Slashdot Mirror

Nations did not "arise" from anything; they're an accident of history.....European "nations" were multilingual and multicultural. There's no country border in Western Europe that follows (even roughly) some kind of traditional linguistic or cultural watershed...

If you said even half of this crap in front of an academic audience you would probably be thrown at bananas and nuts, and not for racist reasons. Try to cross the border between Spain and France and you'll see that people will suddenly start speaking french, try to cross from Austria to Italy, and people will suddenly speak Italian. And you'll also see that lifestyle and architecture are very different, even at few kilometers from the shared border. An unbelievable magic.

Anyways, two "accidents of history" are holding general elections in the next few months: France and the Netherlands. In both countries anti-EU parties are widely leading the polls. Same story in Italy and Austria that are voting in 2017-18, while the parties that share your views of a "multicultural cesspool united europe" are being wiped out. The most curious thing is that usually progressive (regressive) people like you should be horrified by the EU-mandated economic policies, which are brutally neoliberal, as the Greeks have been learning. I guess the ideology of a "United Multicultural Cesspool Europe" has probably overshadowed your Marxist past, which was probably far healthier.

Anyways, enjoy yesterday's statements by the EU president, he probably learned history far better than you:

EU chief Tusk slams utopian 'illusions' of united Europe
http://uk.reuters.com/article/...

A carbon price is a proxy for the missing external costs of coal power, so it helps raise the wholesale price to better reflect its true cost (which is around double current wholesale prices). This alone encourages alternatives - both demand for carbon-neutral alternative power, and investment in further renewable generation.

But of course, the revenue from that didn't vanish; it was funneled back into industry adaption schemes and consumer tax cuts. And it worked, driving emissions down significantly, until it was repealed in 2014 (at which point they immediately started rising again.

You mention industry adaption schemes like that's a bad thing. It's a required thing. You can't legislate someone out of business and not provide an exit strategy. That's a good way for them to fight you tooth and nail the entire way. People will lose their jobs if/when coal goes away. As a coal/natural gas worker, I've been to many former coal towns and poverty, drug abuse, and crime are very quick to creep in when the coal money runs out. We're talking about intentionally destroying lives and communities here.

The green movement is winning. I can't stop that, nobody can. It is inevitable. I have to give the environmentalists credit, they fought persistently over a long period of time. They won, or they will win. But now it is very important that we take care of those who will be harmed by the transition. If coal-free truly is "better for all of us in the long run", then surely the green movement can afford some compassion for those who found themselves on the opposite side of the argument. It isn't anyone's fault they were born to parents who live(d) in a coal town. Most people would not choose that life if they had another option. If sinking the coal boat needs to happen, common decency demands that we rescue the victims on that boat.

A carbon price is a proxy for the missing external costs of coal power, so it helps raise the wholesale price to better reflect its true cost (which is around double current wholesale prices). This alone encourages alternatives - both demand for carbon-neutral alternative power, and investment in further renewable generation.

But of course, the revenue from that didn't vanish; it was funneled back into industry adaption schemes and consumer tax cuts. And it worked, driving emissions down significantly, until it was repealed in 2014 (at which point they immediately started rising again.

.... the bribe wasn't high enough and Apple called their bluff and lost. Why? src. http://www.reuters.com/article...

"However, Apple's products were not considered to be in this category, said the official, who has direct knowledge of the matter.

He declined to be named as the decision by the finance ministry is not public. A finance ministry spokesman was not immediately available for comment."

So a secret decision uh?

it's not at all a stretch to suggest that Hillary was negligent with the setting up of her server that any reasonable person would expect would see classified information traverse it

The "regular" office email system was NOT designed for classified materials either: it was rather generic. (A separate system, which is not typically characterized as "email", was intended for the classified messages.)

You imply she used her Pinto to transfer goods when she could have used the company's Lexus. BUT, the company car was a actually Yugo.

The implication that her decision put info at risk is false.

In fact, the regular office email system was eventually hacked.

(Putting classified materials on the regular office email system would be a mistake also. Whether that actually happened is still an open question. Much if not all of the reported classified stuff found was retroactively classified.)

I'll assume from that comment that you're not an experienced stock investor. I think you confuse "profits" with the term I used of "return on invested capital." Here are links to the the financials of Apple, AT&T and Verizon.

