We could do it in the US, but we've got evangelical so-called "christians" who refuse to give their kids the vaccine, because Jesus told them sex is bad, m'kay?
Correct but to be fair we also have the (mostly) granola munching anti-vax crowd who wrongly think that their kid will immediately become autistic if they vaccinate them. In both cases it is a result of individual freedom being foolishly prioritized over public and individual health.
It is inevitable that they pass laws allowing machines to kill x number of people. It can be no other way. And that will be a major devaluing of human life.
The statistics for car accidents are no mystery and are objectively rather appalling yet we seem to be largely ok with the current state of affairs. We are letting machines operated by humans kill X number of people even though we have the technical ability to reduce this number any time we want. Whether a person is killed by a programmed machine or killed by a mistake a human makes directly operating a machine is really of no consequence to the dead. Insurance is literally a valuation of human life and we can give you a figure for what it is worth. This makes some people uncomfortable but it's an objective fact.
Here's the thing. The machine didn't kill anyone. There is no such thing as a machine error. There are only human errors. It might be the human operating the machine or it might be the fault of the engineer who designed the machine or it might be the fault of the human who assembled the machine but at the end of the day it was a human decision that is to blame. The fact that a program designed by a human is steering the vehicle rather than a human operator physically turning the wheel is not logically any different - that is the means not the cause. It creates a few new wrinkles on who is liable but at the end of the day it's still a human decision that is the root of the problem.
Umm, no.... It definitely COULD be worse with driverless cars. There are a lot of numbers bigger than 6.5 million. Obviously there is no point to the endeavor if the driverless cars have a worse accident rate than human driven cars but it's certainly among the possible outcomes. And there definitely will be fatalities and injuries with driverless cars. We're just hoping for (substantially) better than current technology.
If a company wants to sell a new airplane or medical device, it must undergo an extensive process to prove to federal regulators that it's safe. Currently, there's no comparable requirement for self-driving cars.
How are these things comparable? We require medical devices to prove that they work because quackery is a real thing with real consequences. As such we require medical device manufacturers to prove that they actually provide therapeutic value. It's expensive but the alternative of people not being able to trust the treatment is FAR more expensive. People who are ill and in need of treatment aren't routinely able to determine for themselves whether a device works or is well made and most medical treatments aren't really voluntary. I freely admit I have no way to tell if an EKG machine is providing useful information or not and unless you have the letters MD after your name chances are you haven't a clue either. So we have regulation because market forces won't result in a good outcome.
A self driving car that doesn't function as a self driving car is going to be almost immediately self evident and market forces (and lawyers) will do what they do rather quickly. Your decision to get in one is pretty much 100% voluntary and most people are perfectly well qualified to determine if it functions properly for the purpose of transportation. Current cars carry a risk of injury just like driverless cars so there isn't much of a difference there aside from who is the liable party in the event of an accident. Yes there are going to be some injuries and fatalities in the development of the technology but that is true for literally every transportation technology ever invented.
Boys and girls have both the same abilities. However boys tend to be more inclined to pursue studies in science.
Is this really true? I'm not so sure you have the evidence to back that claim up. Certainly more men go into STEM fields than women currently but that does not prove that the reason is because of interest or inclination. I'm not convinced that men are inherently more interested in technical fields than women. I think the reasons that women currently tend to avoid these fields is more complicated than mere inclination. The reasons seem (to me) to be predominately cultural expectations with some other factors thrown in there too.
I saw a study a while back that the #1 factor in whether a girl decides to go into a STEM field turns out to be whether or not there is a female parent or close relative who is also in a STEM field. Turns out it's hard to imagine yourself in a job if you don't see anyone that resembles you in that job. Why don't we see more men in nursing for example? Certainly not a lack of aptitude for the job and I doubt it's any sort of inherent lack of interest in the work itself. I think the reasons are social stigma and holdover effects of traditional gender roles and it's something that happens to both genders differing only in the field where one or the other gender historically dominates. It's only recently that women achieved parity in admissions to medical school to become MDs. It used to be almost unheard of to find a male nurse but it's becoming more common. Honestly the reason I'm probably an engineer today is because I come from a family of engineers. Nobody around me in my school went into engineering and it wasn't a subject that was taught or explained in school. My wife probably would have made a terrific engineer but she never really had any exposure to the field until she met me. My sister got her undergraduate degree in civil engineering and I'm certain this is because she was exposed to the field as she grew up.
