Slashdot Mirror

Of course it matters if you want to fix the problem. First you need to identify the problem. Which in this case seems to be corruption and not big government as you can have a really small government that does nothing but protect business interests.

Well said.

One possible fix might be to limit bribery, but that means intruding on peoples freedom.

Now I'm confused. You want to limit bribery? I see no virtue in it existing at all. (I assume you mean bribery of elected officials. People go to jail when that happens.)

As for it intruding on peoples' freedoms, I can only assume you mean limiting the freedom of people (or corporations) to contribute to political campaigns. Contributions are the only kind of "bribe" I can see fitting the situation. There are already laws that limit campaign contributions. But alas, SCOTUS has ruled that individuals, corporations, and unions can contribute unlimited amounts of money to Super PACs, and effectively hide their identities. Of course, corporations generally have far more money than individuals and unions, so it's not hard to see who benefits from this situation.

And so, I think one possible solution is to continue to evolve campaign finance reform laws.

Get a warrant. And yes, that means showing probable cause for a warrant.

About one in four accidents involve cellphone use.

Probable cause does not necessarily mean "greater than 50%".

It is a legal term, not a mathematical one.

Texas - as Red and GOP as you can get

Unlike Connecticut, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, which are Blue and restrict manufacturer-direct sales completely or to a large degree..... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... And if you think that manufacturers wanting to sell directly to consumers is a new idea, then I have a bridge to sell you.

The problem is in "success". In the sense that she held the position and had a chair pulled out and waiting when she left, Carly Fiorina is a success. In the sense that she managed to leave HP and Lucent as bombed out shells of their former selves (and took Compaq down with them), not so much.

It was that seriously brain damaged measure of merit that allowed Chainsaw Al to be handsomely rewarded for his efforts for so long before he got carted off to jail.

Eventually that'll trickle down to the end customer who'll probably see this as a $1 start charge that's refunded in say 24 hours unless the caller complains.

This is an awful idea that will hurt prepaid cell phone users (who by the way aren't even capable of spoofing their CallerID).

The real problem is MNVOs. Just bill the MNVO that originated the call. Done. No need to complicate life for pay-as-you-go users.

User:BC1278

User's current talk page:

My name is Ed Sussman. I have interest and expertise in articles around business, technology, the digital world, law, media and journalism.

I also do paid Wikipedia editing, trying always to stay strictly within the Conflict of Interest rules at WP: COI. As a COI editor, I promote the service I offer at http://whitehatwiki.com/ information I offer as required disclosure under WP: Paid.

I have a COI in regards to the following previous employers and/or schools I attended: Buzzr.com, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Federal Judicial Center, Inc. Magazine, Fast Company Magazine, Mansueto Ventures, Inc.com, FastCompany.com, Gruner + Jahr, University of Pennsylvania, The Daily Pennsylvanian, Duke Law School, Duke Law Journal.

You can presume any edits I have made for any article are on behalf of the article-subject or their employer, unless I specify otherwise.

If you ever think any of my work doesn't conform to Wikipedia policy, please let me know and I'll do my best to fix it!

User contributions: last 500, article space only, hide minor edits

User:BC1278

User's current talk page:

My name is Ed Sussman. I have interest and expertise in articles around business, technology, the digital world, law, media and journalism.

I also do paid Wikipedia editing, trying always to stay strictly within the Conflict of Interest rules at WP: COI. As a COI editor, I promote the service I offer at http://whitehatwiki.com/ information I offer as required disclosure under WP: Paid.

I have a COI in regards to the following previous employers and/or schools I attended: Buzzr.com, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Federal Judicial Center, Inc. Magazine, Fast Company Magazine, Mansueto Ventures, Inc.com, FastCompany.com, Gruner + Jahr, University of Pennsylvania, The Daily Pennsylvanian, Duke Law School, Duke Law Journal.

You can presume any edits I have made for any article are on behalf of the article-subject or their employer, unless I specify otherwise.

If you ever think any of my work doesn't conform to Wikipedia policy, please let me know and I'll do my best to fix it!

User contributions: last 500, article space only, hide minor edits

I wasn't aware that the U.S. government gave up on space.

Compared to unmanned spacecraft, landers, and rovers, sending people into space incurs enormous additional costs completely disproportional to the small increase in science gained. If/when we can get launch and life support costs down to something reasonable (currently it costs nearly 50 people's lifetime productivity just to send one person into space once), then we can begin manned space exploration in earnest. But in the meantime, unmanned space exploration gives us much better bang for the buck.