Look at the bottom of each under the "Management Effectiveness" section. The numbers in that section and other numbers on those pages suggest that Apple, who is the most successful name-brand mobile phone producer, is earning several times as much money on each invested dollar as the other two, who are the commodity mobile carriers.

Although not all corporate management is as smart as Apple's, Tim Cook and his colleagues would never deploy their capital in such a poor business as commodity mobile phone service when they can earn several times as much deploying that same capital in some form of their existing business - assuming they can come up with the next 'i'-whatever-it-is.

That could change in the far future if Apple phones ever became commoditized the way Android phones are. For the time being, though, they are making a lot more money per dollar of investment than anybody who sells the carrier service those phones depend on. As the old song goes: Nice work if you can get it.

I'll assume from that comment that you're not an experienced stock investor. I think you confuse "profits" with the term I used of "return on invested capital." Here are links to the the financials of Apple, AT&T and Verizon.

Look at the bottom of each under the "Management Effectiveness" section. The numbers in that section and other numbers on those pages suggest that Apple, who is the most successful name-brand mobile phone producer, is earning several times as much money on each invested dollar as the other two, who are the commodity mobile carriers.

Although not all corporate management is as smart as Apple's, Tim Cook and his colleagues would never deploy their capital in such a poor business as commodity mobile phone service when they can earn several times as much deploying that same capital in some form of their existing business - assuming they can come up with the next 'i'-whatever-it-is.

That could change in the far future if Apple phones ever became commoditized the way Android phones are. For the time being, though, they are making a lot more money per dollar of investment than anybody who sells the carrier service those phones depend on. As the old song goes: Nice work if you can get it.

I'll assume from that comment that you're not an experienced stock investor. I think you confuse "profits" with the term I used of "return on invested capital." Here are links to the the financials of Apple, AT&T and Verizon.

Look at the bottom of each under the "Management Effectiveness" section. The numbers in that section and other numbers on those pages suggest that Apple, who is the most successful name-brand mobile phone producer, is earning several times as much money on each invested dollar as the other two, who are the commodity mobile carriers.

Although not all corporate management is as smart as Apple's, Tim Cook and his colleagues would never deploy their capital in such a poor business as commodity mobile phone service when they can earn several times as much deploying that same capital in some form of their existing business - assuming they can come up with the next 'i'-whatever-it-is.

That could change in the far future if Apple phones ever became commoditized the way Android phones are. For the time being, though, they are making a lot more money per dollar of investment than anybody who sells the carrier service those phones depend on. As the old song goes: Nice work if you can get it.

" because its unlikely you'll lose more that one unexpectedly"
When something happens that's bad enough to trip a nuke plant offline, it usually affects a sizable chunk of the grid.
And getting your nuke plant back online isn't trivial.

Here's an example full of irony - in late Feb 2008, a sudden decline in wind production required the Texas grid operators to cut power to several large interruptible industrial customers, dropping over 1.1 GW of demand within 10 minutes.
So a near crisis was averted and a big pile of fodder was grown for the anti-wind crowd who still bring this near-miss event as a testament to the dangers of reliance on intermittent power.

http://www.reuters.com/article...

But the last 2 lines of the Reuters link above mentions an actual outage that the renewable energy detractors *never* bring up - the *very same day* in Florida an electrical fire at a substation in Miami triggered a cascading failure that knocked Turkey Point Nuclear Station offline and caused a blackout affecting 3 million across all the way to Tampa & Daytona and it was at least 4 hours before power was restored.

http://content.time.com/time/n...

"Just like in Germany, when sometimes they can't even supply 2% of demand"

Looking at Fraunhofer's charts of electricity production for the past 6 years, those times are quite rare or coincide with high solar output.
But, yes, intermittency is a concern. That said, Germany has had pretty darn good forecasting in place since about 2009.
And, more importantly they have a modern grid with good interlinks to other markets, something the USA could improve domestically.
https://www.energy-charts.de/p...
The Tres Amigas Superstation, if it ever gets built, will be of tremendous benefit to ERCOT and the southern grids.

You mean you present a defensive piece produced by the Bush White House? You don't source it, but it comes from the Office of the Press Secretary. Which reveals a lot about its character and purpose. Notice the focus on blaming others for stopping any reforms? What a surprise that it serves to castigate others in an attempt at exoneration of the President. It doesn't even name a single other Republican politician, which says a lot about the partisan nature of it as well. Why not?

