.

His mother was 100 percent white.

Nope.

He called himself black http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04... to race-bait and pander.

Yes, yes, blame the black man for being black. He should have told us he was as white as a lily.

Probably the most racist thing he accomplished during his presidency was to deny his white ancestry.

But he didn't. In fact, he accepted a certificate of them.

So how the heck is his blackness part of why could couldn't achieve his goals?!?

Ask the people who resisted anything and everything he did, including the Birther in Chief. You do realize that it was not about Obama, but about them.

Absolutely. +1. Demos got pissed at "unconstitutional" crap Bush did. Repos got pissed at "unconstitutional" crap Obama did...some of the very stuff that Bush did. And of course, Bush was also *mostly* following precedent. But each new precedent makes it easier for the next president.

sr

Not that Obama was perfect by any means, but he did try to get Congress to remove some of the crazy powers the President now has but the GOP wanted those powers if it won so they refused. Or maybe it was just because Obama was black. Honestly, I can't even tell anymore why the GOP hated him so much there is video of it's leaders publicly stating they will oppose anything Obama does, no matter what it is. They weren't banking on Trump winning, though, and now the most unstable, thin-skinned, easily manipulated, foolish, childish, moron on the planet has scary, relatively unchecked power.

His mother was 100 percent white. He called himself black http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04... to race-bait and pander. Probably the most racist thing he accomplished during his presidency was to deny his white ancestry. So how the heck is his blackness part of why could couldn't achieve his goals?!?