Fun fact: Germany has similar pumped hydro facilities it uses to store excess energy from wind and solar plants.
Yes. It's called Norway:)
I'm not sure Norway has any pumped hydro facilities at the minute but it has been suggested to turn Norway into a giant battery to store excess energy from the rest of the N-European grid. Unfortunately that seems not to be doable for a variety of reasons. It was a pretty cool idea though.
Renewables are not more reliable
solar is only avalible 12 out of 24 hours at the most (and for a good portion of that dont produce at 100% output even without a cloud going over!).
wind is constantly variable and can fail for weeks at a time.
Not having breeder reactors is a choice mainly due to fears about them producing the required materials for bombs, nothing to do with the other shit you mentioned.
You can solve that with grid design and designing capacity distribution according to weather patterns. However, when I said reliable I literally meant mean time between generation unit failures and the cost, time and complexity involved with repairing them. With wind and solar that is relatively easy, with sodium reactors it's not quite so easy as Admiral Rickover pointed out.
Which means i have heard of this declaration elsewhere and in other contexts. In short, nobody in the energy sector takes it seriously. France in not Germany and their administration is a more efficient counterweight in face of the public opinion. And nobody there wants to end up like Germany in regard to energy.
One part of the hydroelectric power being in fact nuke electricity pumped in reversible hydro plants.
You seem to be taking a swipe at Germany and their renewables policy in favour of your preference for nuclear. However, it does not in any way add to your argument that renewables are crap and nuclear is king to say that this water is being pumped into the reservoir by nuclear energy because pumped hydro is just another way of saying 'energy storage'. It is completely irrelevant to the pumped hydro energy storage facility operator whether the energy for pumping is excess energy from nuclear plants or excess energy from renewables since the whole point of building the pumped hydro facility in the first place was to store excess energy for later use regardless of where it comes from. Fun fact: Germany has similar pumped hydro facilities it uses to store excess energy from wind and solar plants.
Could someone explain to me why wind and solar are better than *MODERN* nuclear plants, particularly fast breeder reactors, that output very little waste and are relatively safe? Nuclear plants don't vary with the sun and wind and so have no need for expensive/complex energy storage solutions to go along with them. Is the replacement of nuclear purely down to the green lobby not liking the word "nuclear" or is there any justification that has a scientific basis?
Because renewables are cheaper. From what I've seen there also seem to be reliability issues with these breeder reactors and 'reliability issues' and 'nuclear' in the same sentence tend to be a downer when trying to sell nuclear to the public. On top of that, and according to the International Panel on Fissile Materials: "After six decades and the expenditure of the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars, the promise of breeder reactors remains largely unfulfilled and efforts to commercialise them have been steadily cut back in most countries". Thus a number of countries have abandoned breeder reactor development programs, In Europe this is because renewables are simply cheaper and easier to develop, manage and operate. For those wanting to know more here is an article from the "Bulletin of the Nuclear Scientists":
The bit at the end kind of sums sodium reactors up: "In 1956, U.S. Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover summarized his experience with a sodium cooled reactor that powered early U.S. nucear usbarines by saying that such reactors are "expensive to build, complex to operate, succeptible to prologned shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time conusming to repair." More than 50 years later , this summary remains apt.
And yet, deficits are projected to be over a trillion next year...and the next...and the next...I guess short term sugar highs are enough to justify the tax cuts in your book.
Obama entered office with a country 8 trillion in debt. He left a country 20 trillion in debt.
If you're going to attempt to bash the current administration, try not to be so dismissive of the damage the last one caused.
Actually it was at ~10 trillion when Obama took over and was at ~19 trillion by the time he left office so Obama added about 9 trillion. It breaks down like this:
In addition to this he borrowed money from things like federal pension funds and the social security trust fund that resulted in a deficit of around 9 trillion.
As you can see you most of the growth happened in his first term to a large extent (but not exclusively) as a result of the financial crisis caused by deregulation under Clinton/Bush. The debt growth slowed down significantly during Obama's second presidency when he added only ~2 trillion and he added regulations to rein in the worst excesses of the financial system. Your man Trump, aided by the party of fiscal responsibility, has so far added 2.5 trillion in two years and is thus on track to add some 10 trillion in two terms if he gets a second term and he has already systematically dismantled all the regulations Obama set up to rein in the banks. Trump's record so far is (and keep in mind that his raiding of federal pension funds is not in these figures any more than Obama's):
He'll do it alright, but that does not mean he likes it. For Mitch kowtowing to Trump is probably much like cleaning the toilet is to the rest of us, we don't like doing it but not cleaning the toilet is worse.
It doesn't really make any difference what he thinks in private, he is a public servant and his public actions - unequivocal support of Trump - speak for themselves. In supporting Trump he shares responsibility for undermining norms and causing severe damage to US reputation and international standing.
If there was a crime "Moral negligence causing decline of USA", then Mitch McConnell would be guilty as a co-conspirator.