It's completely unenforceable. Even if the State could locate and identify the boots, they can't do anything about it if they aren't in California.
No but a certain prominent company headquartered in California just demonstrated such technoloy and they certainly could be held accountable. Frankly just about any company that matters has a presence in Silicon Valley and that gives the State of California leverage. It's similar to how the State of New York has outsized leverage in financial regulation because of the fact that NYC also happens to be a major financial center where all the major players do business.
People do not get that fundamental physics is over
Yeah yeah, people were making this bullshit argument centuries ago.
(you would not call seriously "string theory" "scientific" would you?).
As long as it make predictions that can be empirically tested then of course I would.
I know I am repeating what Lord Kelvin said to his embarrassment just before great discoveries in relativistic physics, quantum physics, etc.
And he was just as wrong as you are.
The clear indication that we are close to the limit is absence of ANY fundamental discoveries since a long time ago.
What are you babbling about? You are in a scientific golden age for discoveries. Furthermore we have well known holes in our knowledge of fundamental physics. We have no way to reconcile gravity to quantum mechanics. We can't explain large amounts of seemingly missing matter in the universe. Just because we're not rolling out a new theory of special relativity every other week doesn't mean we've explained everything. It was literally centuries between Newton and Einstein but the only reason Einstein's work was such a breakthrough was because of a LOT of important work done in time between the two men.
Call them for what they are: Nobel Prizes in Technology
You seem to have a huge misapprehension. Physics only advances when we can built devices to test our theories independent of human senses. Theories are fine but they are meaningless without the tools to verify them. Furthermore we cannot refine our theories without the data from these tools which inform us how the world actually behaves. A theory of gravity waves is meaningless unless you have some tool to test for their existence. Physics isn't just blackboards and chalk.
Yet we're constantly having "I'm a woman therefore my accomplishments are special!"
You seem to be mistaking an argument for equality for an argument for preference. Perhaps you would understand if your accomplishments were dismissed as unimportant because of your skin color or age or gender or some other irrelevant bit of your physiology rather than the quality of your ideas. Women aren't arguing for special treatment. They are arguing for EQUAL treatment. It only sounds like a call for "special" treatment to people who are missing the point.
If gender doesn't matter, why is it constantly thrown in our faces?
Gender SHOULDN'T matter for topics like this yet It DOES matter because too many people (like yourself) make it matter in the wrong places. Gender is supposed to matter in some circumstances but physics isn't one of them. It is really hard to explain why there hasn't been a single woman worthy of a Nobel prize in Physics in over a half century without invoking some amount of sexism in the explanation. Maybe unintentional sexism but sexism all the same. They don't deserve the award because of their gender but they also shouldn't be excluded from it because of their gender either. Sexism is real and if you think fighting against it is "throwing it in your face" then you are part of the problem.
So you get a higher rate of return by buying a piece of worthless land and putting solar panels on it, a better return than bank interest and the tax write offs means it is tax free.
Getting a higher rate of return than bank interest making at least some amount of profit. Just buying solar panels and some otherwise unused land doesn't automatically equal profit. Solar panel installations have a large up front capital cost which has to be recouped over a period of YEARS. Breakeven isn't going to happen immediately even in the best of circumstances. I don't think I've ever seen a solar installation with a breakeven faster than 5 years and over 10 isn't uncommon.
Tax incentives on solar can help reduce tax burden IF you manage to make a profit but they don't (generally) eliminate tax altogether and certainly not in perpetuity. If the solar installation isn't profitable tax incentives might ease the pain slightly but they aren't going to make a business profitable that wouldn't be otherwise.
Low interests rates makes all renewables a pretty good investment, just depends how long they will stay low.
If your business model depends on continued low interest rates in order to profit on solar then it is a bad business model. Low interest rates can help boost profit but if your profit depends on them then the business will fail the moment interest rates rise.
Solar provides a pretty good return upon land that would otherwise have very little value.
Solar panels CAN provide a good ROI but it's hardly a foregone conclusion. The financial math that goes into making that happen is quite a lot more complicated than you are making it out to be. The good news is that the cost of solar power technology is dropping fast so the ROI math is looking better all the time.
Fossil fuels are doomed, just a harsh reality, the worst one to go first ie coal.
