Typical price range of electricity where I live is from $0.02 to $0.40 per kWh. Even with swings like this there currently is no storage technology that can be profitable. Pumps for dams will wear out or require to much maintenance to turn a profit. The existing water storage mechanisms in Canada and the USA are maintained for insurance not for storage. (The pump facilities charge utilities for the ability to rapidly bring power online). Chemical batteries will degrade before they will have gone through enough charge cycles to pay for themselves.
So yes, a good battery technology would be revolutionary.
The US constitution guarantees most rights for everyone not just white, land owning men. However the government often chips away at those rights by denying them to various groups, non-citizens, convicts, those without government issued ID,...
If you aren't willing to support fundamental rights for everyone, then really should you be surprised when you lose those rights yourself?
Also you can yell Fire in a crowded room as long as people in the room believes you are serious. It is only a crime if a reasonable person thinks you would be believed and it would cause a stamped.
I live in Ottawa Canada. I had my GPS stolen from my car and the police drove to my house to return it. I live in a neighbourhood where people never lock their doors. This was a low end $80 GPS. I think most of our officers try and be helpful here. I would definitely think that a $1000 laptop would warrant police help.
Obviously you don't care that much about it because otherwise you would have read a bit about the story and realized the story is complete click bait. Zuckerberg isn't suing to force people to sell. Zuckerberg doesn't even know who the people are. They don't know who they are! There are 8 acres of land inside his land. He owes these people the right to cross his land and if he builds on his land something like a fence he has to consult with them. These owners owe property taxes on the land. He is asking the local government to find the people who own the land and tell them they own the land. If the owners decide they don't want the land (very likely) then the land will be sold and if it is sold for more than the back taxes the owners might get some money.
This is just click bait to bash Zuckerberg. He isn't suing to force people to sell.
Zuckerberg doesn't even know who the people are. They don't know who they are! There are 8 acres of land inside his land. He owes these people the right to cross his land and if he builds on his land something like a fence he has to consult with them.
No one has been paying property taxes on the land. He is asking the local government to:
1) find out who owns the land
2) collect the property taxes or auction the land to pay the taxes
3) if the land is auctioned to pay any money over the owed taxes to the owners of the land
To complicate things the land was bought by Portuguese workers (not native Hawaiians) 4 or 5 generations ago. So each of these plots could now have over 100 owners.
Well funded research by professors adds value to undergraduate degrees.
I got my degree from a well funded math faculty. That math department is now studying quantum computing. This makes the engineering faculties expenses look tiny. It also increase the prestige of degrees that come out of the university, increasing student life time earnings. AND! the professors actually do teach the leading edge stuff to their undergraduate students. 10 years from now when this new leading edge stuff becomes mainstream those students will now have an advantage over their peers.
Students are better off going to a university with better professors and professors that are working on new, well funded projects. Should society make them pay more? I don't know, but from an individuals perspective it would make sense to be willing to pay more.
This is a total non-story. This is like complaining when a TV station airs an ad for a show that it will air.
Google is using it's own advertising to promote it's own products. They aren't using their search results they are using the paid ads on the search page. Now they are paying themselves for the advertisements but they are also being transparent and honest about it. Also since the ad spots are auctioned every ad google uses is an ad spot that could have been used by a paying customer. So the ads are not free for Google.
The Y Chromosome does get used for anything and for a very good reason. If it did humans would likely go extinct very quickly. Our individual genes are what evolution passes on. Any mutation in a gene that makes it more likely to be passed on is favored. Unfortunately most mutations that cause a gene to be replicated are not beneficial to the organism (cancer) or the species in general. That's why multi-cellular organisms have all kinds of mechanisms to keep genes behaving. One of these mechanisms is chromosomal crossover but this mechanism doesn't work for the Y chromosome. So if a gene arose on the Y chromosome that made all the sperm released carry only Y chromosomes this gene would very quickly spread throughout the population and then in a few tens of generations there would be no more females.
1. Store of value
2. Medium of exchange
3. Unit of account
As long as it doesn't drastically lose value bit coin is a good store of value.