Maybe not but knowing that praising Trump and sucking up to him makes McConnell gag, like smellimg rotten meat does to the rest of us, is strangely satisfying.
This is the government that enslaved million of black Africans for profit.
As much of a dick Trump is you have to separate government from country, you can't really lay that one on him.
True, that one can't be laid on Trump... and for the OP: let's not forget that for all it's mistakes, this is also the government that set the slaves free.
From McConnell's perpspetive he ain't doing too bad : he got what he wanted. Conservative judges filling all the vacanices across the country, 2 (and maybe more) ultra conservative supreme court justices and THE FUCKING NEW TAX CODE (ie stealing from the poor to appease the rich). He has no problem kissing Trump's ass, doing him a blowjob or worse.
Yes, but on a purely personal level McConnell deeply despises Trump, you can tell when he talks about the guy, no matter how hard he tries to hide it it always shines through. Kowtowing to Trump like the Jade Emperor of China and heaping ridiculous praise on Trump is clearly deeply galling to old Mitch. He'll do it alright, but that does not mean he likes it. For Mitch kowtowing to Trump is probably much like cleaning the toilet is to the rest of us, we don't like doing it but not cleaning the toilet is worse. Mitch, of course, has a servant who cleans his toilets for him, but making an ass of himself by kowtowing to Trump and flattering him in public is the one job Mitch can't outsource.
Republican idiot is republican idiot is... waiting for 2019 to watch the Trump insane asylum get... TRUMPED!
It's more like Trump having Trumpified the Republican party. He commands the fanatical loyalty of a portion of the party that is sufficiently large for the Republican establishment having to suck up to him and appease his followers because they need that portion of the electorate to win elections. In order to win Trump's support they have to follow him in a headlong charge towards the right wing nationalist fringe and cater to his narcissistic bullshit. The last few Republicans that looked moderate because the rest of the party had moved so far to the right have now retired or been primaried and in those cases where they were replaced by Republicans in the recent elections those Republicans are universally hard core Trumkins. So just face it, there is no Republican party anymore. There are two US political parties, the 'Democrats' and the 'Cult of Trump'. I can only imagine how frustrating all of this is to Mitch McConnell. Just when he thought he had secured congressional majorities for the Republicans on the back of the minority vote using gerrymandering, voter suppression, disenfranchisement and intimidation, along comes Trump and basically hijacks the party. I bet it is still nothing compared to how galling it is for old Mitch to have to make an ass of himself in public by kissing Trump's posterior and heaping sycophantic praise on Trump as if he is some oriental god-emperor.
He's not wrong; iPhones are a luxury item. If you can't afford the hike, you shouldn't be buying one to begin with.
So are all of the most popular Android phones and the same applies to them since they are also made in China and expensive as hell. The 64Gb iPhone X sells for $1000 the new Samsung S10 entry level model is slated to sell at at $750, cheaper but not exactly affordable either and they are all made in China so why just tax the iPhone? These things are now costing more than an Ultrabook laptop on Amazon so somebody remind me, why should I pay $750+ for an entry level 64Gb smartphone (irrespective of which Mobile OS religion runs on it) when I can get a 128Gb ultrabook laptop for less money?. It's not that I can't afford a $750 Android entry level phone, I can even afford a $900 S9+ with 256gb, I can even afford the $1250 iPhone Xs Max with 256Gb, I'm simply not willing to get ripped off because all those prices are a rip-off and quite frankly I don't need those things. I'm going to use my current phone till it falls apart and then buy something in well and truly in the sub $500 range and invest the difference in a proper ultra compact laptop which is something I actually need as opposed to a new smartphone which is something I merely want. As long as the damn thing can make calls, get e-mail, has a calendar, an alarm clock, has a browser capable of ordering movie/concert tickets, run a navigation app, order lodgings on booking.com and can double as a WiFi hot-spot I'm pretty much completely beyond caring which one of the great Mobile OS religions runs on it. Two SIMs would also be nice, but not essential.
The problem is that law enforcement and politicians would demand a backdoor.
That opens up for abuse both by the government, corporations (in the countries where the two are separate) and by other criminals who manage to hack/steal/cajole access from the key holders.
Yes, but it would be kind of fun to be able to remotely lock the doors and windows and have the thing drive the thief straight to jail.
And yet he's still less corrupt than Hillary. How about that Haiti reconstruction, eh? The Clinton Foundation raised billions for them. And spent millions. And pocketed the difference. Oops.
Say what you want about Hillary but she is not the kind of moron that managed to bankrupt six, that's **SIX**, casinos.
Does this assume that the country from which the immigrant originates is sophisticated enough to have credit scores? Does it assume that an immigrant already in the US and applying for citizenship already has a work authorization and is building a US credit score?
Look on the bright side, this only lasts until you become a citizen. Once you are a US citizen the reflection of the content of your character that is your credit history becomes so completely unimportant that even a man who has bankrupted six casinos, welshed on god knows how many loans leading to him being treated as a leper by the entire world banking system except Deutsche bank and Russian Mafia owned money laundering factories masquerading as banks, a man who has been convicted of money laundering, cheating people out of their hard earned money with a fake university and is currently being investigated over his fake charitable foundation can become president. If DJT's credit history was an accurate reflection of the content of his character he should be a cloak wearing Sith lord with, dead eyes, pale wrinkled skin like a Shar-Pei that can lift tanks whit his mind and shoot lighting from his fingertips and not the mere sleazebag hack that he is.
Yeah, but not world wide.
Far north and far south you still will have tempered regions, question however is what kind of weather (aka storms) you have and what and how much you can grow.
Around the equator it mostly will depend on your distance to the sea... at least during the last glacier periods at the equator the temperature was more or less the same as right now. So except inside of Africa, I doubt those areas will get much warmer. However: again the question is changing rain patterns. Phillippines and Indonesia had a drought last year and partly this year and heavy floodings several times this year (I don't remember last year). Thailand is unusually dry to, at least in the north west.
No, literally every life form over 5 kg does seem to have become extinct during the Permian extinction event world wide and the oceans became largely dead zones. You can try to make a 10C increase in temperature sound like a minor event, nothing to worry about, just a Chinese hoax. Personally I would rather avoid that scenario if I could and not just because of the climatic changes. Keep in mind we haven't even begun to discuss the social and political upheaval (a.k.a. famine and wars) caused by scenarios like the entire interior of Africa becoming uninhabitable.
It can't be reversed now even with major changes to carbon consumption (not that that would ever happen with both sides taking tons of cash from the energy lobbyists).
Nirvana fallacy. Just because a perfect solution doesn't exist doesn't mean reducing our CO2 emissions can't help.
It might be too late to avoid a 2C temperature raise. But let's avoid a 5C raise. And if it's too late, then let's avoid a 10C raise.
By the time the temp increase passes 5C we are moving into great Permian extinction territory. By the time you get to 10C every life form heavier than 5 kg is likely going to become extinct... at least that's what happened back then.
Dammit! I've been trying to get (hold of) the bubonic plague for some time.
Where are you avoiding it so I can get me some (lemme know in the comments' section).
I've had a couple of Huawei's 4G usb/wifi connectors. Thus far they have turned both turned out to be a complete and utter pile of crap so the US Govt. is preaching to the converted as far as I am concerned since I am already avoiding Huawei products like the bubonic plague.
Ivanka Trump is a Senior Adviser to the President,
Which happened after her emails from a private server, at least according to Newsweek.
Ivanka Trump is a Senior Adviser to the President, which is an official government position. Complete with all of us sending her a paycheck.
Still a complete horseshit equivalency - even if she's been using private email since joining the White House staff. She's not an Original Classification Authority, the way Hillary was, trading in the highest levels of classified information as a part of her job. Nor has Ivanka set up her own private email server in Jared's house, nor has she used it exclusively.
Hillary was found to have sent 65 emails on topics deemed "Secret" and 22 deemed "Top Secret" but that all of them contained material that was particularly sensitive because the content of the emails discussed things that were at the time of writing available in the public domain, i.e. newspapers and it's kind of dumb to fault somebody for discussing secret things in non-secure emails that are already being discussed in newspapers. Some emails were also classified retroactively. Additionally several FBI investigations found that there was no cause for any kind of prosecution. Basically the whole Clinton emails scandal was a gigantic shitstorm over nothing. Having said that both Hillary Clinton and Ivanka Trump should use secure mail servers for all of their government related communications and particularly things like travel schedules and details about where they are planning to lodge since both of their privately operated servers seem to have been out of date and easy to hack. This could potentially be a problem for all kinds of reasons since obtaining advance details about travel plans and lodgings would be useful to anybody from assassins and terrorists to foreign intelligence services intent on gathering signals intelligence, i.e. planning to bug whatever apartments Ivanka is are staying at. I'm pretty sure that some of her shop-talk with both her husband and her father would be pretty interesting to any of a number of intelligence agencies listing in. Then there is simply the colossal hypocrisy of the whole thing due to the gigantic stink Ivanka's father raised over Hillary's e-mails.
Move all your productivity to the cloud, they said.
It will be more productive, they said.
... and there will be wonderful surprises, like this, and having to log in again into the Office 365 suite that you are paying a subscription fee for every time you cross a border. Then there is the Office 365 account management web interface which was (last time I logged in at least) divided into two separate sites on two URLs. I really miss the days when you just shelled out a lump sum for the software and installed it and entered a license code. No accounts, no subscription that you forget to update when you get a new credit card, no Office 365 license cheating detector that will always send you searching for your Office 365 account login/password when you need to get something done in a godawful hurry. The Cloud thing seemed like a good idea because it meant you could access your documents on your laptop, tablet and phone. Turned out that I always reach for the laptop because the tablet and phone apps generally just suck.