Where's mention of Bush's lack of support for bank regulation? Where's mention of his support for zero-downpayment mortgages? I don't even see one mention of checking to make sure banks and other financial institutions were actually being honest when dealing with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Why not do that? Why only talking about how "If only we'd regulated the GSEs, this would never have happened!" and no calling out of the banks on their own deliberate crimes that they committed to enrich themselves? It's a conspicuous silence.

Because it's not meant to be a true picture, but present what they wanted to say.

Look, you want to show me Bush had a defensive piece written where they cherry-picked the things they wanted to pull from others, while ignoring their own mistakes? What a surprise.

That's what your quoted material is.

But at least admit who produced it. You certainly didn't write it up yourself.

Show me George W. Bush taking responsibility, that'll be more believable.

And none of it will mean the banks did not choose to lie when they created their MBSs, when they pursued their foreclosures, and when they took the government's money. For their own profits.

Wells Fargo, admitted to the fraud. Countrywide was convicted. Others as well.

They chose their own behavior, they weren't forced, the government did not hold any guns to their heads forcing them to lie. They knew what they were doing, and why.

Just like you chose not to source your material. Was that oversight, or did you realize how it would look?

You mean you present a defensive piece produced by the Bush White House? You don't source it, but it comes from the Office of the Press Secretary. Which reveals a lot about its character and purpose. Notice the focus on blaming others for stopping any reforms? What a surprise that it serves to castigate others in an attempt at exoneration of the President. It doesn't even name a single other Republican politician, which says a lot about the partisan nature of it as well. Why not?

Where's mention of Bush's lack of support for bank regulation? Where's mention of his support for zero-downpayment mortgages? I don't even see one mention of checking to make sure banks and other financial institutions were actually being honest when dealing with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Why not do that? Why only talking about how "If only we'd regulated the GSEs, this would never have happened!" and no calling out of the banks on their own deliberate crimes that they committed to enrich themselves? It's a conspicuous silence.

Because it's not meant to be a true picture, but present what they wanted to say.

Look, you want to show me Bush had a defensive piece written where they cherry-picked the things they wanted to pull from others, while ignoring their own mistakes? What a surprise.

That's what your quoted material is.

But at least admit who produced it. You certainly didn't write it up yourself.

Show me George W. Bush taking responsibility, that'll be more believable.

And none of it will mean the banks did not choose to lie when they created their MBSs, when they pursued their foreclosures, and when they took the government's money. For their own profits.

Wells Fargo, admitted to the fraud. Countrywide was convicted. Others as well.

They chose their own behavior, they weren't forced, the government did not hold any guns to their heads forcing them to lie. They knew what they were doing, and why.

Just like you chose not to source your material. Was that oversight, or did you realize how it would look?

Nobody has presented public evidence that ANY were clearly classified at the time she sent/received them.

Zilcho.

Irrelevant, and false: Dozens of Clinton emails were classified from the start, U.S. rules suggest

Plus, some things are "born classified". They do not need "clear markings" to be classified, and she knew this.

Oh, and then there is the email in which she ordered someone to strip the classified markings from a document. Quote: "If they can't, turn into non paper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure." That's a smoking gun in my book. If you or I did that, we'd be in federal prison right now.

roll your own email server. Don't put it anywhere secure

Hey, the regular State Dept. email server was a generic box, and was hacked. We are comparing Pinto's to Yugo's here, not to Cadillacs.

Pundits keep implying she skipped "the good system". There was no good system for "regular" work emails.

Alcohol problems not uncommon among surgeons: study
Boom

And are you that thick that you do not understand that Apple had to refuse that openly put demand (or suffer a sharp drop in sales because their customers would not trust them anymore) ? Their refusal tells you absolutily [sic] nothing about their ability to enter their phones or not.

Last I checked, Apple was not "the phone company." They are a manufacturer. Maybe you are ignorant of what a "phone company" is. Let me help you: https://www.google.com/#q=phon... Do you see Apple on that page?

You original assertion was that the phone company could use their sooper dooper hacking ability to defeat encryption. Are you moving the goal posts again? I have no doubt Apple has the ability to defeat their own encryption methods on some phones running some version of ios. I have never said otherwise. When you can point out that the FBI goes to Verizon or AT&T to get plaintext on an iPhone, I will be impressed.