Sadly this isn't a foregone conclusion either. Fossil fuels are plentiful and our existing infrastructure depends heavily on them and there is no mechanism to get them to pay for much of the pollution they generate. Plus they are heavily subsidized to the tune of about $5 trillion annually. Getting ride of them essentially means tearing out massive amounts of infrastructure globally and replacing it. That isn't going to happen unless the alternative that replaces them is a slam dunk better option financially speaking. I'm hopeful some combination of solar/wind/nuclear can get us to that happen state of affairs but with the amount of money behind the fossil fuel industry they aren't going to go quietly into the night.
It's not opinion and the facts are not hard to find for anyone who can be bothered to look for even 20 seconds on Google. Sexism is quite real and it is distressingly common in the field of physics and many other branches of science. It's ironic that you ask for evidence of sexism in an article about a guy who was fired because he (apparently) exhibited sexism publicly. If that isn't evidence I'm not quite sure you understand the meaning of the term.
or even bothering to characterize it in an objectively unambiguous manner can be quite a bit of fun.
So is pretending to be ignorant as an argument tactic to pretend sexism isn't really a serious problem in the physical sciences.
This is true. Physics has no opinion on the matter. Many physicists however are definitely sexist against women. Not all but enough to be a real problem.
My employer would have something to say about it. They would issue me burners.
Then your employer is very unusual indeed. That isn't how most of them roll in my experience.
This just imposes a huge expense on business travelers in order to apprehend the dumbest of criminals.
It's a little worse than that. It also means some genuinely innocent people are going to get to be abused by the authorities. You're right that it will not catch anyone worth catching which should make one wonder what the real point is...
Sadly for you it doesn't matter most likely. The local authorities (where you physically are) can throw you in jail (or worse), possibly beat you with the xkcd wrench, and keep your laptop for as long as they like. Hell they can torture it out of you if they like and you have little to no legal rights. Nation states aren't really accountable to anyone if they don't want to be. Unless you have some sort of diplomatic immunity and the security to back it up then you are fucked well and good. Your job status (or worse) is probably of little concern to them.
It's also not entirely clear how much your own government will care about you if you get held by the local authorities.
Not quite enough, it's called plausibly deniable encryption, the volume needs to appear to be using all of the space to appear to be not hiding anything, and the unused space needs to be indistiguishable from random binary (i.e deleted unused space).
You seriously think they wouldn't be aware of this trick and throw you in prison until you break?
Don't bring personal/business electronics across borders. It's that simple.
Not really much of a choice these days. Are you really going to go on a business trip without your laptop and phone? I'm sure your employer might have something to say about that. Are you really going to go on vacation without your smartphone? It's not that simple and pretending won't make it so.
In what may be a world first, the FBI has forced a suspect to unlock his iPhone X using Apple's Face ID feature.
Could see this coming. No different logically from forcing someone to unlock with a fingerprint which they've already done and gotten judicial cover for. If you want to keep it private best to require a code (that only you know) to unlock which US courts have upheld as a valid 5th amendment defense.
My 1 year old daughter recently unlocked my wife's phone when my wife was standing behind her so that should give you a good idea how secure it is. It's the rough equivalent to a tiny luggage lock. Useful for keeping out the most causal snoopers but not really serious security.
How come Republicans are have such a hard-on for states rights when states do something evil like voter suppression but change their minds when they do something good like cannabis legalization or net neutrality?
Because "States rights" when the GOP uses it almost never has anything to actually do with States rights. It's a bullshit political argument used for unjustifiable positions (slavery, racism, voter suppression, etc) use when they don't have a real leg to stand on in an argument. It's an admission that they are philosophically bankrupt on the topic and are trying to distract from this fact by loudly touting a (usually) dubious technicality.
I'm pretty sure the Feds are right and that they have the right to regulate the Internet under various interstate commerce laws.
Not necessarily. Depends on exactly how they structured the regulation. And just because something does involved interstate commerce doesn't mean States don't get to make rules about it. That clause in the constitution is merely there to prevent States from imposing undue burdens on other States - not on private companies. It's not clear that California is imposing any such burden on another state. No burden = no case for federal interest in the topic. States have all sorts of regulations on private companies that also happen to do business in other States.
I work in IT for one of the most heavily over-regulated industries in this country, the medical laboratory.
I've worked in labs in years past and my wife is a laboratory director of a pathology lab. I disagree that medical labs are "heavily over regulated". Labs are regulated to the degree they are for VERY good reasons and we've seen what happens when they aren't. The data they produce and the means they use to produce it has to be as reliable as we can make and market pressures are demonstrably inadequate to make that happen. The regulations that are in place ensure corners are not cut that should not be cut. That's not an argument that every regulation is a good one but just an observation that labs that are well run mostly are already doing the things that the regulations require anyway aside from a bit of extra documentation to prove it. But without this requirement the temptation of profit motives would rapidly overwhelm some people and we would all suffer in the long run as a result.
We see our regulation as a challenge, not a burden. Why can't the coal industry?
Because they have made a crap ton of money being comparatively unregulated and would like to continue to make more and there is no mechanism for accountability. In a medical lab if you screw up a specimen, that error is generally immediately traceable back to the lab and liability follows. But without regulation the volume of corner cutting would rapidly overwhelm the ability of the legal system to deal with the problem. Not to mention that liability is a post-hoc solution which doesn't help people already injured. There is no such feedback mechanism in place for the coal industry generally speaking and putting them in place makes them FAR less financially competitive than they are now. (that's probably a good thing but they obviously don't see it that way) They've gotten a free ride for years not having to pay for the full cost of the pollution they generate so it's hardly shocking that it's a real life tragedy of the commons.
That is strange wording. Cancer cells are not autonomous, learning, clever, and planning.
It's not strange wording at all. Sophistication is a statement of what something is, not how it was arrived at. Things don't have to have intelligent thought behind them to be sophisticated. Trees do not have what we regard as intelligence but you'd be hard pressed to argue that a tree leaf isn't an astonishingly sophisticated thing. Enormous sophistication and complexity can arise from very simple processes and evolution - no clever learning or planning required.
For Gowda, it was the fact that Google Maps is a global, commercial product and did not capture local detail. Like the old banyan tree that was a major landmark in his hometown Hassan or public benches just outside the town where pedestrians could stop to catch a break or fire catchment areas in Bellandur lake in Bengaluru, India.
I'm sure that matters to that person personally but that's a TERRIBLE argument in favor of open source mapping projects. If it proves important to enough people then Google could add that capability in a matter of seconds and then what is his complaint? There are excellent arguments why not having all your mapping data controlled by a few large companies is probably a good idea. They are similar to the arguments why having a decentralized internet not controlled by single entities is a good idea. There is money to be made with private control of mapping data but there is probably MORE money to be made if the data and core code is available as open source.
The problem open source mapping projects are going to have is funding and resources (especially people) unless they can get one or more big companies with deep pockets to fund such projects. You need satellite map, an army of people to pore over and process them, a huge amount of hardware, a well coordinated team to oversee the whole thing and write the relevant code, and a shit ton of money to make it all happen. Not saying it's impossible but it's going to be very challenging and such a project is already years behind what Google, Apple, and others are already doing. You're talking about a project that rivals the linux kernel or other major software project in complexity but requires a lot more people for data processing and hardware to actually function.
Yet suggest this might have been over-regulation and you'd get a downmod.
Present some actual evidence to support such a position and maybe you might get some thoughtful consideration. So far every suggestion of "over regulation" is really just an ideological statement rather than an evidence based consideration of the facts. Not all regulation is bad, particularly when it comes to toxic substances. Every bit of evidence points to this mostly being a needless handout to various industries (most notably coal) for financial gain of a few at the expense of the health and welfare of the many.
Trump is easily the worst person (competence, morals, decency, empathy, etc - pick your measure) to get to the office of president in my lifetime and I'm old enough to have lived during Nixon's administration. He surrounds himself with people who are somehow if anything worse in a lot of ways. There are prominent republicans who I respect and think could be good presidents even if I don't necessarily agree with their policy positions on a given topic. Trump is not even close to among them. I thought Bush Jr was a terrible president but I'd take him in a heartbeat over Trump. Reagan or Bush Sr would be a huge upgrade. Heck I'd happily take McCain (even with Palin) or Romney who I think were both competent and fundamentally decent people. No I'm not arguing the Democrats were notably better (they weren't) but literally every other president or candidate for either party in the last half centry would be an improvement over Trump.
Slashdot Mirror
We could do it in the US, but we've got evangelical so-called "christians" who refuse to give their kids the vaccine, because Jesus told them sex is bad, m'kay?
Correct but to be fair we also have the (mostly) granola munching anti-vax crowd who wrongly think that their kid will immediately become autistic if they vaccinate them. In both cases it is a result of individual freedom being foolishly prioritized over public and individual health.
It is inevitable that they pass laws allowing machines to kill x number of people. It can be no other way. And that will be a major devaluing of human life.
The statistics for car accidents are no mystery and are objectively rather appalling yet we seem to be largely ok with the current state of affairs. We are letting machines operated by humans kill X number of people even though we have the technical ability to reduce this number any time we want. Whether a person is killed by a programmed machine or killed by a mistake a human makes directly operating a machine is really of no consequence to the dead. Insurance is literally a valuation of human life and we can give you a figure for what it is worth. This makes some people uncomfortable but it's an objective fact.
Here's the thing. The machine didn't kill anyone. There is no such thing as a machine error. There are only human errors. It might be the human operating the machine or it might be the fault of the engineer who designed the machine or it might be the fault of the human who assembled the machine but at the end of the day it was a human decision that is to blame. The fact that a program designed by a human is steering the vehicle rather than a human operator physically turning the wheel is not logically any different - that is the means not the cause. It creates a few new wrinkles on who is liable but at the end of the day it's still a human decision that is the root of the problem.
Umm, no.... It definitely COULD be worse with driverless cars. There are a lot of numbers bigger than 6.5 million. Obviously there is no point to the endeavor if the driverless cars have a worse accident rate than human driven cars but it's certainly among the possible outcomes. And there definitely will be fatalities and injuries with driverless cars. We're just hoping for (substantially) better than current technology.
If a company wants to sell a new airplane or medical device, it must undergo an extensive process to prove to federal regulators that it's safe. Currently, there's no comparable requirement for self-driving cars.
How are these things comparable? We require medical devices to prove that they work because quackery is a real thing with real consequences. As such we require medical device manufacturers to prove that they actually provide therapeutic value. It's expensive but the alternative of people not being able to trust the treatment is FAR more expensive. People who are ill and in need of treatment aren't routinely able to determine for themselves whether a device works or is well made and most medical treatments aren't really voluntary. I freely admit I have no way to tell if an EKG machine is providing useful information or not and unless you have the letters MD after your name chances are you haven't a clue either. So we have regulation because market forces won't result in a good outcome.
A self driving car that doesn't function as a self driving car is going to be almost immediately self evident and market forces (and lawyers) will do what they do rather quickly. Your decision to get in one is pretty much 100% voluntary and most people are perfectly well qualified to determine if it functions properly for the purpose of transportation. Current cars carry a risk of injury just like driverless cars so there isn't much of a difference there aside from who is the liable party in the event of an accident. Yes there are going to be some injuries and fatalities in the development of the technology but that is true for literally every transportation technology ever invented.
Boys and girls have both the same abilities. However boys tend to be more inclined to pursue studies in science.
Is this really true? I'm not so sure you have the evidence to back that claim up. Certainly more men go into STEM fields than women currently but that does not prove that the reason is because of interest or inclination. I'm not convinced that men are inherently more interested in technical fields than women. I think the reasons that women currently tend to avoid these fields is more complicated than mere inclination. The reasons seem (to me) to be predominately cultural expectations with some other factors thrown in there too.
I saw a study a while back that the #1 factor in whether a girl decides to go into a STEM field turns out to be whether or not there is a female parent or close relative who is also in a STEM field. Turns out it's hard to imagine yourself in a job if you don't see anyone that resembles you in that job. Why don't we see more men in nursing for example? Certainly not a lack of aptitude for the job and I doubt it's any sort of inherent lack of interest in the work itself. I think the reasons are social stigma and holdover effects of traditional gender roles and it's something that happens to both genders differing only in the field where one or the other gender historically dominates. It's only recently that women achieved parity in admissions to medical school to become MDs. It used to be almost unheard of to find a male nurse but it's becoming more common. Honestly the reason I'm probably an engineer today is because I come from a family of engineers. Nobody around me in my school went into engineering and it wasn't a subject that was taught or explained in school. My wife probably would have made a terrific engineer but she never really had any exposure to the field until she met me. My sister got her undergraduate degree in civil engineering and I'm certain this is because she was exposed to the field as she grew up.
It's completely unenforceable. Even if the State could locate and identify the boots, they can't do anything about it if they aren't in California.
No but a certain prominent company headquartered in California just demonstrated such technoloy and they certainly could be held accountable. Frankly just about any company that matters has a presence in Silicon Valley and that gives the State of California leverage. It's similar to how the State of New York has outsized leverage in financial regulation because of the fact that NYC also happens to be a major financial center where all the major players do business.
People do not get that fundamental physics is over
Yeah yeah, people were making this bullshit argument centuries ago.
(you would not call seriously "string theory" "scientific" would you?).
As long as it make predictions that can be empirically tested then of course I would.
I know I am repeating what Lord Kelvin said to his embarrassment just before great discoveries in relativistic physics, quantum physics, etc.
And he was just as wrong as you are.
The clear indication that we are close to the limit is absence of ANY fundamental discoveries since a long time ago.
What are you babbling about? You are in a scientific golden age for discoveries. Furthermore we have well known holes in our knowledge of fundamental physics. We have no way to reconcile gravity to quantum mechanics. We can't explain large amounts of seemingly missing matter in the universe. Just because we're not rolling out a new theory of special relativity every other week doesn't mean we've explained everything. It was literally centuries between Newton and Einstein but the only reason Einstein's work was such a breakthrough was because of a LOT of important work done in time between the two men.
Call them for what they are: Nobel Prizes in Technology
You seem to have a huge misapprehension. Physics only advances when we can built devices to test our theories independent of human senses. Theories are fine but they are meaningless without the tools to verify them. Furthermore we cannot refine our theories without the data from these tools which inform us how the world actually behaves. A theory of gravity waves is meaningless unless you have some tool to test for their existence. Physics isn't just blackboards and chalk.
Yet we're constantly having "I'm a woman therefore my accomplishments are special!"
You seem to be mistaking an argument for equality for an argument for preference. Perhaps you would understand if your accomplishments were dismissed as unimportant because of your skin color or age or gender or some other irrelevant bit of your physiology rather than the quality of your ideas. Women aren't arguing for special treatment. They are arguing for EQUAL treatment. It only sounds like a call for "special" treatment to people who are missing the point.
If gender doesn't matter, why is it constantly thrown in our faces?
Gender SHOULDN'T matter for topics like this yet It DOES matter because too many people (like yourself) make it matter in the wrong places. Gender is supposed to matter in some circumstances but physics isn't one of them. It is really hard to explain why there hasn't been a single woman worthy of a Nobel prize in Physics in over a half century without invoking some amount of sexism in the explanation. Maybe unintentional sexism but sexism all the same. They don't deserve the award because of their gender but they also shouldn't be excluded from it because of their gender either. Sexism is real and if you think fighting against it is "throwing it in your face" then you are part of the problem.
she will never know if she was really worthy of it, or just a diversity token.
We do know you are a sexist jerk if you really believe that.
So you get a higher rate of return by buying a piece of worthless land and putting solar panels on it, a better return than bank interest and the tax write offs means it is tax free.
Getting a higher rate of return than bank interest making at least some amount of profit. Just buying solar panels and some otherwise unused land doesn't automatically equal profit. Solar panel installations have a large up front capital cost which has to be recouped over a period of YEARS. Breakeven isn't going to happen immediately even in the best of circumstances. I don't think I've ever seen a solar installation with a breakeven faster than 5 years and over 10 isn't uncommon.
Tax incentives on solar can help reduce tax burden IF you manage to make a profit but they don't (generally) eliminate tax altogether and certainly not in perpetuity. If the solar installation isn't profitable tax incentives might ease the pain slightly but they aren't going to make a business profitable that wouldn't be otherwise.
Low interests rates makes all renewables a pretty good investment, just depends how long they will stay low.
If your business model depends on continued low interest rates in order to profit on solar then it is a bad business model. Low interest rates can help boost profit but if your profit depends on them then the business will fail the moment interest rates rise.
Solar provides a pretty good return upon land that would otherwise have very little value.
Solar panels CAN provide a good ROI but it's hardly a foregone conclusion. The financial math that goes into making that happen is quite a lot more complicated than you are making it out to be. The good news is that the cost of solar power technology is dropping fast so the ROI math is looking better all the time.
Fossil fuels are doomed, just a harsh reality, the worst one to go first ie coal.
Sadly this isn't a foregone conclusion either. Fossil fuels are plentiful and our existing infrastructure depends heavily on them and there is no mechanism to get them to pay for much of the pollution they generate. Plus they are heavily subsidized to the tune of about $5 trillion annually. Getting ride of them essentially means tearing out massive amounts of infrastructure globally and replacing it. That isn't going to happen unless the alternative that replaces them is a slam dunk better option financially speaking. I'm hopeful some combination of solar/wind/nuclear can get us to that happen state of affairs but with the amount of money behind the fossil fuel industry they aren't going to go quietly into the night.
Stating opinion without proffering evidence
It's not opinion and the facts are not hard to find for anyone who can be bothered to look for even 20 seconds on Google. Sexism is quite real and it is distressingly common in the field of physics and many other branches of science. It's ironic that you ask for evidence of sexism in an article about a guy who was fired because he (apparently) exhibited sexism publicly. If that isn't evidence I'm not quite sure you understand the meaning of the term.
or even bothering to characterize it in an objectively unambiguous manner can be quite a bit of fun.
So is pretending to be ignorant as an argument tactic to pretend sexism isn't really a serious problem in the physical sciences.
physics is not sexist against women
This is true. Physics has no opinion on the matter. Many physicists however are definitely sexist against women. Not all but enough to be a real problem.
My employer would have something to say about it. They would issue me burners.
Then your employer is very unusual indeed. That isn't how most of them roll in my experience.
This just imposes a huge expense on business travelers in order to apprehend the dumbest of criminals.
It's a little worse than that. It also means some genuinely innocent people are going to get to be abused by the authorities. You're right that it will not catch anyone worth catching which should make one wonder what the real point is...
So which law trumps the other one?
Sadly for you it doesn't matter most likely. The local authorities (where you physically are) can throw you in jail (or worse), possibly beat you with the xkcd wrench, and keep your laptop for as long as they like. Hell they can torture it out of you if they like and you have little to no legal rights. Nation states aren't really accountable to anyone if they don't want to be. Unless you have some sort of diplomatic immunity and the security to back it up then you are fucked well and good. Your job status (or worse) is probably of little concern to them.
It's also not entirely clear how much your own government will care about you if you get held by the local authorities.
Not quite enough, it's called plausibly deniable encryption, the volume needs to appear to be using all of the space to appear to be not hiding anything, and the unused space needs to be indistiguishable from random binary (i.e deleted unused space).
You seriously think they wouldn't be aware of this trick and throw you in prison until you break?
Don't bring personal/business electronics across borders. It's that simple.
Not really much of a choice these days. Are you really going to go on a business trip without your laptop and phone? I'm sure your employer might have something to say about that. Are you really going to go on vacation without your smartphone? It's not that simple and pretending won't make it so.
Travelers in New Zealand who refuse to hand over their phone or laptop passwords to Customs officials can now be slapped with a $5000 fine.
Guess I won't be traveling to New Zealand then. Pity... Looked like a nice place to visit. They can go fuck a hobbit if they think this is acceptable.
In what may be a world first, the FBI has forced a suspect to unlock his iPhone X using Apple's Face ID feature.
Could see this coming. No different logically from forcing someone to unlock with a fingerprint which they've already done and gotten judicial cover for. If you want to keep it private best to require a code (that only you know) to unlock which US courts have upheld as a valid 5th amendment defense.
My 1 year old daughter recently unlocked my wife's phone when my wife was standing behind her so that should give you a good idea how secure it is. It's the rough equivalent to a tiny luggage lock. Useful for keeping out the most causal snoopers but not really serious security.
How come Republicans are have such a hard-on for states rights when states do something evil like voter suppression but change their minds when they do something good like cannabis legalization or net neutrality?
Because "States rights" when the GOP uses it almost never has anything to actually do with States rights. It's a bullshit political argument used for unjustifiable positions (slavery, racism, voter suppression, etc) use when they don't have a real leg to stand on in an argument. It's an admission that they are philosophically bankrupt on the topic and are trying to distract from this fact by loudly touting a (usually) dubious technicality.
I'm pretty sure the Feds are right and that they have the right to regulate the Internet under various interstate commerce laws.
Not necessarily. Depends on exactly how they structured the regulation. And just because something does involved interstate commerce doesn't mean States don't get to make rules about it. That clause in the constitution is merely there to prevent States from imposing undue burdens on other States - not on private companies. It's not clear that California is imposing any such burden on another state. No burden = no case for federal interest in the topic. States have all sorts of regulations on private companies that also happen to do business in other States.