I have to say that it was awful nice of the Russians to give us this demonstration of how easily everything form simple navigation to weapons targeting can be disastrously disrupted due to our over-reliance on GPS
My guess is that they wanted to test the equipment to gauge NATO's ability to deal with the disruption. No point in using jamming equipment if it's not going to be effective (i.e. if they already have redundant systems to prevent this kind of jamming), and you'd want to go back to the drawing board and come up with something more effective.
I don't think so because testing this live against opposing forces unnecessarily warns them of your capability. The Russians could have done secret tests deep in the Siberian forests in some military exclusion zone against a simulated opposing force using either civilian equipment or western military grade equipment obtained through third countries like, say, India? who in turn got it from some western country like Israel, for example, that sells hight tech military equipment and weapons to anybody willing to pay. That might have been picked up by western intelligence services but is unlikely to have influenced a western political, military and defence industry hierarchy that is too deeply invested in their existing systems to believe profit reducing intelligence reports about the vulnerabilities of their systems. Just witness the way these people were willing to completely ignore the potential issues with unencrypted command links to US drones in central Asia until the Iranians used that oversight to hack-n-jack the beast of Kandahar. Instead the Russians chose to showcase their capability, in a way that neither the western politicians, their military hierarchy nor the armaments industry can ignore however much they might want to. Western forces have been over-reliant on GPS, especially for weapons guidance for way too long. Jammers like this would be pretty effective against the JDAM for example which reverts to inertial guidance when the GPS is out, come to think of it, if the Russians can 'skew' the GPS signal the JDAM might not even notice and slam down next to the target. A bomb does not have to miss the target most of the time by more than a hundred yards for a $25.000 JDAM kit to be wasted. The whole thing is a bit like that time some Bush White House bozo bragged about the US ability to bug and track Al Quaeda satellite phones, within 24 hours every single Al Quaeda bigwig had dropped of the CIA's radar and vanished into Pakistani tribal country. The lesson here is that if you have an advantage like this, or tracking Al Quaeda satellite phones or decrypting Nazi army, air force and navy communications you don't tell anybody and never do anything to make your capability obvious to the enemy until it is absolutely necessary. Like Napoleon said, Never interrupt the enemy while he is making a mistake.
Everyone has the ability to do this. There is no "if" involved. Signal jamming is easy, especially if you only want to jam a single known band.
All those FCC regulations on your wifi router that Slashdotters find an offensive infringement on their right to overload the airwaves? Those exist to reduce accidental "jamming" of nearby signal bands.
All you need is an antenna and a bigger power supply than the signal you want to overload. With GPS, the signal strength is pretty low by the time it reaches human activities, so you could jam a large area with a car battery, a bit of frequency conversion, and a metal post.
I have to say that it was awful nice of the Russians to give us this demonstration of how easily everything form simple navigation to weapons targeting can be disastrously disrupted due to our over-reliance on GPS instead of springing it on us in the opening phases of a shooting war. Without Russias kind assistance it might have been a lot harder to obtain funds from the politicians for preemptive improvements and the procurement of less vulnerable systems. This, and their hacking efforts along with disruptions of drone guidance signals, along with their downright dangerous jamming of civilian air traffic systems comms and air traffic radars will result ins some very swift and comprehensive upgrades to these systems.
It's not stealing. It's copyright infringement. They really can't be more different.
If it was stealing they would have been charged in a criminal court and imprisoned. This was a civil suit, where they were charged an amount to compensate for the losses claimed by Nintendo.
I don't really care, I will never understand why people do this because everybody loses. If I am understanding this correctly these people are making old games that Nintendo no longer markets or supports and for which there is no new production hardware available playable on emulators. Since I don't think this retro games niche market is massively cutting into Nintendo's modern games business it seems to me that it serves no purpose to shut these businesses down. If I was Nintendo, and I was vexed by people doing digital archeology on my ancient retro games available and profiting form it, I'd just make them an offer they couldn't refuse. In return for paying me a fair license fee, a percentage of net profits on each sale perhaps, they would get an official license from Nintendo to make this retro stuff available to enthusiasts which they can hang on their wall and show any lawyer that comes calling and yapping about copyright violations and I'd gladly throw in complete access to original Nintendo documentation on out-of-production hardware to make your emulator work easier and increase your emulator's product quality. That way the retro enthusiasts are happy, the company stays in business and Nintendo would have a revenue stream from products that were netting them no revenue previously which they can pour into the development of new games,... buuut, no, let's shut them down instead.
Slashdot Mirror
Japan doesn't have enough sun and wind to run an industrial economy
[citation needed]
and neither does it buy into the Green dream of devolving the economy into primitive foraging tribes.
[citation needed]
Fun fact: Germany has similar pumped hydro facilities it uses to store excess energy from wind and solar plants.
Yes. It's called Norway :)
I'm not sure Norway has any pumped hydro facilities at the minute but it has been suggested to turn Norway into a giant battery to store excess energy from the rest of the N-European grid. Unfortunately that seems not to be doable for a variety of reasons. It was a pretty cool idea though.