You wrote --> The phone company can, and does have all kinds of (often called "debugging") access to your phone you have little to no clue about, and which, even if you knew, you can't do anything about. [...] Absolutily nothing that is stored on your phone or anything your phone can do that is outside the reach of a phone company, and thus the "law enforcement" agencies.

Well, I call bullshit. I am asking you to give me proof. I asked earlier and you wanted me to do your homework for you. You want me to prove a negative.

Yes, rather voluminous ... What was it, way less than 50 IIRC.

Your memory is either faulty or you are willfully ignorant. On Slashdot, articles have reported between 100 and 400 at the Federal level and many more if you add in local cases awaiting resolution of the New York case resolution before litigating. A New York Manhattan Prosecutor is on record for 175 himself.

Citation: http://abcnews.go.com/Technolo...

Comey himself mentioned the following: He (Director Comey) also said that since October 2015, the FBI has examined "about 4,000 digital devices" and was unable to unlock "approximately 500."

How many of those devices were actually encrypted?

Citation from Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... and Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article...

Pardon me ? If the FBI has the Law on their side, why should they start with threats ? What you are saying there is that those feds legally have nothing to go on, but try to bully others into doing their bidding anyway.

You do realize that is what TFA is about, right? The FBI threatening more litigation against tech companies using encryption by default.

And yours speeks [sic] loudly of plain-old gullibility. Don't blindly believe everything you read, especially if the ones claiming something have much to win by you believeng [sic] it.

I do not believe everything I read, including you. I am still waiting for you to cite one single case where a "phone company," which is an entity distinctly different from a phone manufacturer, hacked a cell phone for any law enforcement agency and successfully defeated encryption permitting them to prosecute. I do believe that Apple does have the resources currently to defeat encryption on some of their phones. I also believe that Apple will work to remove that capability to prevent being caught in the position of being "bullied" (as you said) again, provided the Burr-Feinstein bill goes nowhere. And as I

You mean the corporations ran away with the people's money?

No he meant the government nationalized entire industries and seized their assets. Here's the rundown. The rest is Socialism SOP for running out of other people's money.

Cubicle Politics 101: "Don't complain without supplying alternatives". The public-sector alternatives are not so great either.

The cars are highly profitable with margins of over 25%.

Apparently Tesla is losing $4,000 (-5%) per Model S sold.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-teslamotors-cash-insight-idUSKCN0QE0DC20150810

Trying to pass yourself off as a happy customer Elon?

So instead, you make your own childish comment about them not providing any references and you provide a Wikipedia link that proves their point. If you had read your own link,

Yes I provided a link, so the reader can make up their own mind. Do you know the difference between that and un-referenced claims of fact (that appear all too often in this place)?

you could have noticed a reference to emails that "were classified from the start." and "born classified". But since it seems to be too much effort to look at reference #90 in that sea of information, I will simplify it for you by providing that link here.

I read that, it is an opinion piece open to interpretation. Having experience with Federal Government Security classifications, I assure this type of thing occurs on a daily basis. Nothing in your link is a smoking gun (yet - maybe there's more, but right now, nothing).

But perhaps your goal was to sound informative and hope that the truth would be buried too deep for most people to actually understand it.

My goal was to add to the discussion by providing citations, so people can do their own research. You did that so it clearly worked.

Just my attempt to add something to this discussion. The false claims still seem to be promoted but evidence clearly shows the laws about handling classified information were broken.

I disagree. And instead of trial by media, maybe we let due process take it's course. Because I assure you, there are people much a smarter than us, who hate Clinton much more than anyone here, and they want blood.
So who to say at this point, if I had to bet money, I say she's fine and will survive intact and be the next president. You may not like that, but it won't make it any less true.

I don't know what the real story is

So instead, you make your own childish comment about them not providing any references and you provide a Wikipedia link that proves their point. If you had read your own link, you could have noticed a reference to emails that "were classified from the start." and "born classified". But since it seems to be too much effort to look at reference #90 in that sea of information, I will simplify it for you by providing that link here.

But perhaps your goal was to sound informative and hope that the truth would be buried too deep for most people to actually understand it. Just my attempt to add something to this discussion. The false claims still seem to be promoted but evidence clearly shows the laws about handling classified information were broken.