I work in IT for one of the most heavily over-regulated industries in this country, the medical laboratory.
I've worked in labs in years past and my wife is a laboratory director of a pathology lab. I disagree that medical labs are "heavily over regulated". Labs are regulated to the degree they are for VERY good reasons and we've seen what happens when they aren't. The data they produce and the means they use to produce it has to be as reliable as we can make and market pressures are demonstrably inadequate to make that happen. The regulations that are in place ensure corners are not cut that should not be cut. That's not an argument that every regulation is a good one but just an observation that labs that are well run mostly are already doing the things that the regulations require anyway aside from a bit of extra documentation to prove it. But without this requirement the temptation of profit motives would rapidly overwhelm some people and we would all suffer in the long run as a result.
We see our regulation as a challenge, not a burden. Why can't the coal industry?
Because they have made a crap ton of money being comparatively unregulated and would like to continue to make more and there is no mechanism for accountability. In a medical lab if you screw up a specimen, that error is generally immediately traceable back to the lab and liability follows. But without regulation the volume of corner cutting would rapidly overwhelm the ability of the legal system to deal with the problem. Not to mention that liability is a post-hoc solution which doesn't help people already injured. There is no such feedback mechanism in place for the coal industry generally speaking and putting them in place makes them FAR less financially competitive than they are now. (that's probably a good thing but they obviously don't see it that way) They've gotten a free ride for years not having to pay for the full cost of the pollution they generate so it's hardly shocking that it's a real life tragedy of the commons.
That is strange wording. Cancer cells are not autonomous, learning, clever, and planning.
It's not strange wording at all. Sophistication is a statement of what something is, not how it was arrived at. Things don't have to have intelligent thought behind them to be sophisticated. Trees do not have what we regard as intelligence but you'd be hard pressed to argue that a tree leaf isn't an astonishingly sophisticated thing. Enormous sophistication and complexity can arise from very simple processes and evolution - no clever learning or planning required.
For Gowda, it was the fact that Google Maps is a global, commercial product and did not capture local detail. Like the old banyan tree that was a major landmark in his hometown Hassan or public benches just outside the town where pedestrians could stop to catch a break or fire catchment areas in Bellandur lake in Bengaluru, India.
I'm sure that matters to that person personally but that's a TERRIBLE argument in favor of open source mapping projects. If it proves important to enough people then Google could add that capability in a matter of seconds and then what is his complaint? There are excellent arguments why not having all your mapping data controlled by a few large companies is probably a good idea. They are similar to the arguments why having a decentralized internet not controlled by single entities is a good idea. There is money to be made with private control of mapping data but there is probably MORE money to be made if the data and core code is available as open source.
The problem open source mapping projects are going to have is funding and resources (especially people) unless they can get one or more big companies with deep pockets to fund such projects. You need satellite map, an army of people to pore over and process them, a huge amount of hardware, a well coordinated team to oversee the whole thing and write the relevant code, and a shit ton of money to make it all happen. Not saying it's impossible but it's going to be very challenging and such a project is already years behind what Google, Apple, and others are already doing. You're talking about a project that rivals the linux kernel or other major software project in complexity but requires a lot more people for data processing and hardware to actually function.
Yet suggest this might have been over-regulation and you'd get a downmod.
Present some actual evidence to support such a position and maybe you might get some thoughtful consideration. So far every suggestion of "over regulation" is really just an ideological statement rather than an evidence based consideration of the facts. Not all regulation is bad, particularly when it comes to toxic substances. Every bit of evidence points to this mostly being a needless handout to various industries (most notably coal) for financial gain of a few at the expense of the health and welfare of the many.
or is this man truly evil?
Trump is easily the worst person (competence, morals, decency, empathy, etc - pick your measure) to get to the office of president in my lifetime and I'm old enough to have lived during Nixon's administration. He surrounds himself with people who are somehow if anything worse in a lot of ways. There are prominent republicans who I respect and think could be good presidents even if I don't necessarily agree with their policy positions on a given topic. Trump is not even close to among them. I thought Bush Jr was a terrible president but I'd take him in a heartbeat over Trump. Reagan or Bush Sr would be a huge upgrade. Heck I'd happily take McCain (even with Palin) or Romney who I think were both competent and fundamentally decent people. No I'm not arguing the Democrats were notably better (they weren't) but literally every other president or candidate for either party in the last half centry would be an improvement over Trump.