Renewables are not more reliable solar is only avalible 12 out of 24 hours at the most (and for a good portion of that dont produce at 100% output even without a cloud going over!). wind is constantly variable and can fail for weeks at a time.
Not having breeder reactors is a choice mainly due to fears about them producing the required materials for bombs, nothing to do with the other shit you mentioned.
You can solve that with grid design and designing capacity distribution according to weather patterns. However, when I said reliable I literally meant mean time between generation unit failures and the cost, time and complexity involved with repairing them. With wind and solar that is relatively easy, with sodium reactors it's not quite so easy as Admiral Rickover pointed out.
Which means i have heard of this declaration elsewhere and in other contexts. In short, nobody in the energy sector takes it seriously. France in not Germany and their administration is a more efficient counterweight in face of the public opinion. And nobody there wants to end up like Germany in regard to energy.
One part of the hydroelectric power being in fact nuke electricity pumped in reversible hydro plants.
You seem to be taking a swipe at Germany and their renewables policy in favour of your preference for nuclear. However, it does not in any way add to your argument that renewables are crap and nuclear is king to say that this water is being pumped into the reservoir by nuclear energy because pumped hydro is just another way of saying 'energy storage'. It is completely irrelevant to the pumped hydro energy storage facility operator whether the energy for pumping is excess energy from nuclear plants or excess energy from renewables since the whole point of building the pumped hydro facility in the first place was to store excess energy for later use regardless of where it comes from. Fun fact: Germany has similar pumped hydro facilities it uses to store excess energy from wind and solar plants.
Could someone explain to me why wind and solar are better than *MODERN* nuclear plants, particularly fast breeder reactors, that output very little waste and are relatively safe? Nuclear plants don't vary with the sun and wind and so have no need for expensive/complex energy storage solutions to go along with them. Is the replacement of nuclear purely down to the green lobby not liking the word "nuclear" or is there any justification that has a scientific basis?
Because renewables are cheaper. From what I've seen there also seem to be reliability issues with these breeder reactors and 'reliability issues' and 'nuclear' in the same sentence tend to be a downer when trying to sell nuclear to the public. On top of that, and according to the International Panel on Fissile Materials: "After six decades and the expenditure of the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars, the promise of breeder reactors remains largely unfulfilled and efforts to commercialise them have been steadily cut back in most countries". Thus a number of countries have abandoned breeder reactor development programs, In Europe this is because renewables are simply cheaper and easier to develop, manage and operate. For those wanting to know more here is an article from the "Bulletin of the Nuclear Scientists":
https://www.princeton.edu/sgs/...
The bit at the end kind of sums sodium reactors up: "In 1956, U.S. Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover summarized his experience with a sodium cooled reactor that powered early U.S. nucear usbarines by saying that such reactors are "expensive to build, complex to operate, succeptible to prologned shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time conusming to repair." More than 50 years later , this summary remains apt.
And yet, deficits are projected to be over a trillion next year...and the next...and the next...I guess short term sugar highs are enough to justify the tax cuts in your book.
Obama entered office with a country 8 trillion in debt. He left a country 20 trillion in debt.
If you're going to attempt to bash the current administration, try not to be so dismissive of the damage the last one caused.
Actually it was at ~10 trillion when Obama took over and was at ~19 trillion by the time he left office so Obama added about 9 trillion. It breaks down like this:
FY 2010 -> deficit $1.294 trillion.
FY 2011 -> deficit $1.3 trillion.
FY 2012 -> deficit $1.087 trillion.
FY 2013 -> deficit $679 billion.
FY 2014 -> deficit $485 billion.
FY 2015 -> deficit $438 billion.
FY 2016 -> deficit $585 billion.
FY 2017 -> deficit $666 billion.
In addition to this he borrowed money from things like federal pension funds and the social security trust fund that resulted in a deficit of around 9 trillion. As you can see you most of the growth happened in his first term to a large extent (but not exclusively) as a result of the financial crisis caused by deregulation under Clinton/Bush. The debt growth slowed down significantly during Obama's second presidency when he added only ~2 trillion and he added regulations to rein in the worst excesses of the financial system. Your man Trump, aided by the party of fiscal responsibility, has so far added 2.5 trillion in two years and is thus on track to add some 10 trillion in two terms if he gets a second term and he has already systematically dismantled all the regulations Obama set up to rein in the banks. Trump's record so far is (and keep in mind that his raiding of federal pension funds is not in these figures any more than Obama's):
FY 2016 - deficit $585 billion.
FY 2017 - deficit $666 billion.
FY 2018 - deficit $833 billion.
And here is what Trump wants to do:
FY 2019 - deficit $984 billion.
FY 2020 - deficit $987 billion.
FY 2021 - deficit $916 billion.
Anybody notice a certain upward trend there?
We have a spending problem. You could tax the rich 100% of their labor and it would put a dent in the deficit.
The boat is sinking and your bitching about which way is better for it to go under. So yeah, tax away. It's all futile
[citation needed]
He'll do it alright, but that does not mean he likes it. For Mitch kowtowing to Trump is probably much like cleaning the toilet is to the rest of us, we don't like doing it but not cleaning the toilet is worse.
It doesn't really make any difference what he thinks in private, he is a public servant and his public actions - unequivocal support of Trump - speak for themselves. In supporting Trump he shares responsibility for undermining norms and causing severe damage to US reputation and international standing. If there was a crime "Moral negligence causing decline of USA", then Mitch McConnell would be guilty as a co-conspirator.
Maybe not but knowing that praising Trump and sucking up to him makes McConnell gag, like smellimg rotten meat does to the rest of us, is strangely satisfying.
This is the government that enslaved million of black Africans for profit.
As much of a dick Trump is you have to separate government from country, you can't really lay that one on him.
True, that one can't be laid on Trump ... and for the OP: let's not forget that for all it's mistakes, this is also the government that set the slaves free.
From McConnell's perpspetive he ain't doing too bad : he got what he wanted. Conservative judges filling all the vacanices across the country, 2 (and maybe more) ultra conservative supreme court justices and THE FUCKING NEW TAX CODE (ie stealing from the poor to appease the rich). He has no problem kissing Trump's ass, doing him a blowjob or worse.
Yes, but on a purely personal level McConnell deeply despises Trump, you can tell when he talks about the guy, no matter how hard he tries to hide it it always shines through. Kowtowing to Trump like the Jade Emperor of China and heaping ridiculous praise on Trump is clearly deeply galling to old Mitch. He'll do it alright, but that does not mean he likes it. For Mitch kowtowing to Trump is probably much like cleaning the toilet is to the rest of us, we don't like doing it but not cleaning the toilet is worse. Mitch, of course, has a servant who cleans his toilets for him, but making an ass of himself by kowtowing to Trump and flattering him in public is the one job Mitch can't outsource.
Republican idiot is republican idiot is ... waiting for 2019 to watch the Trump insane asylum get ... TRUMPED!
It's more like Trump having Trumpified the Republican party. He commands the fanatical loyalty of a portion of the party that is sufficiently large for the Republican establishment having to suck up to him and appease his followers because they need that portion of the electorate to win elections. In order to win Trump's support they have to follow him in a headlong charge towards the right wing nationalist fringe and cater to his narcissistic bullshit. The last few Republicans that looked moderate because the rest of the party had moved so far to the right have now retired or been primaried and in those cases where they were replaced by Republicans in the recent elections those Republicans are universally hard core Trumkins. So just face it, there is no Republican party anymore. There are two US political parties, the 'Democrats' and the 'Cult of Trump'. I can only imagine how frustrating all of this is to Mitch McConnell. Just when he thought he had secured congressional majorities for the Republicans on the back of the minority vote using gerrymandering, voter suppression, disenfranchisement and intimidation, along comes Trump and basically hijacks the party. I bet it is still nothing compared to how galling it is for old Mitch to have to make an ass of himself in public by kissing Trump's posterior and heaping sycophantic praise on Trump as if he is some oriental god-emperor.
He's not wrong; iPhones are a luxury item. If you can't afford the hike, you shouldn't be buying one to begin with.
So are all of the most popular Android phones and the same applies to them since they are also made in China and expensive as hell. The 64Gb iPhone X sells for $1000 the new Samsung S10 entry level model is slated to sell at at $750, cheaper but not exactly affordable either and they are all made in China so why just tax the iPhone? These things are now costing more than an Ultrabook laptop on Amazon so somebody remind me, why should I pay $750+ for an entry level 64Gb smartphone (irrespective of which Mobile OS religion runs on it) when I can get a 128Gb ultrabook laptop for less money?. It's not that I can't afford a $750 Android entry level phone, I can even afford a $900 S9+ with 256gb, I can even afford the $1250 iPhone Xs Max with 256Gb, I'm simply not willing to get ripped off because all those prices are a rip-off and quite frankly I don't need those things. I'm going to use my current phone till it falls apart and then buy something in well and truly in the sub $500 range and invest the difference in a proper ultra compact laptop which is something I actually need as opposed to a new smartphone which is something I merely want. As long as the damn thing can make calls, get e-mail, has a calendar, an alarm clock, has a browser capable of ordering movie/concert tickets, run a navigation app, order lodgings on booking.com and can double as a WiFi hot-spot I'm pretty much completely beyond caring which one of the great Mobile OS religions runs on it. Two SIMs would also be nice, but not essential.
The problem is that law enforcement and politicians would demand a backdoor. That opens up for abuse both by the government, corporations (in the countries where the two are separate) and by other criminals who manage to hack/steal/cajole access from the key holders.
Yes, but it would be kind of fun to be able to remotely lock the doors and windows and have the thing drive the thief straight to jail.
And yet he's still less corrupt than Hillary. How about that Haiti reconstruction, eh? The Clinton Foundation raised billions for them. And spent millions. And pocketed the difference. Oops.