To have setup and used her own e-mail server for "official government business, including Sensitive But Unclassified information" is [very bad]

BUT, what makes you believe the alternative was any safer?

Amazon already own it's own color screen technology,.
http://www.reuters.com/article...
https://www.google.se/search?q...

I wouldn't really settle for the very poor colors of the Triton screen. Maybe it would be an improvement for Dungeons & Dragons rule books (or not due to poorer resolution?) but it's too shitty for comics. Why would I read that on that screen rather than IPS or OLED?

I opened the second link but I can not really follow it / don't know what to look at.

I guess for speedometers(?) it may be fine.
Check Mirasol: http://the-digital-reader.com/...
And Liquavista: http://the-digital-reader.com/...
The later is the one which look the best IMHO. But Amazon hasn't put it into a kindle even though they own the company. They will know much more about the capabilities of the display than I do though =P

The last concept unit you linked look "better."
It doesn't have to have perfect color some is better than none.
The problem with Mirasol or atleast in some versions of this is that it seem to look like say butterfly wings: http://www.netbooknews.com/wp-...
I think it worked about the same by working with very small gaps too (matching wave-length of light.)

Rueters urges all nuclear plants be under international security control. http://blogs.reuters.com/great...

Remember BNP Paribas, was punished for violated sanctions. Yes, Cuba is only sanctioned by one country, the most powerful country which dominates the world's monetary system.
If you don't believe, read "Red brotherhood at wars", which showed after the Vietnam War, Vietnam actively opened the economy and tried to make relations with Western countries, but feared of sanction by USA, only France provide several thousand dollars.

About Mexico, you don't understand? One of the most corrupted government and a capitalist country. OK, can I list other capitalist countries?

About the internet cable, the same sanctioned policy affect here. You can't trade with Cuba.

And, It seems that you don't read the report, or try not to understand. The report claimed Cuba restricts internet connection as a dictatorial country would do, as one knew about the "Iron Curtain".
Forbidden for everyday citizens because they have limited resource or expensive satellite option.

Yeah, and Venezuela is doing so good without the trade embargo. No wait, they're in economic freefall because they nationalized the oil industry and based their entire economy on it (95% of exports), and then oil crashed. Their currency is in the shitter because the government has three confusing exchange rates based on types of imports and nobody wants to import goods into the country anyway because they have no guarantee that the government won't just seize the goods in the warehouse and sell them at a price that it feels is fair. The country is teetering on the brink of default on loans, which I'm sure will really help out.

Venezuela has systematically chased away anyone willing to do any investment in their country by way of stealing the infrastructure and investments they made, and then they wonder why they are going the route of Zimbabwe. And it's the people that will suffer - you can bet that the Maduro government still has a full pantry, and plenty of nice big TVs to watch, and Land Rovers in the driveway.

I was all set to be stoked about Solar City until I found out they were buying panels from someone who uses slave labor to manufacture them (Suniva) ... more like conniva. Is that better or worse than buying them from China? Still can't decide.

Which GS people committed which crimes for which they should be in prison? Please be specific.

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO. See the presentence investigative report on him and Goldman from 2010.

He traded against his clients, which is a crime. Then he lied to the FBI and Congress about doing so. That's conflict of interest, fraud and perjury.

Now it's up to you to explain why he should NOT have gone to jail for these crimes other than the fact that Goldman controls the Fed. Please be specific.

http://www.rollingstone.com/po...

http://www.reuters.com/article...

What about the biomass decay from all that extra food we'll be throwing away? What's the point of growing more if we're just going to let it rot? We don't suffer from food shortages, we suffer from de facto food rationing. The CO2 thing? Replace the hydrocarbon fuels with something else. The only impediment there is the political corruption.

Except that scenario doesn't exist. It isn't like the Boston bombers, Paris attackers, Brussels attackers used encrypted communication. In the case of the Boston bombers it was the government's own incompetence that screwed those people, it isn't like Russia warned the US about those 2 ass clowns, well shit. Also it isn't like the leader of the Pairs attack was featured in ISIS's magazine, well fuck me. Since is has come out that the Paris attackers and Brussels attackers were in contact and seemingly related it sure seem like the authorities suck balls at doing their jobs and may be should be gathering less information on everyone and instead look into people who are interviewed by pig fuckers monthly or are told by some other country to keep an eye on. I also remember a while ago seeing that the FBI or CIA stating that encryption hasn't prevented them from getting the brake they needed in any of their cases. I would cite the article but with their recent about face and encryption being in the news a tone that appears to have been buried and I can't find it.