I wasn't aware that the U.S. government gave up on space.

Compared to unmanned spacecraft, landers, and rovers, sending people into space incurs enormous additional costs completely disproportional to the small increase in science gained. If/when we can get launch and life support costs down to something reasonable (currently it costs nearly 50 people's lifetime productivity just to send one person into space once), then we can begin manned space exploration in earnest. But in the meantime, unmanned space exploration gives us much better bang for the buck.

I wasn't aware that the U.S. government gave up on space.

Compared to unmanned spacecraft, landers, and rovers, sending people into space incurs enormous additional costs completely disproportional to the small increase in science gained. If/when we can get launch and life support costs down to something reasonable (currently it costs nearly 50 people's lifetime productivity just to send one person into space once), then we can begin manned space exploration in earnest. But in the meantime, unmanned space exploration gives us much better bang for the buck.

I wasn't aware that the U.S. government gave up on space.

Compared to unmanned spacecraft, landers, and rovers, sending people into space incurs enormous additional costs completely disproportional to the small increase in science gained. If/when we can get launch and life support costs down to something reasonable (currently it costs nearly 50 people's lifetime productivity just to send one person into space once), then we can begin manned space exploration in earnest. But in the meantime, unmanned space exploration gives us much better bang for the buck.

I wasn't aware that the U.S. government gave up on space.

Compared to unmanned spacecraft, landers, and rovers, sending people into space incurs enormous additional costs completely disproportional to the small increase in science gained. If/when we can get launch and life support costs down to something reasonable (currently it costs nearly 50 people's lifetime productivity just to send one person into space once), then we can begin manned space exploration in earnest. But in the meantime, unmanned space exploration gives us much better bang for the buck.

I wasn't aware that the U.S. government gave up on space.

Compared to unmanned spacecraft, landers, and rovers, sending people into space incurs enormous additional costs completely disproportional to the small increase in science gained. If/when we can get launch and life support costs down to something reasonable (currently it costs nearly 50 people's lifetime productivity just to send one person into space once), then we can begin manned space exploration in earnest. But in the meantime, unmanned space exploration gives us much better bang for the buck.

I wasn't aware that the U.S. government gave up on space.

Compared to unmanned spacecraft, landers, and rovers, sending people into space incurs enormous additional costs completely disproportional to the small increase in science gained. If/when we can get launch and life support costs down to something reasonable (currently it costs nearly 50 people's lifetime productivity just to send one person into space once), then we can begin manned space exploration in earnest. But in the meantime, unmanned space exploration gives us much better bang for the buck.

I've been sockpuppeting Wikipedia since 2002, and a proud banned user. The admins, bureaucrats, stewards and arbcon get sadder and more revert happy every year. It's a shame that there is no true open source encyclopedia, because people need one. We need a distributed system, where we don't need to worry about notability so any subject with sources can be covered and that multiple versions are allowed so you can't revert because there will always be an alternative version available. Respect for banned users, they influence wiki policy even though Wikipedia has a denial policy.

"There is no such thing as "thriving" under socialism." - https://www.google.com/search?q=netherlands+gdp&oq=netherlands+gdp = says you're a moron.

You think capitalist Netherlands is socialist?

Socialists don't have stock exchanges.

How about Denmark's Prime Minister:

Speaking at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Danish PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen told students that he had “absolutely no wish to interfere the presidential debate in the US” but nonetheless attempted to set the record straight about his country.

"I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy,” Rasmussen said.

“The Nordic model is an expanded welfare state which provides a high level of security for its citizens, but it is also a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish,” he added.

Did you catch that "LIVE LIFE AS YOU WISH" part? I bet that's the part that won't sink in....

Get a refund on your education.

Jesus H. Mother Fucking Christ, you're a moron. And the sad thing is, you probably think you're smarter than those "deplorables".

Which country in Europe has a socialist economy? Scandinavia is unabashedly capitalist in economic models. They have a strong social safety net on which they spend their taxes, but their economic systems are capitalist, full-stop.

China started to grow when Deng Xiaoping implemented capitalist reforms into the socialist economic model, but it's since stalled and is on the cusp of collapse because of centralized command-and-control (as required by socialism) of the banks, telecom, and others. Laos and Vietnam? They thrive because they are cheaper resource bases than China. So I will grant that socialism IS great for exploiting people...

I love the F-5!

