Forgive me. Certainly don't mean to make your blood boil. Of course, it's science fiction. It hasn't been done yet. duh.
Speaking of science fiction, ever hear Authur C. Clarke's 1st law?
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
Not that I'm accusing you of being a distinguished scientist. Bill Nye. Honest. Bill Nye.
Bill Nye's easy to understand positions seem to intentionally hold back something much harder to understand - knowledge. I say let the straw man stand... out in the field.
IMHO, we won't have to terraform Mars that much (if at all) provided gene editing can make our progeny Martians. We are nature's experiment of rational intelligence over reflex [1]. The Anthropocene could very possibly have proven nature's experiment a failure. Humans are screwing up this planet so much, at some point Mars might become the more suitable environment. Why not hedge the biological bet, and through our own intelligent design, initiate life with more rational intelligence elsewhere.
You make it sound like it's not a feature. Spectre was brought to you by the NSA, there will be something else there to take its place once new hardware is ready.
Do you really think the CPU is intentionally designed to be exploitable, or, to borrow from Elon Musk, do those those huge idiots not know what they're doing?
I really don't know Spectre an abuse of a mistake or making use of a feature. I'm not sure which scenario is worse.
...technically there is no such thing in law called "corporate personhood'.
Oh, I agree. There is no law establishing corporate personhood. For corporations to qualify for such rights and responsibilities, there would have to be a constitutional amendment, a treaty usurping said constitution, or a few arbitrary judicial fiats:
Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1819, Where the court recognized that corporations were entitled to some of the protections of the Constitution dealing with the application of the Contracts Clause of the United States Constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_College_v._Woodward
These and other rulings established that corporations have rights (and hopefully responsibilities) assigned to citizens by the constitution. A legal fiction, if you will, that has become known as "corporate personhood".
~~
Simply put, 'corporate person-hood' means that your individual rights are not abridged when you pool resources with others toward a specific goal.
I disagree. To quote Wikipedia
Corporate personhood is the legal notion that a corporation, separately from its associated human beings (like owners, managers, or employees), has at least some of the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by natural persons (physical humans).
I don't know if I agree with you that a shareholder should be personally liable for damages a company does. I think you are going about it the wrong way. If you can prove damages were caused by illegal behavior of a company you can receive compensation. What's the problem?
I don't think shareholders should be financially liable, unless they are somehow responsible. Lloyd's of London, for example, use to rake many their investors over the coals when the company had to pay up, sending many into bankruptcy. Lloyd's has since changed.
The people who should pay, and possibly go to jail, are those responsible for making the decisions to pollute, put people in personal harm, cause damage directly or indirectly, etc. The potentially liable come from a large group: management (upper, mid and lower), the board of directors, the chairman, majority shareholders, and others who escape my alleged mind at the moment.
By the way, I'm not adverse to our legal tradition of going after the deepest pockets. And when appropriate, the person or persons liable should go to jail.
I've gotten very pessimistic about all this. The law's purpose is to serve justice, not the rich, and certainly not corporations. So much has gone wrong. Now we find corporate lackeys and shills writing the very laws that are supposed to regulate them. 'Criminal Justice' has become an oxymoron, double entendre. Lenny Bruce was right, "In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls."
Passing the buck. As in, letting the legislature do their job.
If congress had previously passed a law, signed by the president, that gave corporations 'personhood', i.e. rights and responsibilities assigned by the Constitution, I might agree with you.
No such thing happened.
Because corporate personhood is something created by the judicial decree and not by an Act of Congress, the courts have the duty to hold corporations responsible for their actions.
Instead, corporations have only limited liability. They can cause earthquakes while fracking, make cyanide ponds while mining for gold that are known to spill over into other properties, rivers and streams, and pollute the atmosphere and water sources with god knows what.
When it's time to clean up the toxic mess that corporations wreck, more often than not, the funds the government uses comes from the taxpayer.
Giving rights to corporations without responsibilities is just plain wrong.