The U.S. government's actions against ISIS cause ISIS, in some areas, to have more support. It's like world-wide advertising: "Want to participate in something big? Fight the U.S. government."

Mostly secret agencies of the U.S. government use violence as a reason to be violent. Iraq was a country with a violent dictator, Saddam Hussein. People inside the U.S. government saw that as a reason to be more violent, and as a way to make money. The U.S. government has been FAR more violent than was Saddam Hussein. That was after the U.S. government encouraged Saddam Hussein to be violent toward Iran.

Those who work for violent U.S. government agencies can get promotions is they can find more ways to encourage violence.

Before the U.S. government invaded Iraq, it was a country. Now Iraq is no longer a managed country, and is destroyed as a society. The cost from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers: "... expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest".

Some people in the U.S. had bad childhoods and love violence so much that they are willing to be poor because of violence. The U.S. is no longer a democracy, it is partly a dictatorship of the violent and partly a dictatorship of the rich. Violent-minded people have control.

By some measures, the U.S government is the most violent in the world.

Translation: free of public oversight and the threat of whistle blowers exposing corruption

My first thought was "CO2 as a refrigerant - its kind of toxic isn't it? I wouldn't want to be around if a pipe broke."

Then I thought "Ammonia is also used as a commercial refrigerant, and that is also toxic. Which is worse?"

I haven't found any good answer online. Nobody seems to want to talk about toxic concentrations of ammonia in air, just in blood. Then there are all sorts of other complications - what quantities and pressures would be used for comparable CO2 and NH3 refrigeration plants? Does the lower density of NH3 mean it will disperse faster? Are you a whole lot worse off after being nearly killed by NH3 than after being nearly killed by CO2? Is CO2 more likely to take you by surprise, so you don't realize your danger until it is too late?

In summary - is it better to be near a catastrophically failed NH3 or CO2 refrigeration plant? What about other refrigerants used at a similar scale?

Here's an NH3 refrigerant accident: http://www.reuters.com/article...
And here's a CO2 one: http://www.fluorocarbons.org/m...
Interestingly this last link refers to CO2's 'low toxicity'.

Just to be a bit more clear, either a democrat or a republican will win. "Competitive" hardly seems to matter or even describe the situation. It's more like a tag team, or a good cop/bad cop thing, no real opposition per se. The most successful aspect of this circus is the ratings and subsequent ad rates, and Trump is promising to not bore the audience by "becoming overly presidential" to keep those numbers up. Maturity is *off the table*

Well, the "expensive" part is correct. But claiming it "can't fly, can't fight" is just not true.

A lot of people disagree:

Pentagon’s big budget F-35 fighter ‘can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run’
http://blogs.reuters.com/great...

The F-35 may have big problems fighting at long range
http://www.businessinsider.com...

The $400 Billion Military Jet That Can't Fly in Cloudy Weather
http://www.alternet.org/fail-4...

RAND Corp: F35 Can’t Turn, Can’t Climb, Can’t Run
http://www.stopthef35.com/rand...

Air Force Admits: Our New Stealth Fighter Can’t Fight
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

The F-35 Can't Beat The Plane It's Replacing In A Dogfight: Report
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.c... ...and so on.

Even McDonald's workers need $15/hr ($30k/year)

Most fast food workers don't work even close to 40 hours a week, 30 hours now being the cutoff for being considered "full time" and thus eligible for health insurance. The average is more like 24. So even at $15/hr (ridiculous, I agree), that's only about $18k/yr.

Are you enjoying those nice diesel boats travelling around the world to deliver those rare earth materials and additional parts needed to build an hybrid?

Each battery pack uses 10–15 kg (22–33 lb) of lanthanum, and each Prius electric motor contains 1 kg (2 lb) of neodymium; production of the car is described as "the biggest user of rare earths of any object in the world. - Reuters

Not to mention that they're used on Fugly cars like the Prius

Let's hope so. US government agencies have caused a lot of damage by the way they handled this case, blowing everything hugely out of proportion, making heaps of false and/or questionable accusations and acting like this is the first case of tampering with emission tests ever. The whole affair seems very dishonest and hypocritical. It is nothing more than an attempt to grab money, to damage the reputation of a competitor to U.S. government-backed car manufacturers and to distract from EPA's own failures in the recent past. It is suspicously similar to the way Toyota was attacked because of a problem with accelerator pedals that probably never existed.

