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This is similar to what Ontario is looking at as well. Especially since things like disability and so on pay literally shit. If a person is unable to work, and is on disability they're capped to a maximum of $1,100/mo. You may get back some money via various programs like housing allowance(upto $350/mo) when you file income taxes. You may be able to apply for welfare(I say may) because I know people on disability who were unable to. And that's what you're expected to live on. Around here an appt in the poorer areas is still going to run you $770/mo. Income assisted housing? At least a 3 year wait at this point.

It's been guessed that the program would remove welfare, disability and roll it into a UBI program which would cap out at $23k/year(which is the poverty level). As you earn money, the amount is deducted from your UBI, until you pass the minimum $23k level at which point it fully falls off.

I know a few people who'd be able to actually survived on a UBI, because they're barely scraping by now on disability. And they've been fighting with workmans compensation for 16 years after being injured on the job. Just remember here in Ontario: Workers Comp is for the employer, not the worker. There was even a huge report showing that workers comp was turning down people who should be paid by the system because they're no longer able to work. So anyone working in Ontario who get's hurt? You're looking at a life in poverty, and that's if you're lucky. I've met more people on the streets during volunteer work then I can count who can't work and were either kicked off comp or simply refused. Most recent case was a guy who's leg had been crushed by heavy machinery and couldn't walk and required a PSW for day-to-day life. Who now basically lives at the local Lutheran church because that's the only one would help him.

"Even if the most ridiculous of climate models it will take 100s of years for the sea level to rise 10s of feet."

Except if their models which you have already called rediculous, are wrong. I fully expect to be fleeing sea level rise in my lifetime, and I didn't ten years ago.

The reason is that people think of climate change as a linear progression, when really it is probably non-linear. In which case we may see severe results in the next 10-20 years if we haven't already started to see them.

"The fact that it can go erratically, and often abruptly, from the neighborhood of one center to the other is the essence of a chaotic behavior. This property manifests itself as a sensitivity to initial conditions : any small imprecision in the knowledge of one parameter will make it impossible to know where the system is going to be after some finite time: in other words, it is unpredictable."

http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/r...

People like you, who are all like "not my problem! future generations will adapt" may be surprised what the next few years have in store for us all. You doubt the climate models being accurate, I do as well. Just in the other direction. More chaos, sooner.

http://www.thespec.com/opinion...

US Steel lied to every single person involved with their purchase of Stelco steel company, and has dragged out the case for so long, while people I know, and their families, get shafted. http://www.thespec.com/news-st.... I hate chinese/russian hackers as much as the next guy, but I could care less about US Steel and their scummy tactics.

... after your person has been seized ...

That is the due process: Ever heard of the Magna Carta? The police must state they have evidence of you committing a specific crime under a specific law; not throw you in a jail cell and forget about you. That you have the opportunity to defend yourself against those charges, is also due process: That's why you get to call a lawyer, or get a public defender (of sorts), or get bail.

Uber kicks out city bylaw officers at preliminary business meeting WRT setting up shop in a Canadian city.

http://www.thespec.com/news-st...

Personally, I would rather take uber than take a run down cab, driven by a person who doesn't know the city, let alone drive safely. My last cab ride consisted of a minivan with practically no electrical (the dashboard was lit up like a Christmas tree), bald tires, in 3 feet of snow. Let's just say I'm glad I made it home safely. All these foreigners care about is making a buck. They don't give a shit about their cars, or how they drive (and how it affects their passengers). The people who run these cab companies make back-door deals with the city so they're the only people allowed to obtain medallions, which also prevents competition. Long story short, the taxi cab business is fucked, and I'm glad Uber is taking a stand against these corrupt bastards.

There is a good article "Five reasons to blame Apple in nude celebrity photo leak", in The Hamilton Spectator. Here are the key points (read the article for elaborations).

1. The vulnerability is Security 101 stuff (even a good password, like “D0nM@tt1ngly!”, was still vulnerable).
2. The vulnerability was publicly known since May.
3. Apple defaults users into the cloud (and Apple makes it very hard to not store in the cloud).
4. Apple does not encourage two-factor authentication (it discourages this).
5. Two-factor authentication wouldn't have worked anyway (it is not actually enforced on iCloud).

I like the idea that he's spending his on advancing technology.