Where it is accepted it's transaction costs are very low compared to using banks or credit cards. It does differ from cash in that transactions do not occur instantly.
Unit of account is where bitcoin currently fails to be a currency. Very few items are actually valued in Bitcoin. Most items are valued in US dollars and then the current bitcoin conversion is quoted. Even if I had an online business that sold everything in bitcoin I would still likely count the value of my inventory in US dollars, or Euros.
2017 might be the year that bitcoin does become a unit of account. If the weekly/daily fluctuations in its value compared to other major currencies decrease then I could very well see it used as a unit of account in places like Argentina, Venezuela, Egypt or any other moderately wealthy, educated country with an unstable local currency.
Currently bitcoins value is too variable to be a unit of account.
Where it is accepted it is a very good medium of exchange with low transaction costs.
It is used as a store of value - There are many countries where bitcoins medium term stability is better than the local currency.
So bitcoin has 2 out of the 3 requirements for a currency and it may with time gain the 3rd.
Econ 101 called, Money has 3 properties:
1. Store of value
2. Medium of exchange
3. Unit of account
Currently bitcoins value is too variable to be a unit of account.
Where it is accepted it is a very good medium of exchange with low transaction costs.
It is used as a store of value - There are many countries where bitcoins medium term stability is better than the local currency.
So bitcoin has 2 out of the 3 requirements for a currency and it may with time gain the 3rd.
Certificate transparency (CT) is making it unlikely any CA will ever issue a certificate to anyone other than the legitimate owner of a site. The risk of getting caught is nearly 100%. Once CT gets some added auditing features built into the browsers even the NSA will have difficulty preventing a target from knowing they have been presented with a fraudulent certificate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_Transparency/
I do think the patent system has always been broken and is so badly broken that we would be better off without them but Monsanto vs. Schmeiser is one of the worst arguements against patents.
I will concede that Uber does have a negotiating advantage over the drivers. It is not a level playing field. If Uber is the only app or by far the most used app and if drivers invest time or in equipment that can only be used for ride sharing then the drivers become "sticky". They no longer can remove their service or change careers easily. As a society we may want to create some sort of legal framework to protect these people. This is similar to how unions improved the lives of teachers or miners. If you invest your time in becoming a teacher there is often only one employer in a region, similarly if you move your family to some mining town you can't easily change jobs. A union or a legal structure would make things better although calling them employees is a stretch.
Uber drivers set their own hours and supply their own equipment. They have a high degree of autonomy in how they do their job such as which areas they want to work in.
Uber supplies an app that connects people who want to go from A to B with drivers who are willing to do the driving. It also makes it much easier for both driver and customer to vet each other and agree on a price.
This seems like Uber is an information company connecting two market participants. I would love to see this model expanded to house cleaning, yard work and baby sitting. In all these cases the customer doesn't want to work with a large company, I want to select and vet an individual baby sitter or driver but I don't want a long term relationship with this vendor so I therefore need to be able to enter into this contract as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
So why should Uber drivers be considered Uber employees? What is the benefit to society as a whole? If there were 10 different ride/taxi apps and the drivers could use all of them would it make them employees of all the apps?
Correct. The hack wasn't on the SWIFT network. No one broke SWIFT's security or forged transactions. They used legitimate authorized systems to send valid commands to the SWIFT network. It was the Bangladesh central bank's security and audit systems that were by-passed.
I worked at a credit bureau. As developers we had unlimited access to everyone's data and zero oversight on read access. We could even change people's files and unless we were really stupid no one would catch us. I don't know anyone who was even tempted to abuse the power. No one even looked at their own reports. Even the poor guy who was a victim of identity fraud went through the proper channels (and then updated them because they sucked).
NO! ,
I want my power to be there when I want to use it, not when the sun shines or the wind blows. Renewables may produce power at the lowest cost but they do it at the wrong time. Wind where I live often causes the price of electricity to go negative (OK - there is also some government stupidity here) . So the windmill is producing cheap electricity but the retail sales price for that electricity might be negative $0.02/KWh. Meanwhile on a hot, humid, cloudy day with no wind the price of electricity might jump to $7/KWh. Suddenly my turbofan natural gas generator is looking mighty profitable.