It is more than fair that VW should fix the issues at its own cost and that owners should be compensated for their inconvenience. If it can be established that any environmental damage was done, it is also reasonable that VW should pay for compensation projects administered by an independent third party. Anything beyond that is, in my opinion, unfairly taking advantage of the situation. Let's not forget that only a few VW employees, who are already facing criminal prosecution, were responsible for this violation and similar cases involving American manufacturers (e.g. GM's Cadillacs) were handled with small fines and little publicity. Moreover, the EA189-equipped cars do not actually pollute more than most comparable Euro 5 diesels (or even many Euro 6 diesels). The only difference is that other manufacturers (as far as we know) design around test conditions, rather than checking for them explicitly (although the Opel Zafira case suggests otherwise and the Renault Espace case is also very fishy).

It is clear that it's a bad thing. It will increase ocean temperatures and alter ocean pH levels, causing massive changes to a food source that feeds hundreds of millions of people. It will shift rainbelts, rendering currently arable land far less useful to agriculture (or far more expensive to keep under cultivation), while taking marginal agricultural land completely out of the food supply. It will see a slow but steady inundation of coastal areas, again, effecting hundreds of millions of people. It is already seeing formerly "tropical" diseases creeping to higher latitudes.

As to accusations of crony capitalism, how is not pricing fossil fuels for the actual costs they incur anything but handing fossil fuel companies probably the largest set of financial subsidies in human history? Do you think continue to allow people like the Kochs to profit massively off of an energy source that is heating the planet (and no, there's no debate that it's happening, not in the scientific circles, the WSJ is not a science journal and Frank Spencer stopped being a climatologist a couple of decades ago) anything but crony capitalism?

For chrissakes, even the Saudis know the days of oil as a major energy source are numbered, which is why they're working to create one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in history: http://www.reuters.com/article... .

If the market was able to produce a solution on its own, it would have been now. The market is going to need a kick in the nuts, and that kick in the nuts is making fossil fuels more expensive.

Not really, if that becomes a problem, we'll just re-institute the ban on exporting oil from the US. We've done it before.

That's the sort of stupid I expect from someone who's doomed to repeat history. Hint: first you have to lift the existing ban, and, it didn't work last time either - because you're a bunch of greedy, deceitful, cheating, ignorant bastards (mostly).

Anyway, we can disagree about the transition time, but consider this: The average lifespan of a coal power plant is about 40 years - and many of them are due for replacement fairly soon. Knowing what we now know, it would be insane to replace them with more coal plants

Logically, I understand your viewpoint... but consider this:

http://energydesk.greenpeace.o...

"According to a new Greenpeace analysis, in the first nine months of 2015 Chinaâ(TM)s central and provincial governments issued environmental approvals to 155 coal-fired power plants â" thatâ(TM)s four per week."

At the end of the day, the goal to replace fossil fuels runs into a $20 trillion dollar roadblock... money... The known reserves in the ground are already accounted for above ground on balance sheets...

http://www.reuters.com/article...

"The largest U.S. independent refiners are bullish on domestic gasoline demand as super-cheap fuel and the lure of bigger vehicles entice more consumers.

Valero Energy Corp and Phillips 66 both say they are in "max gasoline mode," pumping out as much as they can as a mild winter, economic uncertainty and a stinging slump in oil drilling squeezed U.S. diesel demand.

They still see export demand growth for both gasoline and diesel, but at home expectations are for rising gasoline demand, despite concerns the U.S. economy could soften in 2016."

As gas gets cheaper, demand for it will pick up. There are over a billion cars in the world, many of them 20 years old. EVs will continue to grow of course, but last year 75 million cars were sold world-wide, about half a million of them EVs (most of those plug in hybrids that still use gas).

This path isn't going to change by 2050. Even if we wanted it to, it can't, because of economics. Many governments, for better or worse, are addicted to coal, oil, and natural gas, they won't allow them to change faster, we'll have an economic disaster on our hands.

Or do you really think Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the USA are going to leave all those trillions of dollars in the ground?

I'm guessing US diplomats can probably give us a really good reason for the unflinching support of the Kingdom ... but I sure as hell can't think of one.

