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User: eepok

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  1. Re:Why trust a cheap supermarket to be a bank? on British Retail Tesco Bank: 20,000 Customers Lose Money (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Great question. I work in a county where there's an extremely well-known credit union with an education focus-- if you're a university student or employee of a school, you and your family can join the credit union. I joined as a student because it offered no fees for pretty much anything. As I grew into a career-person, I learned about the massive benefits. First, they're a not-for-profit. Their goal isn't to get rich and make people rich. It's to keep the money safe, keep member credit availability high, and then share what profits are had with their membership.

    Here's a great example: Most savings accounts accrue infinitesimal interest (if any). At this credit union, you get a .05% APR. Nothing special. You can open a Money Market account and get .1% APR, though. What's the difference? To the end user, nothing, really. You put money in and you take money out. Here's the good stuff though-- There's a Summer Saver's account (remember the education focus?) where you can have up to $2,000 of each of your paychecks deposited. This earns 3.0% APR! You can withdraw some/all the money whenever you want, but you can only deposit via your paycheck's direct deposit. Thus, your money isn't tied up, but while it's there, it's bringing in better interest than any other no-risk savings I've ever seen.

    Additionally, they have variable limit credit cards, rewards credit cards, home loans (PMI/Non-PMI, etc.)-- and all at rock-bottom interest rates because their goal isn't to milk money from you, it's to make sure you pay back your debt so that the members (including you), keep bringing in good interest returns.

  2. Re:The terrorists have won on Man Who Named His Wi-Fi SSID 'Daesh 21' Prosecuted Under French Anti-Terror Law (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Riiight. And that's evident how? Tell me how your life exhibits the Constitution having been smashed. Which freedoms did you have, but do not have today? Ya, Western governments are over-stepping bounds, but I'm fairly certain you weren't shot for typing your response. Nor will you be prosecuted. Nor will anyone else give much of a damn. Your freedoms are 99.999% intact and the police will still come to protect them when you call and the legal system will continue to prosecute and defend the accused. But if living in a dystopic fantasy land is your thing, then you do you.

  3. Re:Airport charging on White House, 35 States To Boost Electric Vehicle Charging Stations (cnbc.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Plain ol' sockets won't do the job because it doesn't provide the data necessary to bill the driver to electricity used, manage the hundreds of plugs, etc.

    Also, while it seems like common sense to place charging stations at workplaces and shopping areas, it doesn't make sense form an administrative or engineering standpoint. When stations go in at your job site, your job site becomes the administrator of those stations. They effectively become refueling stations and they become responsible for the smooth running of their workers refueling. This is much more complex than most people realize. Additionally, when you place massive amounts of chargers (level 2 chargers for that matter) in areas where people are likely to park during the day, you're encouraging additional peak-time load which usually means more pollution per kWh. It's also more expensive to INSTALL the EVSEs because you have to trench and run electrical cables into open lots, install new transformers, etc.

    If you want to promote EV use, the solution is NOT more chargers in public spaces, but more battery capacity at an affordable price (like the Chevy Bolt) and more charging at home. And this is the truest obstacle of the push for EVs.

    The cheapest energy is off-peak energy. If you charge at home between 9pm and 6am, you're paying a couple dollars at most to fill up your car's battery pack. This is what everyone wants. But not everyone has a garage. Not everyone owns a home so that they can install an EVSE with which to charge an EV.

    If EVs are to succeed:
    1. EVERYONE has to be able to charge at home.
    2. The cars can't cost more than a Prius. (The federal rebate needs to be reworked to be useful to those of moderate/low income.)
    3. The cars must have at least a 200 mile range. (All of us working in sustainability are looking forward to the Chevy Bolt.)
    4. We have to find a way to make battery manufacturing, recycling, and disposal environmentally safe.

    That's a lot to ask for. Which is why I genuinely think that we're over-investing in battery EVs when we should be building more solar/wind powered hydrolyzers and focusing on hydrogen fuel cell vehicle adoption (Toyota Mirai, Hyundai Tuscon, etc.).

  4. Definitions and Context on Renewables Overtake Coal As World's Largest Source of Power Capacity (ft.com) · · Score: 1

    The title is correct, but then we have to define "renewables". It includes solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric.

    With that in mind, know that wind and solar, the big newer, flashier energy sources in the media, are not the major sources of renewable energy. Hydroelectric (falling water) accounts for over 70% of renewable energy. Wind is at 15%. Solar is at 4%.

    Percentage-wise, solar and wind have grown very quickly, but in the grand scheme of total energy production, wind and solar are still small potatoes.

    Disclaimer: I'm not writing this post as a nay-sayer. I actually work in sustainability. I WANT more solar and wind power. I'm just trying to make sure that people don't accept hype-ish headlines as implying certain things. Within sustainability, we always have to manage the expectations of the hype. Everyone thinks we can "just put up some solar panels" and make free electricity for EV charging stations when FREE is never reality.

  5. Not My Experience on Amazon Marketplace Shoppers Slam the Spam (fortune.com) · · Score: 1

    I get one email asking how packaging or service was. And I ignore it. I don't get repeat emails. What are these people buying?

    FTFA: “I buy literally everything on Amazon, from hangers to batteries,” noted one disgruntled shopper.

    Oh. So "Shoppers" don't "slam the spam". Some extreme Amazon shoppers slam the spam. Gotcha.

  6. Trump's a D-Bag, but... on Newsweek Website Attacked After Report On Trump, Cuban Embargo (talkingpointsmemo.com) · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Trump's a D-Bag, but if there's literally no evidence that the DDOS came as a RESULT of the article (only that it came after the story), then why are we strongly insinuating causality?

    There's no need for that. Trump's already shit stain and everyone knows it. There's no need to jump to conclusions and tie him to something that he may not be associated. Because if it turns out that he's NOT associated, this will just be conspiracy theorist and Trump pariah bait.

  7. Why not use the source article? on Facebook at Work To Report For Duty Next Month (fortune.com) · · Score: 1

    Why are we being linked to a Forbes article when Forbes cites a Techcrunch article for the information?

    "... according to tech site TechCrunch. The news site further noted..."

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/09...

  8. I have Sprint. I'm not angry. on Sprint Charging 'Unlimited' Users $20 More for Unthrottled Video (dslreports.com) · · Score: 1

    I was told at the very beginning that I get X GB data at max speed and then unlimited data at a reduced speed after my cap had been exceeded.

  9. Sex is fun, News at 11. on Robot Babies Not Effective Birth Control, Australian Study Finds (sky.com) · · Score: 1

    People like to have sex. Having a robot baby isn't going to deter people from having sex... but it may make some people desensitized to the downsides of being an ill-prepared parent.

  10. Taking Credit for Saving, Not Generating Energy on Alphabet's Nest Wants to Build a 'Citizen-Fueled' Power Plant (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 2

    What a stupid story. So Nest wants to reduce demand artificially and take credit (carbon credit... financial credit) for doing so. The "power plant" concept comes in their spin saying, "Removing demand is just like increasing supply. Effectively."

  11. Agreed! I can see the name and the icon is immediately relatable to the name!

  12. Re:Entrepreneur Spreads Hype - News at 11 on Eleven Reasons To Be Excited About The Future of Technology (medium.com) · · Score: 1

    1. First, they've had test vehicles. Test vehicles that aren't good enough to launch as fully "self-driving" yet or else they'd be knee-deep in the legal questions already. I can say that I'm developing a rocket booster in my backyard, but until I can approach its intended function to the point where I feel comfortable selling it, the product doesn't exist. It's all concept and research with no real deadline. So, as I said, without more tech and legal solutions, it's still speculation.

    2. Yes, very expensive. Some panels are cheap, but panels cleanly sourced are expensive and it doesn't matter how efficient future panels cost if you sink the cost today. Moreover, most people that invest in rooftop solar end up doing it through a leasing process which means selling the home becomes more complicated. Batteries are still a **very** dirty storage method (dirty to make, dirty to recycle/dispose) that adds to the cost of the energy ecologically and financially. There's a reason there hasn't been a boom in full-sized solar and wind plants/farms -- they don't make fiscal sense. The power companies would be all over them if there was a method to make it work with current infrastructure.

    3. It's all prediction based on precedence.

    11. No, SpaceX has *said* they *plan* on sending a manned mission to Mars within a decade. There's no reason (at all) to believe the plan will come to fruition. Elon has said he'll build an EV for the masses, send people to Mars, send people at hundreds of MPH down a pressurized tube, make automated vehicles that would make obsolete transit, etc.

    For the record, I know that I sound like an absolute humbug. It's not my goal to be a humbug, but I feel that it's necessary to nip some of the hyperbolic enthusiasm in the bud. Tech hype, in my experience, only serves to help people stuff their heads in the sand and ignore existing problems that could be eased or even solved today with existing technology. Instead, people like to ignore it all and say, "Technology will save us." So, I'll go down the list again and point out what we could do TODAY to achieve similar results...

    1. Self-Driving Cars: The goal is to ease traffic and reduce traffic collisions. We can do this by better facilitating transit and increasing the minimum driving age to 21. We should require automatic braking (a today tech!) in every vehicle where airbags are required.

    2. Clean Energy: The goal is to ease global climate change. To do that, we can use nuclear power with breeder reactors and keeping building rooftop solar and windfarms where they make sense.

    3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: The goal is to have an immersive experience where one isn't. Embrace the porn/games market. Hopefully someone will make something more useful out of it, but don't shy from the true buyers-in.

    4. Drones and Flying Cars: The purpose is to reduce delivery and surveillance expenses (drones) and travel more quickly on demand (flying cars). There's not much you can do to further reduce delivery expenses, honestly. That's commerce. I don't think any private person wants to be watched more. And quick, on-demand travel should be the alternative transportation to transit being the standard option.

    5. Artificial Intelligence: The goal is to think less for ourselves because we're wrong about things. This is a bad goal. Drop this goal.

    6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: There is no goal here. It's just a pat on the back.

    7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: The goal here is to avoid surveillance and, if that's the case, then why support drones?

    8. High-Quality Online Education: The goal here is to make education easier for the entity responsible for providing education. However, education is hard because people are complex and the job of an educator is more complex than people realize. We can improve everyone's quality of life if we focused more on educating the underperformers and less on those who perform well regardless. It's called imp

  13. LOL. We are of a similar mind:

    "The Eye" - This is creepy and much too reminiscent of Big Brother. And the color scheme screams of Norton AntiVirus.
    "The Connector" - This looks like the very long history of very bad Olympics logos. Bad shapes, confusing, weird colors. It would not be immediately associated with a "web browser".
    "Open Button" - This is better, but reminds me of the many audio/media players with last track, pause, and next track button. This would be a great logo if Firefox were WinAmp.
    "Protocol" - This is cool, but confusing to the uninitiated. It's kind of like the inside joke of "Slashdot.org"-- when someone would ask you the website address, you would say "H-T-T-P-Colon-Slash-Slash-Slashdot-Dot-Org".
    "Wireframe World" - Nope. Too much empty space for too little communication.
    "The Impossible M" - Maybe if the patterns weren't so late 90's computing retro and the M wasn't so wide. It has to be an icon, right?
    "Flik Flak" - This looks like a marketing logo for an architecture firm using a default color scheme from the Microsoft Office suite.

  14. Entrepreneur Spreads Hype - News at 11 on Eleven Reasons To Be Excited About The Future of Technology (medium.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1. Self-Driving Cars: If the tech and legal issues ever get sorted, it can be great. But that's nowhere near happening, so the hype machine needs to continue to roll to continue bringing in new investors.

    2. Clean Energy: Very expensive and requiring massive diversity of investment. Wind and solar (the big "new" players) are not for every environment. Moreover, there has only been minimal gains in the grid balancing act required to make use of these intermittent energy sources.

    3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Porn and games. For all other applications, it would just be too much of a distraction.

    4. Drones and Flying Cars: Drones come with MASSIVE safety and privacy risks. Flying cars are and always will be BS.

    5. Artificial Intelligence: Always just around the corner.

    6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: If we can designate smartphones supercomputers because they're as powerful as supercomputers once were, then I am the smartest man on Earth (by comparison to pre-Enlightenment Europe).

    7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Until there's a means of securing cryptocurrencies in peoples' hands, they will never gain sufficient faith for widespread usage. Until then, they're just volatile niche currencies.

    8. High-Quality Online Education: Online Education will be crap until you can figure out a way to use it to consistently educate the lower socio-economic ranks. Until then, we're going to continue to NEED to require them to physically show up to a classroom with humans adjusting to the needs of the students.

    9. