Did you know that Toyota moved their North American HQ to Texas? Ask where that hydrogen comes from. It comes from hiding massive CO2 emissions at natural gas âoereformingâ facilities to generate that hydrogen. Itâ(TM)s all part of a strategy to greenwash the natural gas CO2 emissions in partnership with the Japanese who through industrial policy are trying to build a national moat around their high tech fuel cell business. This whole approach is more expensive than alternatives and of course is incompatible with stopping run away climate change making human extinct
It will take *at least* as much energy to recapture the CO2 released by fossil fuels as the provided when burned originally (basic 2nd law of thermodynamics). And remember that at most 25% of the original fossil fuel energy was useful, so a conservative estimate would be that any process which recaptures the Co2 releasd orignally back into stable solid sequestered form will take 5-10x the original useful energy released when burning the fossil fuel. And that 5-10x energy will need to also be *zero CO2* emitting energy. Donâ(TM)t let people dazzle us with techno-babble unless they claim the 2nd law of thermodynamics magcally doesnâ(TM)t apply
The Bolt canâ(TM)t come close to shipping in the volumes the the Model 3 does. The issue isnâ(TM)t Tesla production rates since it is already outshippng all luxury car competitors. Itâ(TM)s a problem of having the most desirable car with hundreds of thousands of back orders, unlike the Bolt
this study, possibly intentionally, understates the risks. What it did is look at existing modeling to narrow the range of predicted warming. That completely misses the fact that scientists are *conservative* when they build models. When there are factors they can't reliably model, they often just exclude them. This is why their models consistently *under predict* the amount of warming we see. For example, a recent Scientific American article pointed out that scientists weren't including feedback effects like the warming of the permafrost because the couldn't model it. This means the math trick used in this article excludes all these other effects that can (and almost surely will) have *huge* accelerative effects on the modeled warming rates. Far from scare mongering, the conservativism of scientists means they nearly always under predict warming. So what can we expect? Well, the last time Earth had the levels of CO2 we now have in the atmosphere, sea level was up to 100 feet higher than today and ferns grew in the Arctic. This was before man even existed on the planet. And the rates of warming and CO2 rise, far from slowing, are increasing at an *accelerating* rate. So I call bullshit on this article.
there have always been algorithms for decentralized consensus. What's new and useful about this in terms of new capabilities not already well covered by solutions?
Digital signatures and distributed databases have existed for decades contrary to the attribution by many of those to blockchain. My customers have had reliable inexpensive low-latency systems for decades that are far superior to anything that blockchain provides or could hope to provide in the future. Digital signatures and hashing are ubiquitous and widely used too. Blockchain is all hype. I've worked at Microsoft for decades and currently work with large companies in Southern California and Hawaii. The only customer I know looking at blockchain was a drug company and they were just doing it in a group that tests new technologies to examine benefits, not because benefits were being realized by adopting it currently. Blockchain and specifically Bitcoin has advantages for illegal activities though - facilitating illicit transactions for gun running, hit men, child prostitution, drugs etc. It's a great way to undermine countries with capital controls. It is probably useful for intelligence organizations to hide their activities and evade oversight. It's probably good for evading taxes and money laundering too. It's a great way to increase entropy in the universe for the lowest cost as miners compete. It provides more drama and headlines for news organizations who refuse to generate real news content. Oh, and as all can see it's the most friction-free global bubble making apparatus conceived since derivitives and the trusts in the 1920's.
