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User: Gnostic+Teflon

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  1. When Parents Stop Raising Monster Brats . . . on Actresses, Business Leaders, and Other Wealthy Parents Charged in Massive College Admissions Scandal (npr.org) · · Score: 1

    When parents stop raising monster brats who are taught to believe they're the best, and then run up against ACTs, SATs, College Entrance tests, their lousy high school academic records (it's hard to be a shameless hedonist and an outstanding academic at the same time), this will cease to be a problem. When overrich parents stop needing to constantly bail out their precious dearies of problems with the law that would put other kids in prison for long stretches of time, this will cease to be a problem. BwaaaHaaaHaaah . . .

  2. Re:They are making things worse on New Mexico the Most Coal-Heavy State To Pledge 100 Percent Carbon-Free Energy By 2045 (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Yea too bad we never invented a way of storing surplus electricity for later use. /sarcasm

    To those who read energy-related news (no offense intended to those that don't), this is an exciting time for the prospects of electrical energy generation and storage. Wind turbines, photovoltaics (residential and large-scale industrial), solar steam plants, molten salt heat storage, ever-less-expensive chemical battery technologies, decentralization . . . It's a time in which it only makes economic sense to dispense with old and adopt the new.

  3. Re:They are making things worse on New Mexico the Most Coal-Heavy State To Pledge 100 Percent Carbon-Free Energy By 2045 (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Anyone who has driven across New Mexico in an East-West direction would notice that there are persistent strong winds that blow through the state's prairies and passes. New Mexico is the home of a lot of Department of Energy talent who I am sure have also noticed this. With the ever-decreasing costs of building giant wind turbines, the only major challenge is to develop a smart electrical grid to efficiently deliver and store the fluctuating surplus energy to provide a 24/7 smooth supply. Photovoltaic electricity, which is also getting cheaper than carbon, is also a major positive consideration for a state that has an abundance of sunshine.

  4. Win 10 So Bloated Already on Windows Setup Error Messages Will Soon Actually Help Fix Problems (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1, Interesting

    With Win 10 already being so bloated, why don't they put OS images from their earlier history (MS-DOS, Win 3X and up->), Linux, and run these in VMs when an incompatibility crops up? No more problems with those incompatible programs a user/administrator might need. Of course, these VMs would crash from time to time just like in the good old days, when MS was running the BitBlt code 'borrowed' from Apple for their early Windows OSs and not the later Windows with legally gotten OpenBSD code.

  5. The presence of Firefox on the scene moves the overall state of web browsers just by being there, occasionally introducing new features which others might adopt, and giving the web user more options rather than just the Lucrative Interests. Not at all a bad thing.

  6. Difference between live soldiers and dead . . . on Program Allows Ordinary Digital Camera To See Around Corners (theguardian.com) · · Score: 0

    As the scientist said, it is conceivable to see around corners, in a sense.

    Soon we may see as part of a soldier's kit: a headcam connected to his Android Digital Buddy app.

  7. Actually, the carriage making trade never went away, it just morphed into custom auto manufacture, which was huge in the early 20th century before the Great Depression.

    After WWII again with small-production (Tucker, Muntz-Jet, Kaiser-Darren, et al.) auto makers and the still-continuing hot-rod fad.

    There are hundreds, if not thousands of small auto repair and body shops across the country that sideline in custom auto building/rebuilding. It's a multi-billion dollar industry. The auto-racing industry is part of this.

    The point being that there will always be opportunities out there for those with initiative to make a profitable and satisfying life for themselves, rather than dumbly waiting for someone to give them a job.

  8. Hmmm . . . What about houses on President Trump To Use Huawei CFO As a Bargaining Chip (politico.com) · · Score: 0

    Hmm . . . What about the Pacific Northwest & California's long-term house values? Maybe the wealth management funds should take a look at the future of major west coast home builders. With fickle leadership, what's in it for the rich Chinese expats/second home owners?

  9. What else would one expect? on Court Again Rules That Cable Giants Can't Weaponize the First Amendment (techdirt.com) · · Score: 0

    What else would one expect from a company that from its beginnings has bought up all the media companies it can afford and dragged the nation's public debate over to the lunatic right, back to where it was in the early 20th century?

  10. Blame it on my popularity.

  11. Re:Mulched rubber tires on Road Makers Turn To Recycled Plastic For Tougher Surfaces (economist.com) · · Score: 0

    if you RTFA there is no asphalt in this material

    The word bitumen is used. Outside the U.S., it means asphalt (here too, if you're into petroleum science).
    Where tire rubber might not be suitable for durability, perhaps a different mixture of specific trash plastic and rubber tires might work better.
    All told, it's a legitimate effort to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. Bravo for trying. Good ol' Dutch ingenuity at work. Throw some patents on it and make some real money.

  12. Japanese business avoids Net uses fax instead on Malicious Faxes Leave Firms 'Open' To Cyber-Attack (bbc.com) · · Score: 0

    Japanese business has avoided the Net because of it's reputation for black had activity. Now that the bad actors like the NSA, the Russians and the Chinese are aware that they now can exploit this avenue, Japanese business is a sitting duck waiting to be shot.

  13. "We're not hair-assing this black legislator . . . on Amazon's Facial Recognition Wrongly Identifies 28 Lawmakers, ACLU Says (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    "We're not hair-assing this black legislator, says the law enforcement PR flak shield (heh-heh). Our computer identification app told us he was a dangerous murderer."

  14. When MegaFood lawyers up, it's time to look elsewhere. That routine practice by MegaFood is simply a slap down. Slap back.

  15. With Zero-Day Discoveries Being Found All The Time on Hackers Breached Virginia Bank Twice in Eight Months, Stole $2.4M (krebsonsecurity.com) · · Score: 1

    With Zero-Day discoveries being found all the time, any evil computer science genius can screw the systems six ways to Sunday.
    What's needed is hard backups and system analysis software to alert the CT people that something strange is happening. We've given the whole world the keys to the treasure chest.

  16. Why Not A DYI UI Look? on Google Tests Curvy Chrome Tabs With Material Design Overhaul (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    If I can remember back to the early days of windowed UIs, a lot of the bells and whistles could be user defined via simple scripts in config files. It seems that over the years with the Latest Features, a lot of this has been lost, a dumbing down so that your average noob doesn't go into brain freeze.

  17. The Police State's Gonna Love This on New Wearable Sensor Detects Stress Hormone In Sweat (ieee.org) · · Score: 1

    Finally, a lie detector sensor that genuinely works!

  18. Nothing New News on Australian Experiment Wipes Out Over 80% of Disease-Carrying Mosquitoes (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    This has been practiced by vector control authorities for decades in the U.S.

    When it's out of the news for so long, a repeat of the past becomes novel for a new generation.

  19. What They're Really Doing . . . on Why Do Employers Require College Degrees That Aren't Necessary? (thestreet.com) · · Score: 1

    What these HR people are really doing is advertising for a position they already have someone slotted for, but to satisfy company rules and EEOC laws, they load the necessary qualifications list with things that can't possibly exist. They can then say they satisfied the rules and laws and have to use the insider as most qualified on the list of applicants.

  20. Tesla Battery Business v. Status Quo on Tesla Completes World's Largest Battery Project In Half the Time Promised (engadget.com) · · Score: 2

    Any time anyone challenges major economic interests, in this case the electric utilities equipment industries, big oil, big coal, or any other financer of the global warming denial PR biz, arseholes will come out of the woodwork. Big pharma has done it to small innovators that don't want to be bought out. And others too numerous to mention.

  21. It just goes to show ITC arbs are for sale on Court Rules That Imported Solar Panels Are Bad For US Manufacturing (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Uh . . . the foreign competition isn't selling at a loss, even with overseas shipping costs, they aren't being subsidized, the raw materials aren't hard to get (silicon?), they are made by automated machinery and don't need much in the way of labor input. What's the problem? Down the road costs for the existing labor? Yeah . . . that's it (I say, while pulling U.S. manufacturer's fat out of the fire).

  22. It just goes to show ITC arbs are for sale on Court Rules That Imported Solar Panels Are Bad For US Manufacturing (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Uh . . . the foreign competition isn't selling to U.S. at a loss, not being subsidized, selling a product that doesn't have a home country resource advantage (silicon hard to get?), is made mostly without much labor input. What's the problem?

  23. Re:roadtrip 101 on The No-GPS Road Trip (popularmechanics.com) · · Score: 1

    As for reading maps while driving, one needed a Personal Digital Assistant with Optical Recognition (your travel partner handling and reading a paper map) and Audio Response (to tell you when and where to turn) to effortlessy get to one's destination.

  24. Re:TripTik on The No-GPS Road Trip (popularmechanics.com) · · Score: 1

    As long as 4700 years ago in Old Kingdom Egypt, trip guides using papyrus, folded in a succession with annotations (move your asses up the canyon on the left that has the gnarled old beobab tree . . .), guided Egyptians travelling to gold mining sites in the Egyptian and Nubian deserts.

  25. A Proper Token of Atonement . . . on Getty Sued For $1 Billion For Selling Publicly Donated Photos (thestack.com) · · Score: 1

    A Proper Token of Atonement for all the myriad sins the copyright abuser industry engages in would be Bill Gates issuing a public apology and then donating all of the photo stock of Getty Images to the Library of Congress, including all rights pertaining thereto. It would show that even fatcats can be magnanimous. Bwahahaha . . .