Say what you want about Hillary but she is not the kind of moron that managed to bankrupt six, that's **SIX**, casinos.
Does this assume that the country from which the immigrant originates is sophisticated enough to have credit scores? Does it assume that an immigrant already in the US and applying for citizenship already has a work authorization and is building a US credit score?
Look on the bright side, this only lasts until you become a citizen. Once you are a US citizen the reflection of the content of your character that is your credit history becomes so completely unimportant that even a man who has bankrupted six casinos, welshed on god knows how many loans leading to him being treated as a leper by the entire world banking system except Deutsche bank and Russian Mafia owned money laundering factories masquerading as banks, a man who has been convicted of money laundering, cheating people out of their hard earned money with a fake university and is currently being investigated over his fake charitable foundation can become president. If DJT's credit history was an accurate reflection of the content of his character he should be a cloak wearing Sith lord with, dead eyes, pale wrinkled skin like a Shar-Pei that can lift tanks whit his mind and shoot lighting from his fingertips and not the mere sleazebag hack that he is.
Yeah, but not world wide. Far north and far south you still will have tempered regions, question however is what kind of weather (aka storms) you have and what and how much you can grow. Around the equator it mostly will depend on your distance to the sea ... at least during the last glacier periods at the equator the temperature was more or less the same as right now. So except inside of Africa, I doubt those areas will get much warmer. However: again the question is changing rain patterns. Phillippines and Indonesia had a drought last year and partly this year and heavy floodings several times this year (I don't remember last year). Thailand is unusually dry to, at least in the north west.
No, literally every life form over 5 kg does seem to have become extinct during the Permian extinction event world wide and the oceans became largely dead zones. You can try to make a 10C increase in temperature sound like a minor event, nothing to worry about, just a Chinese hoax. Personally I would rather avoid that scenario if I could and not just because of the climatic changes. Keep in mind we haven't even begun to discuss the social and political upheaval (a.k.a. famine and wars) caused by scenarios like the entire interior of Africa becoming uninhabitable.
It can't be reversed now even with major changes to carbon consumption (not that that would ever happen with both sides taking tons of cash from the energy lobbyists).
Nirvana fallacy. Just because a perfect solution doesn't exist doesn't mean reducing our CO2 emissions can't help. It might be too late to avoid a 2C temperature raise. But let's avoid a 5C raise. And if it's too late, then let's avoid a 10C raise.
By the time the temp increase passes 5C we are moving into great Permian extinction territory. By the time you get to 10C every life form heavier than 5 kg is likely going to become extinct ... at least that's what happened back then.
Dammit! I've been trying to get (hold of) the bubonic plague for some time. Where are you avoiding it so I can get me some (lemme know in the comments' section).
CAP === 'parlor'
Over 80% of United States plague cases have been bubonic plague: https://www.cdc.gov/plague/map... ... now have fun with it.
You can't buy this kind of premium advertising.
I've had a couple of Huawei's 4G usb/wifi connectors. Thus far they have turned both turned out to be a complete and utter pile of crap so the US Govt. is preaching to the converted as far as I am concerned since I am already avoiding Huawei products like the bubonic plague.
Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (2 min 35 sec)
Which happened after her emails from a private server, at least according to Newsweek.
Still a complete horseshit equivalency - even if she's been using private email since joining the White House staff. She's not an Original Classification Authority, the way Hillary was, trading in the highest levels of classified information as a part of her job. Nor has Ivanka set up her own private email server in Jared's house, nor has she used it exclusively.
Hillary was found to have sent 65 emails on topics deemed "Secret" and 22 deemed "Top Secret" but that all of them contained material that was particularly sensitive because the content of the emails discussed things that were at the time of writing available in the public domain, i.e. newspapers and it's kind of dumb to fault somebody for discussing secret things in non-secure emails that are already being discussed in newspapers. Some emails were also classified retroactively. Additionally several FBI investigations found that there was no cause for any kind of prosecution. Basically the whole Clinton emails scandal was a gigantic shitstorm over nothing. Having said that both Hillary Clinton and Ivanka Trump should use secure mail servers for all of their government related communications and particularly things like travel schedules and details about where they are planning to lodge since both of their privately operated servers seem to have been out of date and easy to hack. This could potentially be a problem for all kinds of reasons since obtaining advance details about travel plans and lodgings would be useful to anybody from assassins and terrorists to foreign intelligence services intent on gathering signals intelligence, i.e. planning to bug whatever apartments Ivanka is are staying at. I'm pretty sure that some of her shop-talk with both her husband and her father would be pretty interesting to any of a number of intelligence agencies listing in. Then there is simply the colossal hypocrisy of the whole thing due to the gigantic stink Ivanka's father raised over Hillary's e-mails.
Move all your productivity to the cloud, they said.
It will be more productive, they said.