"The Fruit Belt is a residential neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. It is located adjacent to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The Medical Campus was built in 2001, as as part of a planned "Strategic Investment Areas"... Which would explain a prominent label of "medical park" on a 1999 map, two years before then actual NAME of the development was announced.

[CFS has] been shown[1] to be neurological, not psychological in cause, so relaxation and mindfulness can't cure them, and they're only slightly better than placebo as pain relief.

[1] Citation needed. From all the information I've gathered, there is no hard evidence of an exclusive neurological etiology, nor a proven link to measurable physiological symptoms. From Wikipedia:

The cause of CFS is unknown. Genetic, physiological and psychological factors are thought to work together to precipitate and perpetuate the condition. A 2016 report by the Institute of Medicine states that CFS is a biologically-based illness, but that the biologic abnormalities are not sensitive enough to be useful as a diagnosis.

If you know better, edit the Wikipedia article and defend your changes.
[2] Even if a disease is physical, psychological methods can help cope with it. Until we have a fucking clue what the fuck causes it and find a fucking cure this is the best we can do, and it seems to work sometimes.

I love the F-5!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

the USSR/Venezuela/NKorea are/were SOCIALIST, not Norway/Denmark. Welfare state is NOT sufficient for socialism (or socialists for that matter).

You do understand the following https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... have existed and there was no private property(Including your home) and they had SOCIALIST right there in the name. Nod if you can accept reality. Or is that not pure enough ? Should they have tatooed it on the forehead aswell maybe ?

That's why VoIP between providers gets more and more popular, and why numbering schemes like ENUM are used. It just takes time until all the phone switches and exchanges are upgraded or moved to VoIP. I've seen switches running since 30 years, which also have the capabilities of 30 years ago.

Lets for a moment ignore all flat billing plans or similar constructs.

Then you get billed for using a line for a specified amount of time. Each line has a base rate associated to it, and a billing clock, that ticks while you are using that line. You get then billed for the number of ticks during the call. If you are calling long distance or international, you have to use several lines connected together and get billed for the ticks of each of those lines (which then often have different rates). Between the providers, there are interconnects (mostly running the CCSS7 protocol) which also exchange the billing information. But as you can't know beforehand on which lines your call actually gets routed and what the actual total rate for your call will be, your provider offers you a plan with fixed rates for each type of call, hiding the actual pricing the company has with other companies. If you want to see the real cost incurred by your call, you would have to operate your own CCSS7 switch at home and have an CCSS7 link to your provider instead of a PSTN.

That's a very American thing, but don't for a second think you invented it.

The whole oil prices thing is a false premise.
In terms of percent of GDP coming from oil, Venezuela was 8th, with 7-8% of their GDP from oil. The UAE and Kazakhstan are about 14%. Saudi Arabia is 21%. Oman is 25%. Iraq is 28%. Kuwait is 30%. Angola gets about 34% of their GDP from oil production. (Stats from the World Bank and The World Factbook)

None of those other countries even went into a recession when the oil prices dropped, so you can't attribute it to the oil price changes. In fact, oil prices are back up above average, but Venezuela still hasn't been producing and selling more oil.

From 1998 to 2018, oil production in Venezuela is down from 3.5 million barrels per day in December of 1997 vs 2 million in October of 2017.

So what happened in the last 20 years? From Wikipedia:
“After Hugo Chávez officially took office in February 1999, several policy changes involving the country’s oil industry were made to explicitly tie it to the state under his Bolivarian Revolution. Since then, PDVSA has not demonstrated any capability to bring new oil fields on stream since nationalizing heavy oil projects in the Orinoco Petroleum Belt formerly operated by international oil companies ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Total. Chávez’s policies damaged Venezuela’s oil industry due to lack of investment, corruption and cash shortages.”

Probably just a fluke, though, right? I mean, steel production in Venezuela increased from 3400 tons in 1998 to about 4600 tons in 2008. The steel industry was nationalized by the Venezuelan government in 2008 and production declined to under 1600 tons. Huh, definitely a pattern forming. Similar stories of lower production and losses in the other industries after they were taken over: aluminum, cement, gold, iron, farming, transportation, electricity, food production, banking, paper and the media.

The issues in Venezuela are directly a predictable (and predicted by economists) result of nationalizing their industries.

Without the government takeover, even if oil companies were only competent enough to continue production levels and not grow them (as they’ve done previously over time), Venezuela would have almost twice as much hard currency coming in from oil sales.

The number of private companies in Venezuela was 14K in 1998. In 2011 it was 9K. It's lower now, but it's difficult to get accurate stats about exactly how lower in the resulting chaos. Without private companies in the economy, the economy sinks.