In the decision not to hold corporations liable for their adverse impact on climate change, Judge Alsup said, "The problem deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a district judge or jury in a public nuisance case." I think he is passing the buck. Declaring that, in this case, corporations are not responsible for their actions contravenes the corporate personhood that was granted, not by law, but by a transcendent set of judicial decisions.
For me, some of the most heinous, egregious court rulings have been the ones establishing and empowering corporate personhood (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co; Dartmouth College v. Woodward; Citizen's United v. FEC; Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.; etc.). They have had a devastating effect on the democratic republic that Thomas Paine and colonists fought for in the American Revolution. We are governed not by citizens but by corporations.
The country has become a corporatocracy. Advising citizens to vote for change, as many actually did for Obama, leads to a rude awakening. There is no "Change We Can Believe In" anymore. That old critique about governance seems even more true today: "If voting changed anything, it would be made illegal." The decision of Judge Alsup's court just adds to existing corporate power by allowing them to maliciously disregard their impact on the environment.
No branch of government is perfect. Maybe we get what we deserve. Or perhaps there's madness in the courts' methods.
If I'd a point to give, you'd have it. This is well thought out, opinionated and insightful. Might not see eye to eye, but that's all the better. Well done.
Trump recently announced a new 'Space Force' branch of the military. Maybe that's why Blue Origin announced they will be selling space tourism tickets next year.
Trump may well farm out the Space Force's space travel to an enterprise that's not Bezos related. And if Elon Musk's SpaceX is the one chosen, I wouldn't be surprised. It would be a 3rd degree burn to Bezos. Especially after that $130 million dollar contract SpaceX won from the USAF. So, maybe Blue Origin's announcement is a foray into the political quagmire, saying they are still economically viable, and that they can still make a buck in space even without a contract from Uncle Sam.
I'd like to think the Stonehenge builders were thinking so abstractly as to conquer up Pythagoras' theorem two thousand years before that Greek genius did, but I have my doubts. When building the Pyramid of Khafre (2558-2532 BC), the Egyptians would have used a rope with knots tied at intervals of 3,4, and 5 (Pythagorean triples) to guarantee a perfect right angle. Their use of concrete numbers aligns to the Pythagorean Theorem, but is not evidence they knew the Pythagorean Theorem. Similarly, the concrete numbers used in the building of Stonehenge do not prove they knew the general formula either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ6ky97LaBc
Given the class of Spectre and Meltdown attacks rely on someone else having the freedom to execute code on your hardware, shouldn't something like this be opt-in? There's a whole world of servers out that where Spectre is ultimately completely irrelevant in terms of a security threat, but hyperthreading is definitely not irrelevant in terms of performance.
I can't do any better than quote OpenBSD on this:
OpenBSD believes in strong security. Our aspiration is to be NUMBER ONE in the industry for security (if we are not already there). Our open software development model permits us to take a more uncompromising view towards increased security than most vendors are able to. We can make changes the vendors would not make.
Can anyone explain why I or anyone else should care about personal flying machines?...
It's a sensible question. Let me fly in the face of sth.
/. is news for nerds, stuff that matters.
Airplanes are technology, a bona fide/. category.
Airplanes have a lot of fans in the nerd communities.
Therefore, a personal flying machine contest does matter to some in the/. community. Even if it's just one nerd.
ipso facto, someone on/. cares. Someone else.
Me. I confess, I've gone to Air Shows to see the warbirds of old, and to watch the Blue Angles do their thing. Even got a ride in a way-too-old cargo plane once. They opened these huge doors as they flew to the mountains and back. Probably just to give us noobs a thrill. It worked. Went right up there and looked down. Better than anything Disney.
cyberchondriac, your points are clear and well reasoned. I've missed that on Slashdot. And although I think I see Trump differently, I too hope that he eventually supports renewables more.
...This is an example of why you should always read the article, not just the headline....
You're right. I'm wrong. Often am. Probably just con-fusion on my part. There are fusion reactors out there now, who aim to fuse hydrogen into helium, and release incredible amounts of clean energy to the grid. But none sell electricity yet. So far, it's just research.
cyberchondriac, I concede your point. Solar and other renewable energies have increased despite the post-Trump added expense. And 10.8 gigawatts yearly? Considering fossil fuels are used in the production of about 63% of the electricity that the US goes through, I really am glad to see renewables are making a dent in our 3,911,000 gigawatt yearly consumption.
Reuters, Forbes, CNBC and others report that the US solar industry lost about 10,000 jobs in 2017. And that's after an initial increase of jobs in 2017 that promised to be about 17 times faster than the total US economy.
Yeah, I think Trump has curtailed the adoption of renewable energy. But it's just my opinion. I could be wrong. Wouldn't surprise me. Often am.
...The fusion guys get these reports and then say "well, we don't have a working reactor so we don't really know" and then stick their fingers in their ears and do the "la la la I CANNOT HEAR YOU" thing...
I like that. It's funny. And it could be that fusion energy is a fly-by-night used to bilk investors. It will forever be 20, 40, 50 years off (double entendre intended). Yeah, I dunno. There is a rumor that results from Big Data analytics is the reason Besos, Microsoft, Amazon, and others are investing here. Ah, it's probably just a ruse.
Oh, and I'm sure you know that there are fusion reactors working right now, just none in the commercial sphere. They're for research. Fusion energy has yet to reach a viable price point. Not yet.
ROFL ! remember 'too cheap to meter' ? fusion will not in a thousand years be cheaper than solar (or wind)
I do agree that solar and wind are some of the most viable renewable sources right now. But the sun goes down and the wind does stop, so rechargeable batteries are in high demand. Consider Tesla's Powerwall. Along with the supporting hardware, it costs over $6,500.00 grand, and that's not including installation fees. Brand new, the Powerwall stores about 13.5 kWh of usable electricity, slightly more than I use now, which is good. And it comes with a 10 year warranty. But Tesla does not offer any coverage related to how much capacity the battery will lose during that time. Kachink!
Don't get me wrong, I'm for renewable energy, solar, wind, hydro-power, geothermal, biomass, Jatropha curcas, microbial fuel cells, artificial photosynthesis, whatever. And I'm good with the government paying for research into such things.
Hell, if the Higgs field and virtual particles were potential viable energy sources, I say check 'em out too. Just be careful, I hear they can make a big bang. (For the uninitiated, that's called "sarcasm".)
MIT thinks they can make affordable, scalable fusion power plants. The likelihood is so real, MIT is getting money from venture capitalists via a newly formed company. They plan on having a working fusion power plant within 15 years. It's still a crap shoot, but the ROI prospects are beaucoup times better than average biotech company. And MIT is just one example. There are plenty of other universities, companies, and countries are into fusion research big time. The potential is that good.
BTW, Popular ingredients for fusion reaction include lithium (the stuff found in some batteries), deuterium (distillable from water) and tritium. I think it's cool that, after the initial supply, the fusion process breeds its own tritium.
Fusion can make electricity 24/7, whether or not the sun is out or the wind blows. And in about 20 years there's a good chance it will be overall cheaper than wind or solar. But hey, I could be wrong and often am. So I diversify. We should all hedge our bets.
I forgot who but, somebody made a good point about this switch to solar & renewables: it's going to crash the economy.
You make good points. I however think otherwise.
For example, I think Trump's rollback of Obama's financial regulations that were designed to abate another 2007 - 2008 crash will put us in even more danger. As I watch the stock market soar, I can't get the word 'bubble' out of my mind.
...We've got massive amounts of investment wealth tied up in fossil fuels. People's retirements are heavily vested in them...
Admittedly, some do think it's a good idea to invest mostly in a single stock or industry, but I don't think that's a good idea for fossil fuels; the writing is on the wall. Diversifying your stock portfolio has always been a good idea, anyway.
Before Trump, the solar industry was booming. The fastest and largest growing job market was in renewable energy, specifically solar (1). Trump has seriously curtailed this growth with tariffs and elimination of tax credits, while at the same time, Trump has repealed rules and promoted coal, shale oil and fracking. As a result, oil production is up, and it has become much less affordable for business and home owners do go solar (2). Nonetheless, I find it telling, and perhaps foretelling, that the oil industry isn't happy about Trump's steel tariffs, NAFTA spats, and other policies (3). Something's not right; something smells and just seems rotten. And as the Ruskies say, a fish rots from the head down. But I digress.
Even with this turnabout, solar and renewable energy will soon be consistently cheaper than fossil fuels, and in some cases are cheaper now (4). I suspect that a few years after the US becomes the world's leading crude oil producer (5), solar and renewables will begin to surge and eventually dominate. Cheaper is better for the average consumer and business alike, which is better for the economy, and so the marketplace will abide. Eventually. Best to divest your fossil fuel investments before then. At least diversify while you still can.
BTW, some say fusion reactors are economically viable now (6). It may be true, but I expect it will take some 20 years before they come online. Such is the nature of the beast. Eventually my money will be on them. After all, cheaper is better.
And why are there (more than ever) unhoused people living in the streets which society has decided to take a giant dump on? Seattle which has a hot tech job market is befuddled with a growing number of unhoused jobless people living in tents on the sidewalks. Amazing.
The unemployed usually go where the jobs are, ridiculously increasing the unemployment and homeless numbers for that particular area. Some come hoping to find a toehold to a career, others come for any sort of employment, even in the secondary job market. But even the qualified might not get hired for whatever reason (gender, race, HR rules and regulations, history, etc.) Not to mention, some homeless have jobs, but just can't afford Seattle's high rent.
It wouldn't surprise me if some of the homeless are anarchic Utopians wanting to create a practical social/economic/ecological alternative to 'authoritarian' representative democracy. Like Europe's Autonomism movement or France's Collectif la vieille Valette.
...The bottom line is that the best prices usually went to the best customers...
So, it's graded pricing based on market data, more or less. They say the marketplace is smarter than we are, but it sounds like some customers know how to work the system. And I thought urgency determined market value. Stupid me.
The following is not a criticism: I wonder how all this fares with Accenture software's "perceived value" or even just a Google search?
Before they got computers, a nearby auto parts store had racks of part books. The price books were actually giant spreadsheets; page after page had part numbers in the first column, followed by about ten columns with various prices for the same part. One price for garages, another for qualified mechanics, then Insurance, do-it-yourselfs, vets, etc.
Until this story, I thought electric vehicles would be cheaper to maintain: fewer moving parts, less wear, easy to replace and repair. Now, I'm not so sure.
Satya is their daddy now. So I'm sure MS, as a good corporate citizen, will address any and all of GitHub's shortcomings. Get ready for major policy updates! After that, well... it appears MS is goin' back to their same o' use to be. GitHub is the leading software development platform, and as such is a major influence in the future of IT. How long before the clarion call to abandon ship?
I think, in some way, all music is derivative. Bach's 'The Well-Tempered Clavier' changed the way music is written and performed, and even how instruments are made. Some of its more notable fans/students included Hayden, Mozart and Beethoven. When my neighbor/music teacher use to play it, I would sit on the porch spellbound. And yet I know music aficionados who say it sucks. C'est la vie.
The music business has been declining for so long, by now they should have discovered Arne Saknussemm's skeletal remains at the center of the earth.
I was just listening to an old clip of Frank Zappa talking about the decline of the music business. Back in the 60's the music industry was run by
"old guys who said 'I don't know. Who knows what it is. Record it. Stick it out. If it sells, all right.' We were better off with those guys than we are now with the supposedly hip young executives, you know, who are making the decisions about what people should see and hear..."
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of science fiction, ever hear Authur C. Clarke's 1st law?
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
Not that I'm accusing you of being a distinguished scientist. Bill Nye. Honest. Bill Nye.
IMHO, we won't have to terraform Mars that much (if at all) provided gene editing can make our progeny Martians. We are nature's experiment of rational intelligence over reflex [1]. The Anthropocene could very possibly have proven nature's experiment a failure. Humans are screwing up this planet so much, at some point Mars might become the more suitable environment. Why not hedge the biological bet, and through our own intelligent design, initiate life with more rational intelligence elsewhere.
--
[1] Brazenly stolen from Jacob Bronowski
Maduro says it was an assassination attempt by drones, BUT firefighters say a gas tank in an apartment exploded.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/04/venezuelan-president-nicolasmaduro-cuts-short-speech-panic-amid/
You make it sound like it's not a feature. Spectre was brought to you by the NSA, there will be something else there to take its place once new hardware is ready.
Do you really think the CPU is intentionally designed to be exploitable, or, to borrow from Elon Musk, do those those huge idiots not know what they're doing? I really don't know Spectre an abuse of a mistake or making use of a feature. I'm not sure which scenario is worse.
...technically there is no such thing in law called "corporate personhood'.
Oh, I agree. There is no law establishing corporate personhood. For corporations to qualify for such rights and responsibilities, there would have to be a constitutional amendment, a treaty usurping said constitution, or a few arbitrary judicial fiats:
Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1819, Where the court recognized that corporations were entitled to some of the protections of the Constitution dealing with the application of the Contracts Clause of the United States Constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_College_v._Woodward
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co, 118 U.S. 394 (1886), the first time that the Supreme Court was reported to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause granted constitutional protections to corporations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad_Co.
These and other rulings established that corporations have rights (and hopefully responsibilities) assigned to citizens by the constitution. A legal fiction, if you will, that has become known as "corporate personhood".
~~
Simply put, 'corporate person-hood' means that your individual rights are not abridged when you pool resources with others toward a specific goal.
I disagree. To quote Wikipedia
Corporate personhood is the legal notion that a corporation, separately from its associated human beings (like owners, managers, or employees), has at least some of the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by natural persons (physical humans).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
~~
I don't know if I agree with you that a shareholder should be personally liable for damages a company does. I think you are going about it the wrong way. If you can prove damages were caused by illegal behavior of a company you can receive compensation. What's the problem?
I don't think shareholders should be financially liable, unless they are somehow responsible. Lloyd's of London, for example, use to rake many their investors over the coals when the company had to pay up, sending many into bankruptcy. Lloyd's has since changed.
The people who should pay, and possibly go to jail, are those responsible for making the decisions to pollute, put people in personal harm, cause damage directly or indirectly, etc. The potentially liable come from a large group: management (upper, mid and lower), the board of directors, the chairman, majority shareholders, and others who escape my alleged mind at the moment.
By the way, I'm not adverse to our legal tradition of going after the deepest pockets. And when appropriate, the person or persons liable should go to jail.
I've gotten very pessimistic about all this. The law's purpose is to serve justice, not the rich, and certainly not corporations. So much has gone wrong. Now we find corporate lackeys and shills writing the very laws that are supposed to regulate them. 'Criminal Justice' has become an oxymoron, double entendre. Lenny Bruce was right, "In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls."
Passing the buck. As in, letting the legislature do their job.
If congress had previously passed a law, signed by the president, that gave corporations 'personhood', i.e. rights and responsibilities assigned by the Constitution, I might agree with you.
No such thing happened.
Because corporate personhood is something created by the judicial decree and not by an Act of Congress, the courts have the duty to hold corporations responsible for their actions.
Instead, corporations have only limited liability. They can cause earthquakes while fracking, make cyanide ponds while mining for gold that are known to spill over into other properties, rivers and streams, and pollute the atmosphere and water sources with god knows what. When it's time to clean up the toxic mess that corporations wreck, more often than not, the funds the government uses comes from the taxpayer.
Giving rights to corporations without responsibilities is just plain wrong.
For me, some of the most heinous, egregious court rulings have been the ones establishing and empowering corporate personhood (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co; Dartmouth College v. Woodward; Citizen's United v. FEC; Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.; etc.). They have had a devastating effect on the democratic republic that Thomas Paine and colonists fought for in the American Revolution. We are governed not by citizens but by corporations.
The country has become a corporatocracy. Advising citizens to vote for change, as many actually did for Obama, leads to a rude awakening. There is no "Change We Can Believe In" anymore. That old critique about governance seems even more true today: "If voting changed anything, it would be made illegal." The decision of Judge Alsup's court just adds to existing corporate power by allowing them to maliciously disregard their impact on the environment.
No branch of government is perfect. Maybe we get what we deserve. Or perhaps there's madness in the courts' methods.
If I'd a point to give, you'd have it. This is well thought out, opinionated and insightful. Might not see eye to eye, but that's all the better. Well done.
Trump may well farm out the Space Force's space travel to an enterprise that's not Bezos related. And if Elon Musk's SpaceX is the one chosen, I wouldn't be surprised. It would be a 3rd degree burn to Bezos. Especially after that $130 million dollar contract SpaceX won from the USAF. So, maybe Blue Origin's announcement is a foray into the political quagmire, saying they are still economically viable, and that they can still make a buck in space even without a contract from Uncle Sam.
I'd like to think the Stonehenge builders were thinking so abstractly as to conquer up Pythagoras' theorem two thousand years before that Greek genius did, but I have my doubts. When building the Pyramid of Khafre (2558-2532 BC), the Egyptians would have used a rope with knots tied at intervals of 3,4, and 5 (Pythagorean triples) to guarantee a perfect right angle. Their use of concrete numbers aligns to the Pythagorean Theorem, but is not evidence they knew the Pythagorean Theorem. Similarly, the concrete numbers used in the building of Stonehenge do not prove they knew the general formula either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ6ky97LaBc
Given the class of Spectre and Meltdown attacks rely on someone else having the freedom to execute code on your hardware, shouldn't something like this be opt-in? There's a whole world of servers out that where Spectre is ultimately completely irrelevant in terms of a security threat, but hyperthreading is definitely not irrelevant in terms of performance.
I can't do any better than quote OpenBSD on this:
OpenBSD believes in strong security. Our aspiration is to be NUMBER ONE in the industry for security (if we are not already there). Our open software development model permits us to take a more uncompromising view towards increased security than most vendors are able to. We can make changes the vendors would not make.
https://www.openbsd.org/security.html
Can anyone explain why I or anyone else should care about personal flying machines?...
It's a sensible question. Let me fly in the face of sth.
/. is news for nerds, stuff that matters. /. category.
/. community. Even if it's just one nerd.
/. cares. Someone else.
Airplanes are technology, a bona fide
Airplanes have a lot of fans in the nerd communities.
Therefore, a personal flying machine contest does matter to some in the
ipso facto, someone on
Me.
I confess, I've gone to Air Shows to see the warbirds of old, and to watch the Blue Angles do their thing. Even got a ride in a way-too-old cargo plane once. They opened these huge doors as they flew to the mountains and back. Probably just to give us noobs a thrill. It worked. Went right up there and looked down. Better than anything Disney.
cyberchondriac, your points are clear and well reasoned. I've missed that on Slashdot. And although I think I see Trump differently, I too hope that he eventually supports renewables more.
...This is an example of why you should always read the article, not just the headline....
You're right. I'm wrong. Often am. Probably just con-fusion on my part. There are fusion reactors out there now, who aim to fuse hydrogen into helium, and release incredible amounts of clean energy to the grid. But none sell electricity yet. So far, it's just research.
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-uk-has-just-switch-on-its-tokamak-nuclear-fusion-reactor
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=electricity_in_the_united_states
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption
Reuters, Forbes, CNBC and others report that the US solar industry lost about 10,000 jobs in 2017. And that's after an initial increase of jobs in 2017 that promised to be about 17 times faster than the total US economy.
Yeah, I think Trump has curtailed the adoption of renewable energy. But it's just my opinion. I could be wrong. Wouldn't surprise me. Often am.
Initial report of job growth:
http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/24/news/economy/solar-jobs-us-coal/index.html
Reports of job loss:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuarhodes/2018/01/23/solar-tariff-a-direct-hit-to-fastest-growing-job-market-in-us/
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/07/us-solar-industry-lost-nearly-10000-jobs-in-2017.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-solar-jobs/u-s-solar-industry-lost-nearly-10000-jobs-in-2017-idUSKBN1FR15O
...The fusion guys get these reports and then say "well, we don't have a working reactor so we don't really know" and then stick their fingers in their ears and do the "la la la I CANNOT HEAR YOU" thing...
I like that. It's funny. And it could be that fusion energy is a fly-by-night used to bilk investors. It will forever be 20, 40, 50 years off (double entendre intended). Yeah, I dunno. There is a rumor that results from Big Data analytics is the reason Besos, Microsoft, Amazon, and others are investing here. Ah, it's probably just a ruse.
Oh, and I'm sure you know that there are fusion reactors working right now, just none in the commercial sphere. They're for research. Fusion energy has yet to reach a viable price point. Not yet.
https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/10042-Private-sector-companies-are-firing-up-the-fusion-race
http://theconversation.com/why-nuclear-fusion-is-gaining-steam-again-93775
ROFL ! remember 'too cheap to meter' ? fusion will not in a thousand years be cheaper than solar (or wind)
I do agree that solar and wind are some of the most viable renewable sources right now. But the sun goes down and the wind does stop, so rechargeable batteries are in high demand. Consider Tesla's Powerwall. Along with the supporting hardware, it costs over $6,500.00 grand, and that's not including installation fees. Brand new, the Powerwall stores about 13.5 kWh of usable electricity, slightly more than I use now, which is good. And it comes with a 10 year warranty. But Tesla does not offer any coverage related to how much capacity the battery will lose during that time. Kachink!
Don't get me wrong, I'm for renewable energy, solar, wind, hydro-power, geothermal, biomass, Jatropha curcas, microbial fuel cells, artificial photosynthesis, whatever. And I'm good with the government paying for research into such things.
Hell, if the Higgs field and virtual particles were potential viable energy sources, I say check 'em out too. Just be careful, I hear they can make a big bang. (For the uninitiated, that's called "sarcasm".)
MIT thinks they can make affordable, scalable fusion power plants. The likelihood is so real, MIT is getting money from venture capitalists via a newly formed company. They plan on having a working fusion power plant within 15 years. It's still a crap shoot, but the ROI prospects are beaucoup times better than average biotech company. And MIT is just one example. There are plenty of other universities, companies, and countries are into fusion research big time. The potential is that good.
BTW, Popular ingredients for fusion reaction include lithium (the stuff found in some batteries), deuterium (distillable from water) and tritium. I think it's cool that, after the initial supply, the fusion process breeds its own tritium.
Fusion can make electricity 24/7, whether or not the sun is out or the wind blows. And in about 20 years there's a good chance it will be overall cheaper than wind or solar. But hey, I could be wrong and often am. So I diversify. We should all hedge our bets.
http://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-newly-formed-company-launch-novel-approach-fusion-power-0309
I forgot who but, somebody made a good point about this switch to solar & renewables: it's going to crash the economy.
You make good points. I however think otherwise. For example, I think Trump's rollback of Obama's financial regulations that were designed to abate another 2007 - 2008 crash will put us in even more danger. As I watch the stock market soar, I can't get the word 'bubble' out of my mind.
...We've got massive amounts of investment wealth tied up in fossil fuels. People's retirements are heavily vested in them...
Admittedly, some do think it's a good idea to invest mostly in a single stock or industry, but I don't think that's a good idea for fossil fuels; the writing is on the wall. Diversifying your stock portfolio has always been a good idea, anyway.
Before Trump, the solar industry was booming. The fastest and largest growing job market was in renewable energy, specifically solar (1). Trump has seriously curtailed this growth with tariffs and elimination of tax credits, while at the same time, Trump has repealed rules and promoted coal, shale oil and fracking. As a result, oil production is up, and it has become much less affordable for business and home owners do go solar (2). Nonetheless, I find it telling, and perhaps foretelling, that the oil industry isn't happy about Trump's steel tariffs, NAFTA spats, and other policies (3). Something's not right; something smells and just seems rotten. And as the Ruskies say, a fish rots from the head down. But I digress.
Even with this turnabout, solar and renewable energy will soon be consistently cheaper than fossil fuels, and in some cases are cheaper now (4). I suspect that a few years after the US becomes the world's leading crude oil producer (5), solar and renewables will begin to surge and eventually dominate. Cheaper is better for the average consumer and business alike, which is better for the economy, and so the marketplace will abide. Eventually. Best to divest your fossil fuel investments before then. At least diversify while you still can.
BTW, some say fusion reactors are economically viable now (6). It may be true, but I expect it will take some 20 years before they come online. Such is the nature of the beast. Eventually my money will be on them. After all, cheaper is better.
(1) http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/2...
(2) https://ntknetwork.com/u-s-oil...
(3) https://www.politico.com/story...
(4) https://www.forbes.com/sites/d...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://www.engadget.com/2018/...
https://about.newenergyfinance...
http://energyinnovation.org/20...
https://about.newenergyfinance...
(5) http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/0...
(6) https://phys.org/news/2015-10-...
Ah, this is just an underhanded way to bring back the Minitel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel#Minitel_and_the_Internet
And why are there (more than ever) unhoused people living in the streets which society has decided to take a giant dump on? Seattle which has a hot tech job market is befuddled with a growing number of unhoused jobless people living in tents on the sidewalks. Amazing.
The unemployed usually go where the jobs are, ridiculously increasing the unemployment and homeless numbers for that particular area. Some come hoping to find a toehold to a career, others come for any sort of employment, even in the secondary job market. But even the qualified might not get hired for whatever reason (gender, race, HR rules and regulations, history, etc.) Not to mention, some homeless have jobs, but just can't afford Seattle's high rent.
It wouldn't surprise me if some of the homeless are anarchic Utopians wanting to create a practical social/economic/ecological alternative to 'authoritarian' representative democracy. Like Europe's Autonomism movement or France's Collectif la vieille Valette.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomism
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://laboratoireurbanismeinsurrectionnel.blogspot.com/2015/10/france-magnifique-vieille-valette.html&prev=search
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.passerelleco.info/article.php%3Fid_article%3D527&prev=search
...The bottom line is that the best prices usually went to the best customers...
So, it's graded pricing based on market data, more or less. They say the marketplace is smarter than we are, but it sounds like some customers know how to work the system. And I thought urgency determined market value. Stupid me.
The following is not a criticism: I wonder how all this fares with Accenture software's "perceived value" or even just a Google search?
Until this story, I thought electric vehicles would be cheaper to maintain: fewer moving parts, less wear, easy to replace and repair. Now, I'm not so sure.
Satya is their daddy now. So I'm sure MS, as a good corporate citizen, will address any and all of GitHub's shortcomings. Get ready for major policy updates! After that, well... it appears MS is goin' back to their same o' use to be. GitHub is the leading software development platform, and as such is a major influence in the future of IT. How long before the clarion call to abandon ship?
I think, in some way, all music is derivative. Bach's 'The Well-Tempered Clavier' changed the way music is written and performed, and even how instruments are made. Some of its more notable fans/students included Hayden, Mozart and Beethoven. When my neighbor/music teacher use to play it, I would sit on the porch spellbound. And yet I know music aficionados who say it sucks. C'est la vie.
"old guys who said 'I don't know. Who knows what it is. Record it. Stick it out. If it sells, all right.' We were better off with those guys than we are now with the supposedly hip young executives, you know, who are making the decisions about what people should see and hear..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZazEM8cgt0