I love the idea of advancing tech, and it costs lots of money. Many worse uses for that money. What I'm skeptical of is that Google X is much more than a way to generate hype (which Google and Silicon Valley in general thrives on) and/or Sergei being a dilettante. The endless announcements of seriously not-ready-for-prime-time stuff seem more like a way of generating hype, as serious projects are more kept under wraps. And many of the things they work on seem "cool" more than part of any coherent business strategy or research approach.

I think that Sergei is in the same situation as Elon Musk, in that he really doesn't have to give a damn about whether or not he's spending on something that makes up part of a coherent whole, rather than an individual new business, and he really doesn't have to give a damn about whether or not it's going to make a viable self-sustaining business in 5 years or 10 years.

He has enough money to take the long view.

Technically, governments also have enough money to take the long view, but other than specific one-off projects at ITER, NILS, LHC, and similarly rare "big physics" projects, governments tend to take the "bread and circuses" approach, and time the preliminary results to the next election cycle. As a senator or congressman, you can pretty much milk any "big, hopeful project which never gets far enough along to cost Real Money(tm)" for 3 or 4 election cycles, if you are good at planning things out. So governments take a "pretend long view", unless the end goal is something military.

Nor are they deep research of the sort that Bell Labs used to do. Maybe Sergei thinks he's running the commercial version of DARPA, but he doesn't single-handedly control the company.

I think he views it more like Edison's workshop, not Bell Labs, and not DARPA, or he'd be laser-focussed on some of the projects I mentioned, and a half dozen or so others I didn't, plus his own less-obvious list of a dozen or so which he'd rather keep quiet.

Technically, he controls a large chunk of the company, but doing that doesn't mean that if he was frozen out of company decisions that his existing pool of money isn't self-sustaining, in large part, and that he's not getting large dividends. But he's really not in a lot of danger of being ousted, as long as he's doing his thing, and Larry and Eric are funding their asteroid mining venture. He's likely to get cut a fair bit of slack.

You may also remember that the Goodle RSUs ("GSUs") and ISOs are now done in non-voting stock, so it's unlikely that they would lose control of their company that way, either -- which was kind of the whole point of switching from issuing voting stock to non-voting stock in the first place. See here for details on the change-over: http://www.thespec.com/news-story/2240618-google-to-issue-non-voting-stock/

I suspect that when the hype and gee golly value of these projects dies out, so will the funding.

I suspect that IF the "hype and gee golly" ever dies out, Sergei will still have more money than God, and will still be able to do whatever the hell he likes, regardless of whether or not it results in hype.

yup

So what's wrong with racists? These days they're the only honest people left.

Cue to the Hungarian anti-Semitic politician who turns out has Jewish grandparents and wasn't to honest about it. http://www.thespec.com/news/world/article/780622--anti-semitic-hungarian-politician-discovers-jewish-roots

"The NY Times has an interesting story (reg. may be required) ... what google did to them when they found out.

Copying a New York Times article wholesale, and then using a Slashdot post to bait-and-switch readers into visiting your website rather than the Times?
Ballsy.

Doing so when the article's content is about using malicious links to artificially inflate your site's visibility?
Just. Not. Cool.

The original NY TImes article is here. Whether you approve of the Times' registration policy or not, you shouldn't support people who steal their content and use it to make money.

It will be hard for anything else to beat this for the dumbest thing I've seen on the internet today.

A CHALLENGER APPEARS!

Canada bans Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing"

Your title suggesting "Canada bans..." is misleading. The first sentence says, "The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has ruled that Dire Straits’ 1980s [unedited] hit Money for Nothing is too offensive for Canadian radio." Now try and tell me that this is is very far from the kind of crap we get here in the US with the FCC.

Which is just downright stupid, anyhow... radio stations I've listened to here in the US always play a radio-edit version which completely removes the "faggot"-lyric verse. I didn't even KNOW all the lyrics or that that I was getting a radio-edited version for the longest time.

It will be hard for anything else to beat this for the dumbest thing I've seen on the internet today.

A CHALLENGER APPEARS!

Canada bans Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing"

Here's an article on the place that may help you decide whether or not it's worthwhile. No mention is made of batteries, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't use any.

http://www.thespec.com/go/go_at_home/article/360214

Hope that gives you enough info to decide whether the place is environmentally responsible or not.

Cheers!