... and there will be wonderful surprises, like this, and having to log in again into the Office 365 suite that you are paying a subscription fee for every time you cross a border. Then there is the Office 365 account management web interface which was (last time I logged in at least) divided into two separate sites on two URLs. I really miss the days when you just shelled out a lump sum for the software and installed it and entered a license code. No accounts, no subscription that you forget to update when you get a new credit card, no Office 365 license cheating detector that will always send you searching for your Office 365 account login/password when you need to get something done in a godawful hurry. The Cloud thing seemed like a good idea because it meant you could access your documents on your laptop, tablet and phone. Turned out that I always reach for the laptop because the tablet and phone apps generally just suck.
I have to say that it was awful nice of the Russians to give us this demonstration of how easily everything form simple navigation to weapons targeting can be disastrously disrupted due to our over-reliance on GPS
My guess is that they wanted to test the equipment to gauge NATO's ability to deal with the disruption. No point in using jamming equipment if it's not going to be effective (i.e. if they already have redundant systems to prevent this kind of jamming), and you'd want to go back to the drawing board and come up with something more effective.
I don't think so because testing this live against opposing forces unnecessarily warns them of your capability. The Russians could have done secret tests deep in the Siberian forests in some military exclusion zone against a simulated opposing force using either civilian equipment or western military grade equipment obtained through third countries like, say, India? who in turn got it from some western country like Israel, for example, that sells hight tech military equipment and weapons to anybody willing to pay. That might have been picked up by western intelligence services but is unlikely to have influenced a western political, military and defence industry hierarchy that is too deeply invested in their existing systems to believe profit reducing intelligence reports about the vulnerabilities of their systems. Just witness the way these people were willing to completely ignore the potential issues with unencrypted command links to US drones in central Asia until the Iranians used that oversight to hack-n-jack the beast of Kandahar. Instead the Russians chose to showcase their capability, in a way that neither the western politicians, their military hierarchy nor the armaments industry can ignore however much they might want to. Western forces have been over-reliant on GPS, especially for weapons guidance for way too long. Jammers like this would be pretty effective against the JDAM for example which reverts to inertial guidance when the GPS is out, come to think of it, if the Russians can 'skew' the GPS signal the JDAM might not even notice and slam down next to the target. A bomb does not have to miss the target most of the time by more than a hundred yards for a $25.000 JDAM kit to be wasted. The whole thing is a bit like that time some Bush White House bozo bragged about the US ability to bug and track Al Quaeda satellite phones, within 24 hours every single Al Quaeda bigwig had dropped of the CIA's radar and vanished into Pakistani tribal country. The lesson here is that if you have an advantage like this, or tracking Al Quaeda satellite phones or decrypting Nazi army, air force and navy communications you don't tell anybody and never do anything to make your capability obvious to the enemy until it is absolutely necessary. Like Napoleon said, Never interrupt the enemy while he is making a mistake.
If Russia has the ability to do this,
Everyone has the ability to do this. There is no "if" involved. Signal jamming is easy, especially if you only want to jam a single known band. All those FCC regulations on your wifi router that Slashdotters find an offensive infringement on their right to overload the airwaves? Those exist to reduce accidental "jamming" of nearby signal bands.
All you need is an antenna and a bigger power supply than the signal you want to overload. With GPS, the signal strength is pretty low by the time it reaches human activities, so you could jam a large area with a car battery, a bit of frequency conversion, and a metal post.
I have to say that it was awful nice of the Russians to give us this demonstration of how easily everything form simple navigation to weapons targeting can be disastrously disrupted due to our over-reliance on GPS instead of springing it on us in the opening phases of a shooting war. Without Russias kind assistance it might have been a lot harder to obtain funds from the politicians for preemptive improvements and the procurement of less vulnerable systems. This, and their hacking efforts along with disruptions of drone guidance signals, along with their downright dangerous jamming of civilian air traffic systems comms and air traffic radars will result ins some very swift and comprehensive upgrades to these systems.
It's not stealing. It's copyright infringement. They really can't be more different. If it was stealing they would have been charged in a criminal court and imprisoned. This was a civil suit, where they were charged an amount to compensate for the losses claimed by Nintendo.
I don't really care, I will never understand why people do this because everybody loses. If I am understanding this correctly these people are making old games that Nintendo no longer markets or supports and for which there is no new production hardware available playable on emulators. Since I don't think this retro games niche market is massively cutting into Nintendo's modern games business it seems to me that it serves no purpose to shut these businesses down. If I was Nintendo, and I was vexed by people doing digital archeology on my ancient retro games available and profiting form it, I'd just make them an offer they couldn't refuse. In return for paying me a fair license fee, a percentage of net profits on each sale perhaps, they would get an official license from Nintendo to make this retro stuff available to enthusiasts which they can hang on their wall and show any lawyer that comes calling and yapping about copyright violations and I'd gladly throw in complete access to original Nintendo documentation on out-of-production hardware to make your emulator work easier and increase your emulator's product quality. That way the retro enthusiasts are happy, the company stays in business and Nintendo would have a revenue stream from products that were netting them no revenue previously which they can pour into the development of new games, ... buuut, no, let's shut them down instead.