So no, their problems aren’t just about oil prices. Their problems, including a big chunk of the oil revenue losses, are a direct result of the socialist government of Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro taking over large portions of the economy. The government bureaucrats don't know what they're doing in business and industry and their priority is pleasing political constituencies, not making the companies run well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...: "Geogroup was awarded the contract to operate migrant detention facilities which held children separate from their families. The company is accused of mistreatment of the children, leading to two deaths. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...: "The T. Don Hutto Residential Center is a former medium-security prison in Taylor, Williamson County, Texas, which, from 2006 to 2009, held accompanied immigrant detainees ages 2 and up under a pass-through contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of Homeland Security.[45] After local and national protests because of the poor quality of treatment, federal officials announced on August 6, 2009, that it would no longer house immigrant families in this prison.[46] Instead, only female detainees will be housed there."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...: "Geogroup was awarded the contract to operate migrant detention facilities which held children separate from their families. The company is accused of mistreatment of the children, leading to two deaths. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...: "The T. Don Hutto Residential Center is a former medium-security prison in Taylor, Williamson County, Texas, which, from 2006 to 2009, held accompanied immigrant detainees ages 2 and up under a pass-through contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of Homeland Security.[45] After local and national protests because of the poor quality of treatment, federal officials announced on August 6, 2009, that it would no longer house immigrant families in this prison.[46] Instead, only female detainees will be housed there."

The US has people dying because they can't afford basic necessities such as insulin - your welfare programs suck.

The problem with an all-public healthcare system is that it also has to cater to public bullshit. Your National Health Service has valiantly tried to get rid of its last few homeopathic hospitals, but even now there is still one left:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

If Ms. Occasional-Cortex were to nationalize American healthcare, California and Oregon would probably have some antivax hospitals to cater to the hippie mom and conspiracy theorist markets. And there would be no use of CRISPR anywhere in the system.

Scientists fear Arctic heating could trigger a climate "tipping point" as melting permafrost releases the powerful greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere, which in turn could create a runaway warming effect.

Melting poles also means changing albedo: sea is darken than ice, and hence it traps more heat from the sun.

Serbia was the tell on that.
" designed to short out electrical transformers, blacking out much of Serbia"
http://edition.cnn.com/US/9905... (May 3, 1999)
All part of a color revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .

And we DON'T want the massive biodiversity of the Jurassic, no, we don't want more plants and animals and trees, no.

Are you on drugs?

How could you not know that "Blind auditions" are a thing that exists and has worked in the professional orchestral scene

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Modify the techniques for other purposes, which in fact, is already being done.

Wouldn't that be the very definition of a Meritocracy? What you are railing against is called Cronyism. Confusing the two is what is causing all the drama. Words have meaning and you don't get to redefine them just because someone is using them to weasel out of something. The weaseling is the problem, not the word Meritocracy.

You might think so at first, because hey, you got a job you might not have otherwise received, but in reality you haven't benefited.

Money isn't a benefit?

That means you're going to be working with less skillful co-workers and that the competition is going to have a leg up on the company you work for because they hire more skilled employees.

But that doesn't always end with the less skilled company ending up on the bottom, does it. Microsoft?

Now it's your bigotry that's showing. I'd look very carefully at the attitudes that lead to people living in ghettos and keeping them there.

yes yes here we go again "It's all their own fault, they're just lazy and anti-intellectual"

Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Pay attention in particular to the parts about school segregation, school funding, and how home ownership turns into access to wealth.

I'm sure that you're familiar with people who are referred to as trailer park trash. A pejorative typically used for white people, but essentially it's just a way of saying white ghetto. Why did they fail to receive all of these benefits, boosts, etc. that you think everyone else received?

Here's the thing...they did get those boosts, if they hadn't they'd be even worse off. You've h eard about the opioid crisis in certain white-rural/semi-rural areas right? Well the reason that's happening, is because the same socio-econimic forces that created say the heroin and crack crisis in urban ghettos are now affecting Appalachia. It just took a bit longer because they had somewhat more resources to start with.

It's causing some frustration with those who know how to deal with certain issues, telling the people of these rural areas that they need to do what works and have needle exchanges and other programs and the rural folks are dismissing what the urban folks learned out of hand.

Or would you base your selection on whether or not that person comes from some group that you consider more deserving?

The thing is, some white people do that with white doctors. They also do that in other ways. Racism is still a thing you know.