I don't have a problem with the FBI using tools to gather evidence with a suspicion. Having said that, I don't support ever secretly weakening our software security to provide them secret access - even with a warrant. In this case, that doesn't appear to be the issue. I *do* have a problem with entrapment and fishing expeditions. Some of their actions to catch people involved encouraging the commission of crimes - in terrorism and other cases. I also have a problem with their priorities. We just had our election massively influenced by foreign and global corporate powers. This is a threat to the entire nation. They weren't just asleep at the wheel - they directly undermined one political party at the expense of the other who was clearly receiving support from foreign governments and global corporate powers with strong agendas that undermined the US (EPA, climate change, energy independence, budget, wars, healthcare, etc). They appear from the outside to have had an agenda in opposition to the priorities of the people of the US. Furthermore they seem to be very upset about deviants sharing pics of naked kids but not nearly as vocal when we see kids being physically abused or shot in the back by overzealous members of law enforcement. Their priorities as surfaced by the news I read are completely out of whack. A dad beating up their kid or wife should be pursued with more resources than some dude sitting in front of his computer whacking off to pics of naked kids. We need the FBI and I'm sure they do a lot of great work. They need to work on their PR and/or their priorities to raise their support from the public.
Almost all hydrogen is generated from natural gas today, which means hiding CO2 emissions and supporting the old dirty extractive industries which we must kill as quickly as possible. Windmills and solar are intermittent, but there are plenty of smart long term smart grid solutions that show promise alleviating those concerns. I suspect that hydrogen has a role to play in rocket and airplane applications since they are sensitive to weight and current battery designs are heavy. That may change too though.
just during warranty period, but you can extend the warranty after 8 years for $4k. The mechanical switches/keys are the parts that fail most often in modern devices - much more often than the computers themselves. Of course batteries wear out eventually but can be replaced easily in minutes. 97% of Telsa owners would buy it again - the highest measurement ever for a car I believe. That speaks for itself. People who don't have one can have an opinion, but I contend it's better not to speculate and instead ask the people who forked over $100k for their car and drive it every day:-)
As a Tela owner: 1) Assembly quality lags BMW but is plenty good especially considering they have not been building cars for decades 2) Some people have had motor units replaced due to a whine. This isn't actually a motor issue or a reliability issue and doesn't affect the reliability at all. It's shim wear that is fixed by replacing the shim in the single gear transmission. Since the motor with gear is easily swapped in a few hours (free), I chalk this up as a minor issue that they will likely fix with a better shim 3) body hardware problems are going to be the same as other cars since they use the same designs as other cars for things like the sunroof. A lot of people are hoping that Tesla will stumble. This doesn't qualify as a stumble. I've had zero problems with my car. One of my friends had an immediate issue with his new Tesla that was fixed and since then nothing. Another friend (who accelerates flat out all the time) experienced the gear whine at 50,000 miles and Tesla swapped it for free quickly. Things that will last a lot longer than other cars: the brakes. Some people think they will last for the life of the car because most of the braking occurs by lifting your foot to decelerate (it recharges the battery by sending energy back from the motors into the battery). Usually you touch the brake at speeds less than 5 mph. The motor - there is only one moving part and no oil changes or lubrication required. The transmission - only one gear as opposed to the crazy complexity in gas cars. The cooling system - it operates at much lower temperatures to cool the battery than it would when trying to cool a hot engine. Spark plugs, air cleaners, ignition systems, etc - non-existant on the Tesla. There is no engine to "service" under the "hood". Switches? Almost everything is controlled by the huge touchscreen which means zero wear. Any software problems can be fixed over the cell connection that is free for life and virtually always connected. If that computer fails? Just swap the thin center touchscreen/computer assembly out in a few hours. Incidentally the sophisticated computer controlled all wheel drive with 500 treadwear base tires mean that there is quicker acceleration while maintaining minimal wheel spin on any surface which is safer and all this makes tires last longer and also avoids the need to rotate tires (based on my observations so far). My problems in the first 10,000 miles: zero. Did I mention that I’ve been driving for free on the free-for-life Tesla charging? Also I have been letting the car do 90% of my heavy traffic commuting here in LA since the recent release of Autopilot. It’s a revelation on the 405 in rush hour
I agree that they need to get out more. A little humility would go a long way. Admit mistakes, be about 5000% more transparent so people understand what is being done and why and then encourage debate and actually listen to the public. And in turn when given the information on what they are doing and why maybe we would also as the public highlight the things we're thankful for that they are doing (most likely in secret). The long term need for secrecy is minimal in a democracy from what I can tell. Otherwise you end up feeling like we have Eloi and Morlocks
Reducing the pressure to address our challenges probably does more harm than good. I suppose if we leave ethics out of the debate we would take measures to engineer a massively reduced population and the resultant drop in CO2. Applying ethics to this I feel like the situation must be similar to when scientists worked on the first atomic bomb. They weren't personally liable for the bomb and it was a challenging ego stroking project but a reasonable person could surmise that the "research" would be seized upon by politicians with short term pressure to achieve marketable results. How is geoengineering research different? I'd prefer we keep the pressure ON and force more substantial near term adaptation. If the argument is that we can do that later, how will later be different than now other than we will be further down the irreversible path? Wikipedia on risk compensation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
actually...No. "a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful." Key escrow is not (to my knowledge) a secret plan by a group. It's public. And I oppose the idea in case you try to lump me in with the people pushing the idea. I believe in strong open source encryption with lots of continuous audit. But for real secrets I wouldn't trust a computer.
Think how much easier it is to target people if you have a system designed for the purpose. Exploits are most useful if they aren't used all the time. Every time they are used, you risk detection. Once the exploit is detected by enough "bad guys", you are put in the odd position of knowing that you are complicit in weakening the "good guys" security too and exposing them to risk from the "bad guys". By having a standard mechanism for truly legal requests, you can save the other *expensive* exploits for the cases without warrants - extending their useful life. My guess
I must be missing something. The standard used by anyone who wants to attempt secure encryption is GPG. I missed what Moxie is recommending as an alternative. What will whistleblowers use if GPG was to go away? I've worked at Microsoft for 15 years but I've also used GPG for a long time and I don't list my keys on a keyserver usually but instead hand people my business card which includes my fingerprint. Other people I know do the same thing.. Does any software encryption protect against hardware/BIOS/emf attacks? No. But someone has a chance of doing effective encryption on an offline computer and copying the encrypted content to another device to send it to someone else. I'd like to see GPG updated to add clean API's. I'd also like to see the code audited by open source and security advocates. I'd like to see products layered on top. Why not try to get Microsoft, Google and Apple to commit to support it in their products directly? That would be smart strategy. Full disclosure: I've previously voted to provide a small grant to PGP and I've also contributed $100 directly to the project to help keep it afloat. PGP 86FA 7F05 C665 5F7B 3CC4 0C40 FA84 2649 1A61 20DE
The aim of our torture program was to induce a state of "learned helplessness" where the subject stopped resisting even when the threats were removed. If people fear speaking out due to illegal spying then I guess it is "Mission Accomplished". I'd say more, but I'm afraid to speak out
We need an Internet Bill of Rights to outline our goals around privacy for citizen infrastructure. Then we can move these projects forward. It needs to cover email, chat, social networking, voice, Skype/video... Please read my first draft and provide feedback: http://matthol.blogspot.com/
Also I don't like that Diaspora requires servers. I email, chat, social network, video calls etc should be P2P based on each person having a PGP key. And let's be clear that if we want to have the true democracies that we all deserve around the world, we need secure and private evoting which also depends on this same infrastructure. Let's get this thing done!
Really? This is a top privacy threat Nadim? This post reminds me of the 1970's racial discrimination hidden under the guise of rational criticism on other fronts. We each get a limited amount of bandwidth to capture other people's attention on important issues and this doesn't seem like it meets the bar. I don't disagree with the observation that it would be better to surface app tracking by Microsoft as an opt-in choice with end user benefits and a clear use and retention policy. But what about all of the privacy issues which result from the lack of anonymous remailers or the problem with ISP's logging everything. Wouldn't the app downloads and all other unencrypted traffic be accessible from the ISP already? And what about web bugs that allow surrepticious tracking in web pages? Your criticism is valid but seems like it is distracting from more important issues. Let's get Cryptocat working in browsers without a plug-in. How about surfacing criticism regarding what ISN'T available to enable that to work today? -Matt
Slashdot Mirror
exactly
Did you know that Toyota moved their North American HQ to Texas? Ask where that hydrogen comes from. It comes from hiding massive CO2 emissions at natural gas âoereformingâ facilities to generate that hydrogen. Itâ(TM)s all part of a strategy to greenwash the natural gas CO2 emissions in partnership with the Japanese who through industrial policy are trying to build a national moat around their high tech fuel cell business. This whole approach is more expensive than alternatives and of course is incompatible with stopping run away climate change making human extinct
It will take *at least* as much energy to recapture the CO2 released by fossil fuels as the provided when burned originally (basic 2nd law of thermodynamics). And remember that at most 25% of the original fossil fuel energy was useful, so a conservative estimate would be that any process which recaptures the Co2 releasd orignally back into stable solid sequestered form will take 5-10x the original useful energy released when burning the fossil fuel. And that 5-10x energy will need to also be *zero CO2* emitting energy. Donâ(TM)t let people dazzle us with techno-babble unless they claim the 2nd law of thermodynamics magcally doesnâ(TM)t apply
The Bolt canâ(TM)t come close to shipping in the volumes the the Model 3 does. The issue isnâ(TM)t Tesla production rates since it is already outshippng all luxury car competitors. Itâ(TM)s a problem of having the most desirable car with hundreds of thousands of back orders, unlike the Bolt
Not true. Refundable on demand. More scared competitor spin
this study, possibly intentionally, understates the risks. What it did is look at existing modeling to narrow the range of predicted warming. That completely misses the fact that scientists are *conservative* when they build models. When there are factors they can't reliably model, they often just exclude them. This is why their models consistently *under predict* the amount of warming we see. For example, a recent Scientific American article pointed out that scientists weren't including feedback effects like the warming of the permafrost because the couldn't model it. This means the math trick used in this article excludes all these other effects that can (and almost surely will) have *huge* accelerative effects on the modeled warming rates. Far from scare mongering, the conservativism of scientists means they nearly always under predict warming. So what can we expect? Well, the last time Earth had the levels of CO2 we now have in the atmosphere, sea level was up to 100 feet higher than today and ferns grew in the Arctic. This was before man even existed on the planet. And the rates of warming and CO2 rise, far from slowing, are increasing at an *accelerating* rate. So I call bullshit on this article.
there have always been algorithms for decentralized consensus. What's new and useful about this in terms of new capabilities not already well covered by solutions?
Digital signatures and distributed databases have existed for decades contrary to the attribution by many of those to blockchain. My customers have had reliable inexpensive low-latency systems for decades that are far superior to anything that blockchain provides or could hope to provide in the future. Digital signatures and hashing are ubiquitous and widely used too. Blockchain is all hype. I've worked at Microsoft for decades and currently work with large companies in Southern California and Hawaii. The only customer I know looking at blockchain was a drug company and they were just doing it in a group that tests new technologies to examine benefits, not because benefits were being realized by adopting it currently. Blockchain and specifically Bitcoin has advantages for illegal activities though - facilitating illicit transactions for gun running, hit men, child prostitution, drugs etc. It's a great way to undermine countries with capital controls. It is probably useful for intelligence organizations to hide their activities and evade oversight. It's probably good for evading taxes and money laundering too. It's a great way to increase entropy in the universe for the lowest cost as miners compete. It provides more drama and headlines for news organizations who refuse to generate real news content. Oh, and as all can see it's the most friction-free global bubble making apparatus conceived since derivitives and the trusts in the 1920's.
I don't have a problem with the FBI using tools to gather evidence with a suspicion. Having said that, I don't support ever secretly weakening our software security to provide them secret access - even with a warrant. In this case, that doesn't appear to be the issue. I *do* have a problem with entrapment and fishing expeditions. Some of their actions to catch people involved encouraging the commission of crimes - in terrorism and other cases. I also have a problem with their priorities. We just had our election massively influenced by foreign and global corporate powers. This is a threat to the entire nation. They weren't just asleep at the wheel - they directly undermined one political party at the expense of the other who was clearly receiving support from foreign governments and global corporate powers with strong agendas that undermined the US (EPA, climate change, energy independence, budget, wars, healthcare, etc). They appear from the outside to have had an agenda in opposition to the priorities of the people of the US. Furthermore they seem to be very upset about deviants sharing pics of naked kids but not nearly as vocal when we see kids being physically abused or shot in the back by overzealous members of law enforcement. Their priorities as surfaced by the news I read are completely out of whack. A dad beating up their kid or wife should be pursued with more resources than some dude sitting in front of his computer whacking off to pics of naked kids. We need the FBI and I'm sure they do a lot of great work. They need to work on their PR and/or their priorities to raise their support from the public.
It took about 30 minutes to bootstrap through the various phases into the Basic interpreter. https://www.google.com/url?sa=...
Almost all hydrogen is generated from natural gas today, which means hiding CO2 emissions and supporting the old dirty extractive industries which we must kill as quickly as possible. Windmills and solar are intermittent, but there are plenty of smart long term smart grid solutions that show promise alleviating those concerns. I suspect that hydrogen has a role to play in rocket and airplane applications since they are sensitive to weight and current battery designs are heavy. That may change too though.
I'm betting on extinction and a slow reboot
just during warranty period, but you can extend the warranty after 8 years for $4k. The mechanical switches/keys are the parts that fail most often in modern devices - much more often than the computers themselves. Of course batteries wear out eventually but can be replaced easily in minutes. 97% of Telsa owners would buy it again - the highest measurement ever for a car I believe. That speaks for itself. People who don't have one can have an opinion, but I contend it's better not to speculate and instead ask the people who forked over $100k for their car and drive it every day :-)
As a Tela owner: 1) Assembly quality lags BMW but is plenty good especially considering they have not been building cars for decades 2) Some people have had motor units replaced due to a whine. This isn't actually a motor issue or a reliability issue and doesn't affect the reliability at all. It's shim wear that is fixed by replacing the shim in the single gear transmission. Since the motor with gear is easily swapped in a few hours (free), I chalk this up as a minor issue that they will likely fix with a better shim 3) body hardware problems are going to be the same as other cars since they use the same designs as other cars for things like the sunroof. A lot of people are hoping that Tesla will stumble. This doesn't qualify as a stumble. I've had zero problems with my car. One of my friends had an immediate issue with his new Tesla that was fixed and since then nothing. Another friend (who accelerates flat out all the time) experienced the gear whine at 50,000 miles and Tesla swapped it for free quickly. Things that will last a lot longer than other cars: the brakes. Some people think they will last for the life of the car because most of the braking occurs by lifting your foot to decelerate (it recharges the battery by sending energy back from the motors into the battery). Usually you touch the brake at speeds less than 5 mph. The motor - there is only one moving part and no oil changes or lubrication required. The transmission - only one gear as opposed to the crazy complexity in gas cars. The cooling system - it operates at much lower temperatures to cool the battery than it would when trying to cool a hot engine. Spark plugs, air cleaners, ignition systems, etc - non-existant on the Tesla. There is no engine to "service" under the "hood". Switches? Almost everything is controlled by the huge touchscreen which means zero wear. Any software problems can be fixed over the cell connection that is free for life and virtually always connected. If that computer fails? Just swap the thin center touchscreen/computer assembly out in a few hours. Incidentally the sophisticated computer controlled all wheel drive with 500 treadwear base tires mean that there is quicker acceleration while maintaining minimal wheel spin on any surface which is safer and all this makes tires last longer and also avoids the need to rotate tires (based on my observations so far). My problems in the first 10,000 miles: zero. Did I mention that I’ve been driving for free on the free-for-life Tesla charging? Also I have been letting the car do 90% of my heavy traffic commuting here in LA since the recent release of Autopilot. It’s a revelation on the 405 in rush hour
Uh, no
I agree that they need to get out more. A little humility would go a long way. Admit mistakes, be about 5000% more transparent so people understand what is being done and why and then encourage debate and actually listen to the public. And in turn when given the information on what they are doing and why maybe we would also as the public highlight the things we're thankful for that they are doing (most likely in secret). The long term need for secrecy is minimal in a democracy from what I can tell. Otherwise you end up feeling like we have Eloi and Morlocks
Reducing the pressure to address our challenges probably does more harm than good. I suppose if we leave ethics out of the debate we would take measures to engineer a massively reduced population and the resultant drop in CO2. Applying ethics to this I feel like the situation must be similar to when scientists worked on the first atomic bomb. They weren't personally liable for the bomb and it was a challenging ego stroking project but a reasonable person could surmise that the "research" would be seized upon by politicians with short term pressure to achieve marketable results. How is geoengineering research different? I'd prefer we keep the pressure ON and force more substantial near term adaptation. If the argument is that we can do that later, how will later be different than now other than we will be further down the irreversible path? Wikipedia on risk compensation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
wrong again. Get lost
actually...No. "a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful." Key escrow is not (to my knowledge) a secret plan by a group. It's public. And I oppose the idea in case you try to lump me in with the people pushing the idea. I believe in strong open source encryption with lots of continuous audit. But for real secrets I wouldn't trust a computer.
Think how much easier it is to target people if you have a system designed for the purpose. Exploits are most useful if they aren't used all the time. Every time they are used, you risk detection. Once the exploit is detected by enough "bad guys", you are put in the odd position of knowing that you are complicit in weakening the "good guys" security too and exposing them to risk from the "bad guys". By having a standard mechanism for truly legal requests, you can save the other *expensive* exploits for the cases without warrants - extending their useful life. My guess
I must be missing something. The standard used by anyone who wants to attempt secure encryption is GPG. I missed what Moxie is recommending as an alternative. What will whistleblowers use if GPG was to go away? I've worked at Microsoft for 15 years but I've also used GPG for a long time and I don't list my keys on a keyserver usually but instead hand people my business card which includes my fingerprint. Other people I know do the same thing.. Does any software encryption protect against hardware/BIOS/emf attacks? No. But someone has a chance of doing effective encryption on an offline computer and copying the encrypted content to another device to send it to someone else. I'd like to see GPG updated to add clean API's. I'd also like to see the code audited by open source and security advocates. I'd like to see products layered on top. Why not try to get Microsoft, Google and Apple to commit to support it in their products directly? That would be smart strategy. Full disclosure: I've previously voted to provide a small grant to PGP and I've also contributed $100 directly to the project to help keep it afloat. PGP 86FA 7F05 C665 5F7B 3CC4 0C40 FA84 2649 1A61 20DE
The aim of our torture program was to induce a state of "learned helplessness" where the subject stopped resisting even when the threats were removed. If people fear speaking out due to illegal spying then I guess it is "Mission Accomplished". I'd say more, but I'm afraid to speak out
said the anonymous walnut brain
We need an Internet Bill of Rights to outline our goals around privacy for citizen infrastructure. Then we can move these projects forward. It needs to cover email, chat, social networking, voice, Skype/video... Please read my first draft and provide feedback: http://matthol.blogspot.com/ Also I don't like that Diaspora requires servers. I email, chat, social network, video calls etc should be P2P based on each person having a PGP key. And let's be clear that if we want to have the true democracies that we all deserve around the world, we need secure and private evoting which also depends on this same infrastructure. Let's get this thing done!
Really? This is a top privacy threat Nadim? This post reminds me of the 1970's racial discrimination hidden under the guise of rational criticism on other fronts. We each get a limited amount of bandwidth to capture other people's attention on important issues and this doesn't seem like it meets the bar. I don't disagree with the observation that it would be better to surface app tracking by Microsoft as an opt-in choice with end user benefits and a clear use and retention policy. But what about all of the privacy issues which result from the lack of anonymous remailers or the problem with ISP's logging everything. Wouldn't the app downloads and all other unencrypted traffic be accessible from the ISP already? And what about web bugs that allow surrepticious tracking in web pages? Your criticism is valid but seems like it is distracting from more important issues. Let's get Cryptocat working in browsers without a plug-in. How about surfacing criticism regarding what ISN'T available to enable that to work today? -Matt