I can think of 60 billion reasons, and there's plenty more to come. Do you really want them to start buying from the Russians?

So, when they say her e-mail has classified information... I say: No doubt!
Now, if they say she sent information that was MARKED as classified at the time she sent it... Yes, that's bad! She should be penalized for that.

I am waiting to hear what you say when you realize that "they say" some of the classified emails were born classified.

You cannot always know what some other agency is going to deem classified. Yes, the nuclear launch codes are going to be classified. No, the starbucks order is not going to be classified. In the middle is a gray area going from offwhite to damn near black, with some being pretty obviously classified and some almost certainly classified and she should have known it. More importantly, if you write sentence 1 (unclassified by itself) and then write sentence 2 (unclassified by itself), the paragraph can easily be classified at a high level. That's why you have people whose job it is to classify and declassify things.

To date, the things she did that I can tell: 1) received unmarked emails that 'follow' classified documents that the NSA and CIA say should have been classified; 2) told someone to fax a document without sensitive markings (might have been classified, don't know) 3) received and sent out emails that should have been classified regarding the verbal communications between foreign governments and the US government. See here.

I think that the 3 is the worse, because it particularly relates to her job and supposed training. hat is, information told to the government in confidence by foreign governments is the State Dept bread and butter, and so should have been immediately classified and handled properly.

The closest thing I can find is: this which says that certain unmarked emails 'passed through her server' (whatever that means? Did someone send her something? Did she send someone something) that 'tracked' classified documents. So: someone sends you an email, and some years later, the CIA says that the information is the same as information in a classified document. How much trouble are you in?

Real autonomous driving has much more input data than visibility of white lines.

And no true scotsman pays attention to the white lines on the highway.

Here's a little bit of recent self-driving car news for you, from Reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article...

Volvo's North American CEO, Lex Kerssemakers, lost his cool as the automaker's semi-autonomous prototype sporadically refused to drive itself during a press event at the Los Angeles Auto Show.

"It can't find the lane markings!" Kerssemakers griped to Mayor Eric Garcetti, who was at the wheel. "You need to paint the bloody roads here!"

Former Russian deputy prime minister and Putin critic Boris Nemtsov would have liked a word with you, but he can't ... but he was silenced with extreme prejudice.

I'm not sure that's true. Forcing someone to sit behind a wheel and wait until the car beeps at them to take control is asking for accidents.

More so or less so than forcing someone to sit behind the wheel on ludicrously long journeys stopping only to eat, shit, drink coffee, and maybe a 15min power nap because otherwise they can't keep their eyes open? Well okay that may not be 100% accurate. Sometimes the drivers also stop to take some harder drugs to help them through their long hauls.

You don't need to question whether that is true. The stats are building themselves continuously. So far Google's self driving cars which are largely autonomous and still have people to take control are starting to rank in a really high percentile when it comes to accident free driving.

So according to you, universities should host anything for free, including child pornography.

That's YOUR OPINION, not mine. Everyone knows that the child pornography websites are operated by the FBI. Your federal tax dollars at work.

A Washington state school administrator has lost a high-profile bid to suppress evidence against him secured by the FBI during an operation in which it secretly ran one of the Internet's largest child pornography websites in order to catch its users.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-crime-childporn-idUSKCN0V72D5

By comparison, research and development for solar energy was given only $302 million; and wind energy just $123 million. http://www.reuters.com/article...

The better question is how many are applying to do such research? And have a viable plan for accomplishing something?

Oil companies have at least proven that they find things for that money. If some random crackpot comes up asking for money to do wind research, he needs to have a pretty good plan for getting some results. Giving money to totally unproven random startups or other small companies for alternative energy is not a path to success.

They closes thing they get to a subsidy is what the government buys from them for their own use, for the reserve, and what they give out to poor people to heat.

Last I heard (2013), oil companies were getting on the order of $5.1 billion in subsidies for exploration. https://newrepublic.com/articl...

Categorization of oil under the tax code as a form of domestic manufacturing eligible for a 6% deduction of net income, claiming foreign royalty payments as a credit against American taxes, and deducting numerous costs associated with the drilling process is absolutely an insane handout that other energy suppliers are excluded from. http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/29/...

By comparison, research and development for solar energy was given only $302 million; and wind energy just $123 million. http://www.reuters.com/article...