Sure for KWh pricing renewables are doing very well but they still suck in the reliability department. Solar in Germany generates exactly 0% of Germany's peak power demand. (Germany's peak is in the winter after 18:00, when the sun has set). Wind provides the most energy to the grid in Ontario, Pennsylvania and Ohio in the late evening in January and February, when our demand is lowest. This frequently causes the price of electricity to go negative. Coal maybe on the way out but natural gas energy production will remain very profitable and actually get more profitable as we shut down our base load production of coal and nuclear.
And batteries are just not good enough yet. Summer retail prices in some places in North America swing by $0.70 per KWh but even at that swing you can't build a battery that will last enough charge/discharge cycles to pay for itself.
My wants are limitless. As automation replaces these workers we should rejoice because they can then do something else that I value. Manufacturing in Canada and the USA has doubled over the last 20 years and the number of people employed has halved. I should therefore have 4 times as much as I had in 1996. ,
I have money but no free time. I would love to have someone clean my house, rake my leaves and give me a massage. The kids in the neighbourhood aren't interested in physical work, a registered massage therapist charges $85/hr but I don't need a registered therapist and a cleaning company is going to charge me $100 to clean my house and require me to tidy the house before they come in. I would be willing to pay $15 - $20/hr for these jobs (minimum wage where I live is $11.25/hr) but I don't know how to find and vet someone to do these jobs.
Unix time - (also known as POSIX time or Epoch time) is a system for describing instants in time, defined as the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), Thursday, 1 January 1970, [note 1] not counting leap seconds.
This is fine for many systems but what about the systems that do count leap seconds. In January they will be 1 second ahead of POSIX time. I'm thinking of industrial equipment and electrical infrastructure. I'm also wondering about how log files will be matched up when different systems are assumed to be synced to under 1 second.
Oh wait, we will just see what breaks and kludge it in January.
I often pirate their books and read the first few chapters. If I like the book I buy the dead tree version. I find I learn from a physical book much better than from reading off a monitor.
I would say 75% of my reference books are now O'Reily.
Once it is collected this information will either be too tempting not to be used or will be used to justify the cost of collecting it. Your browsing history will mined to quantify you. So maybe your exact details won't be revealed but information inferred by your habits will be used. The surveillance will reveal your income level, your likelihood to gamble, use a prostitute, voter preference and likelihood to vote, your children's likelihood to succeed in school. Companies will then selectively choose not to offer you products, government might not invest in infrastructure in your area because they might deem your area unlikely to elect their candidate, programs won't be offered at your school because another school has kids with a higher aptitude for those programs.
This bill along with the actions of other western governments has hurried the use of strong competent encryption in our daily lives. Soon all my traffic will be over TLS, everyone's searches will by default all be done on secure servers out of reach of legitimate law enforcement. Now with this law us geeks will not only start using VPNs and onion routing more but we will teach our friends to do it. In a few years any idiotic criminal will be using encryption that will make it impossible for the police to discover their communication.
This bill along with the actions of other western governments has hurried the use of strong competent encryption in our daily lives. Soon all my traffic will be over TLS, everyone's searches will by default all be done on secure servers out of reach of legitimate law enforcement. Now with this law us geeks will not only start using VPNs and onion routing more but we will teach our friends to do it. In a few years any idiotic criminal will be using encryption that will make it impossible for the police to discover their communication.
Si02 isn't soluble in water.
Silicon doesn't easily form chains. When we do coax it to form long chains it isn't stable.
If we look into space we actually find clouds of alcohol a very water soluble carbon based molecule. We generally don't see many Silicon base water soluble molecules occurring naturally.
The polarity of the bond in SiH4 is the opposite of CH4. The bond is also much weaker, weaker than even H-H bond thus very primitive organic processes would have a more difficult time building more complicated structures with Silicon.
Slashdot Mirror
Typical price range of electricity where I live is from $0.02 to $0.40 per kWh. Even with swings like this there currently is no storage technology that can be profitable. Pumps for dams will wear out or require to much maintenance to turn a profit. The existing water storage mechanisms in Canada and the USA are maintained for insurance not for storage. (The pump facilities charge utilities for the ability to rapidly bring power online). Chemical batteries will degrade before they will have gone through enough charge cycles to pay for themselves.
So yes, a good battery technology would be revolutionary.
The US constitution guarantees most rights for everyone not just white, land owning men. However the government often chips away at those rights by denying them to various groups, non-citizens, convicts, those without government issued ID,...
If you aren't willing to support fundamental rights for everyone, then really should you be surprised when you lose those rights yourself?
Also you can yell Fire in a crowded room as long as people in the room believes you are serious. It is only a crime if a reasonable person thinks you would be believed and it would cause a stamped.
I live in Ottawa Canada. I had my GPS stolen from my car and the police drove to my house to return it. I live in a neighbourhood where people never lock their doors. This was a low end $80 GPS. I think most of our officers try and be helpful here. I would definitely think that a $1000 laptop would warrant police help.
Obviously you don't care that much about it because otherwise you would have read a bit about the story and realized the story is complete click bait. Zuckerberg isn't suing to force people to sell. Zuckerberg doesn't even know who the people are. They don't know who they are! There are 8 acres of land inside his land. He owes these people the right to cross his land and if he builds on his land something like a fence he has to consult with them. These owners owe property taxes on the land. He is asking the local government to find the people who own the land and tell them they own the land. If the owners decide they don't want the land (very likely) then the land will be sold and if it is sold for more than the back taxes the owners might get some money.
This is just click bait to bash Zuckerberg. He isn't suing to force people to sell.
Zuckerberg doesn't even know who the people are. They don't know who they are! There are 8 acres of land inside his land. He owes these people the right to cross his land and if he builds on his land something like a fence he has to consult with them.
No one has been paying property taxes on the land. He is asking the local government to:
1) find out who owns the land
2) collect the property taxes or auction the land to pay the taxes
3) if the land is auctioned to pay any money over the owed taxes to the owners of the land
To complicate things the land was bought by Portuguese workers (not native Hawaiians) 4 or 5 generations ago. So each of these plots could now have over 100 owners.
Well funded research by professors adds value to undergraduate degrees.
I got my degree from a well funded math faculty. That math department is now studying quantum computing. This makes the engineering faculties expenses look tiny. It also increase the prestige of degrees that come out of the university, increasing student life time earnings. AND! the professors actually do teach the leading edge stuff to their undergraduate students. 10 years from now when this new leading edge stuff becomes mainstream those students will now have an advantage over their peers.
Students are better off going to a university with better professors and professors that are working on new, well funded projects. Should society make them pay more? I don't know, but from an individuals perspective it would make sense to be willing to pay more.
This is a total non-story. This is like complaining when a TV station airs an ad for a show that it will air.
Google is using it's own advertising to promote it's own products. They aren't using their search results they are using the paid ads on the search page. Now they are paying themselves for the advertisements but they are also being transparent and honest about it. Also since the ad spots are auctioned every ad google uses is an ad spot that could have been used by a paying customer. So the ads are not free for Google.
The Y Chromosome does get used for anything and for a very good reason. If it did humans would likely go extinct very quickly. Our individual genes are what evolution passes on. Any mutation in a gene that makes it more likely to be passed on is favored. Unfortunately most mutations that cause a gene to be replicated are not beneficial to the organism (cancer) or the species in general. That's why multi-cellular organisms have all kinds of mechanisms to keep genes behaving. One of these mechanisms is chromosomal crossover but this mechanism doesn't work for the Y chromosome. So if a gene arose on the Y chromosome that made all the sperm released carry only Y chromosomes this gene would very quickly spread throughout the population and then in a few tens of generations there would be no more females.
1. Store of value
2. Medium of exchange
3. Unit of account
As long as it doesn't drastically lose value bit coin is a good store of value.
Where it is accepted it's transaction costs are very low compared to using banks or credit cards. It does differ from cash in that transactions do not occur instantly.
Unit of account is where bitcoin currently fails to be a currency. Very few items are actually valued in Bitcoin. Most items are valued in US dollars and then the current bitcoin conversion is quoted. Even if I had an online business that sold everything in bitcoin I would still likely count the value of my inventory in US dollars, or Euros.
2017 might be the year that bitcoin does become a unit of account. If the weekly/daily fluctuations in its value compared to other major currencies decrease then I could very well see it used as a unit of account in places like Argentina, Venezuela, Egypt or any other moderately wealthy, educated country with an unstable local currency. Currently bitcoins value is too variable to be a unit of account. Where it is accepted it is a very good medium of exchange with low transaction costs. It is used as a store of value - There are many countries where bitcoins medium term stability is better than the local currency. So bitcoin has 2 out of the 3 requirements for a currency and it may with time gain the 3rd.
Econ 101 called, Money has 3 properties:
1. Store of value
2. Medium of exchange
3. Unit of account
Currently bitcoins value is too variable to be a unit of account.
Where it is accepted it is a very good medium of exchange with low transaction costs.
It is used as a store of value - There are many countries where bitcoins medium term stability is better than the local currency.
So bitcoin has 2 out of the 3 requirements for a currency and it may with time gain the 3rd.
Certificate transparency (CT) is making it unlikely any CA will ever issue a certificate to anyone other than the legitimate owner of a site. The risk of getting caught is nearly 100%. Once CT gets some added auditing features built into the browsers even the NSA will have difficulty preventing a target from knowing they have been presented with a fraudulent certificate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_Transparency/
I think everyone loves to hate Monsanto but Schmeiser was intentionally growing Monsanto groundup resistent canola.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser/
I do think the patent system has always been broken and is so badly broken that we would be better off without them but Monsanto vs. Schmeiser is one of the worst arguements against patents.
I will concede that Uber does have a negotiating advantage over the drivers. It is not a level playing field. If Uber is the only app or by far the most used app and if drivers invest time or in equipment that can only be used for ride sharing then the drivers become "sticky". They no longer can remove their service or change careers easily. As a society we may want to create some sort of legal framework to protect these people. This is similar to how unions improved the lives of teachers or miners. If you invest your time in becoming a teacher there is often only one employer in a region, similarly if you move your family to some mining town you can't easily change jobs. A union or a legal structure would make things better although calling them employees is a stretch.
Uber drivers set their own hours and supply their own equipment. They have a high degree of autonomy in how they do their job such as which areas they want to work in.
Uber supplies an app that connects people who want to go from A to B with drivers who are willing to do the driving. It also makes it much easier for both driver and customer to vet each other and agree on a price.
This seems like Uber is an information company connecting two market participants. I would love to see this model expanded to house cleaning, yard work and baby sitting. In all these cases the customer doesn't want to work with a large company, I want to select and vet an individual baby sitter or driver but I don't want a long term relationship with this vendor so I therefore need to be able to enter into this contract as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
So why should Uber drivers be considered Uber employees? What is the benefit to society as a whole? If there were 10 different ride/taxi apps and the drivers could use all of them would it make them employees of all the apps?
Correct. The hack wasn't on the SWIFT network. No one broke SWIFT's security or forged transactions. They used legitimate authorized systems to send valid commands to the SWIFT network. It was the Bangladesh central bank's security and audit systems that were by-passed.
I worked at a credit bureau. As developers we had unlimited access to everyone's data and zero oversight on read access. We could even change people's files and unless we were really stupid no one would catch us. I don't know anyone who was even tempted to abuse the power. No one even looked at their own reports. Even the poor guy who was a victim of identity fraud went through the proper channels (and then updated them because they sucked).
NO!
,
I want my power to be there when I want to use it, not when the sun shines or the wind blows. Renewables may produce power at the lowest cost but they do it at the wrong time. Wind where I live often causes the price of electricity to go negative (OK - there is also some government stupidity here) . So the windmill is producing cheap electricity but the retail sales price for that electricity might be negative $0.02/KWh. Meanwhile on a hot, humid, cloudy day with no wind the price of electricity might jump to $7/KWh. Suddenly my turbofan natural gas generator is looking mighty profitable.
Sure for KWh pricing renewables are doing very well but they still suck in the reliability department. Solar in Germany generates exactly 0% of Germany's peak power demand. (Germany's peak is in the winter after 18:00, when the sun has set). Wind provides the most energy to the grid in Ontario, Pennsylvania and Ohio in the late evening in January and February, when our demand is lowest. This frequently causes the price of electricity to go negative. Coal maybe on the way out but natural gas energy production will remain very profitable and actually get more profitable as we shut down our base load production of coal and nuclear.
And batteries are just not good enough yet. Summer retail prices in some places in North America swing by $0.70 per KWh but even at that swing you can't build a battery that will last enough charge/discharge cycles to pay for itself.
My wants are limitless. As automation replaces these workers we should rejoice because they can then do something else that I value. Manufacturing in Canada and the USA has doubled over the last 20 years and the number of people employed has halved. I should therefore have 4 times as much as I had in 1996.
,
I have money but no free time. I would love to have someone clean my house, rake my leaves and give me a massage. The kids in the neighbourhood aren't interested in physical work, a registered massage therapist charges $85/hr but I don't need a registered therapist and a cleaning company is going to charge me $100 to clean my house and require me to tidy the house before they come in. I would be willing to pay $15 - $20/hr for these jobs (minimum wage where I live is $11.25/hr) but I don't know how to find and vet someone to do these jobs.
Unix time - (also known as POSIX time or Epoch time) is a system for describing instants in time, defined as the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), Thursday, 1 January 1970, [note 1] not counting leap seconds.
This is fine for many systems but what about the systems that do count leap seconds. In January they will be 1 second ahead of POSIX time. I'm thinking of industrial equipment and electrical infrastructure. I'm also wondering about how log files will be matched up when different systems are assumed to be synced to under 1 second.
Oh wait, we will just see what breaks and kludge it in January.
I often pirate their books and read the first few chapters. If I like the book I buy the dead tree version. I find I learn from a physical book much better than from reading off a monitor. I would say 75% of my reference books are now O'Reily.
Once it is collected this information will either be too tempting not to be used or will be used to justify the cost of collecting it. Your browsing history will mined to quantify you. So maybe your exact details won't be revealed but information inferred by your habits will be used. The surveillance will reveal your income level, your likelihood to gamble, use a prostitute, voter preference and likelihood to vote, your children's likelihood to succeed in school. Companies will then selectively choose not to offer you products, government might not invest in infrastructure in your area because they might deem your area unlikely to elect their candidate, programs won't be offered at your school because another school has kids with a higher aptitude for those programs.
The police should be fighting against this.
This bill along with the actions of other western governments has hurried the use of strong competent encryption in our daily lives. Soon all my traffic will be over TLS, everyone's searches will by default all be done on secure servers out of reach of legitimate law enforcement. Now with this law us geeks will not only start using VPNs and onion routing more but we will teach our friends to do it. In a few years any idiotic criminal will be using encryption that will make it impossible for the police to discover their communication.
The police should be fighting against this.
This bill along with the actions of other western governments has hurried the use of strong competent encryption in our daily lives. Soon all my traffic will be over TLS, everyone's searches will by default all be done on secure servers out of reach of legitimate law enforcement. Now with this law us geeks will not only start using VPNs and onion routing more but we will teach our friends to do it. In a few years any idiotic criminal will be using encryption that will make it impossible for the police to discover their communication.
Si02 isn't soluble in water.
Silicon doesn't easily form chains. When we do coax it to form long chains it isn't stable.
If we look into space we actually find clouds of alcohol a very water soluble carbon based molecule. We generally don't see many Silicon base water soluble molecules occurring naturally.
The polarity of the bond in SiH4 is the opposite of CH4. The bond is also much weaker, weaker than even H-H bond thus very primitive organic processes would have a more difficult time building more complicated structures with Silicon.