The problem isn't that meritocracy is bad, it's that we don't have enough of it. Do you think fighting inequality with inequality will help anything?

Don't you realize that is the whole "the remedies for discrimination are reverse discrimination" argument used by many a privileged white libertarian/alt-right/conservative tech-guy we see on slashdot? It is usually used as an excuse to not do anything.

Personally I think REALLY desegregation society is a start. Making ALL the schools like some of those well-off surburban schools like New Trier here in Illinois.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

How could you not know that "Blind auditions" are a thing that exists and has worked in the professional orchestral scene

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Modify the techniques for other purposes, which in fact, is already being done.

The city will unofficially imply there's wiggle room, saying it only enforces certain ordinances against 'bad operators,' but that leaves businesses subject to shifting political winds

The real problem is that the laws nowadays are being applied selectively. Officials allow their political allies to violate the laws, but strictly enforce the same regulations against their political opponents. You can especially see this in the way that online mobs and violent protests are being dealt with: conservatives will excuse the alt-right mobs, and liberals will excuse the social justice mobs.

Personally, I feel that this should violate the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees all persons "equal protection of the laws".

Is Believing In Meritocracy Bad For You?

The answer is no.

Typical comercial PV panels are rated at about 125-165 Watts/m^2. So panels 1.66 x 1 meters yielding 210 Watts would correspond with 125 W/m^2 panels.

If the 210 Watts were after the 15% efficiency of electrolysis, then your panel would be producing 210W/0.15 = 1400 Watts. That exceeds the amount of solar energy the sun puts out. The solar constant (total energy of sunlight reaching the Earth) is only 1362 W/m^2. And that's out in space. The Earth's atmosphere absorbs roughly half that, leaving about 750 W/m^2 of total solar energy to reach your solar panel. The panel's efficiency (typically around 16%-21%) drops that to 125-165 Watt/m^2 of electricity generated from the sunlight.

So there's no way the 210 W figure is after accounting for the 15% efficiency of the electrolysis process. 210W is how much power you get from the panels. And the 15% efficiency of the electrolysis drops it to 31.5 Watts put into cracking water.

• Salt makes your food taste better when it has no salt. The more salt you put into it, the better it tastes. Up to a point, after which the food starts to taste bad. Beyond that point, the more salt you put in, the worse it tastes. So it's not a question of "do you like salt" or "do you dislike salt"?. It's a question of finding the right amount of salt to put in your food to make it taste best.
• Taxation works well if you're implementing them for the first time. There are valuable social services a government can provide, and taxes let you pay for them. As government becomes bigger, the easily cost-effective services get fulfilled, and the benefit of additional services becomes smaller. Eventually you reach a point where government is performing so many services, that the cost of implementing additional services exceeds the benefit of just leaving the money with the people. And additional taxation actually harms the economy. If you're beyond this point, then lowering taxes helps the country. If you're below this point, then lowering taxes hurts the country. But for some reason the country has polarized into people who think more taxes always help, and people who thing lower taxes always help.
• Capitalism works tremendously well if you haven't implemented it. It picks off the low-hanging fruit - easy-to-address economic inefficiencies The more capitalistic you become, the fewer easy-to-address inefficiencies are left, and the less benefit there is to it. At some point capitalism makes your economy so efficient that luck begins to play a larger role than your individual economic decisions. But people who look only at this end state and declare capitalism is useless fail to understand that you can only arrive at that end state via capitalism. Likewise, people who worship capitalism declare that more capitalism (i.e. more deregulation) is always better, and so end up implementing changes with no or a negative effect on the economy.
• Immigration is helpful if your country has no immigration. On the other hand, if you had completely open borders and allowed anyone and everyone to immigrate, they would overwhelm your social services and tank your economy. So too much immigration is bad. Draw a line connecting these two points, and it's obvious that at some point immigration transitions from being good to being bad for the country. So it's not a question of being pro-immigrants or anti-immigrants. Certain levels of immigration are good for the country, certain levels of immigration are bad for the country.

And fucking morons like you would disbelieve a truth because of the messenger.

Wolf! Wolf!

Now, it is true that Bill Gates had some decent programming skills, and it is also true that I am a better programmer than he ever was, and I am still not as rich as him. But they are measuring the wrong thing: Gates didn't get rich because of his programming skills, he got rich because of his business skills

His father was a well-connected lawyer, and his mother was chair of the United Way (at which time she rubbed elbows with the CEO of IBM) and also on the board of the First Interstate Bank of Washington. He got rich because he had skills, and he was well-connected. He got those skills in the first place because of who his parents were, and because of the opportunities presented by that parentage. If you want to tell the whole story, it's best to start at the beginning. Let's also not forget that Microsoft, under Bill Gates, was found to have abused its position in the marketplace in pretty much every possible way, and was let off with a handslap by John Ashcroft, under George Bush. They often say that behind every great fortune there is a great crime, and Bill Gates is a career criminal.

Now, it is true that Bill Gates had some decent programming skills, and it is also true that I am a better programmer than he ever was, and I am still not as rich as him. But they are measuring the wrong thing: Gates didn't get rich because of his programming skills, he got rich because of his business skills

His father was a well-connected lawyer, and his mother was chair of the United Way (at which time she rubbed elbows with the CEO of IBM) and also on the board of the First Interstate Bank of Washington. He got rich because he had skills, and he was well-connected. He got those skills in the first place because of who his parents were, and because of the opportunities presented by that parentage. If you want to tell the whole story, it's best to start at the beginning. Let's also not forget that Microsoft, under Bill Gates, was found to have abused its position in the marketplace in pretty much every possible way, and was let off with a handslap by John Ashcroft, under George Bush. They often say that behind every great fortune there is a great crime, and Bill Gates is a career criminal.

At my tech-heavy uni, we always used to laugh at the dumbed-down math options in the non-STEM faculties.

About three quarters of the faculty are white.

Race and ethnicity in the United States

As of July 2016, White Americans are the racial majority. African Americans are the largest racial minority, comprising an estimated 12.7% of the population. Hispanic and Latino Americans are the largest ethnic minority, comprising an estimated 17.8% of the population.

The White, non-Hispanic or Latino population make up 61.3% of the nation's total, with the total White population (including White Hispanics and Latinos) being 76.9%.

Sadly, the modern Grievance Studies dept.—now on a campus near you—stockpiles the dumbest bricks of all.

Just about the only chance to make hydrogen as a fuel worthwhile (compared to electricity production) is if we can use availably energy _directly_ for electrolysis or thermal decomposition in a way that's more efficient than making electricity. Since PV panels are wildly inefficient (albeit significantly more efficient than photosynthesis), a solution like this might turn out to be a game changer, making a hydrogen economy feasible instead of a subsidy-fueled wildly inefficient pipe-dream.

Thermal decomposition is how this would work, unless electricity becomes so cheap (or Hydrogen valuable) that the economics of electrolysis work.

The heat might come from very high temperature steam from gas-cooled high temperature nuclear reactors. This high temperature steam could potentially have a lot of industrial applications eventually, replacing natural gas powered process heat and reducing CO2 emission and methane leaks.

As a added bonus, higher temperatures mean higher thermodynamic efficiency, resulting in more electricity per unit of fuel, and less waste heat to dump.

You know the next part. China is eating our lunch in innovation, but somehow Donald Trump isn't hot and bothered. Huh.

What a bunch of thieves.

The concept of a "Black hole driven starship" is called the Kugelblitz engine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Looking through the comments on a site *FOR NERDS* no one has brought this up yet. Shame.

Kids aren't doing this because they genuinely give a damn about Climate Change.
They're doing it because it's a convenient excuse to get out of school.

So you think students are too stupid to make a change in the world? Ever heard of International Students' Day? What about Velvet revolution?

Kids aren't doing this because they genuinely give a damn about Climate Change.
They're doing it because it's a convenient excuse to get out of school.

So you think students are too stupid to make a change in the world? Ever heard of International Students' Day? What about Velvet revolution?

This just continues to illustrate everything that is wrong with the Fed. Take money from the citizens of the States, then waste it, then send part of it back to the States, with lots of strings and regulations attached, and without any concern for the actual needs of each State. Meanwhile, making the Fed larger and larger, and governance further and further away from the constituents. It breeds inefficiency, waste, corruption, and centralization of power while lowering innovation, freedom, and accountability.

This model, like the majority of all Federal actions for quite a while now, is unconstitutional- it is not the way the United States was designed nor meant to operate. All it takes is reading bill Bill of Rights of the Constitution:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"

"It expresses the principle of federalism and states' rights, which strictly supports the entire plan of the original Constitution for the United States of America, by stating that the federal government possesses only those powers delegated to it by the United States Constitution. All remaining powers are reserved for the states or the people"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Probably easier to use classic PV panels and a separate electrolysis cell.

There are electrolysis cells that can directly provide 120-200 bar hydrogen without an additional compressor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...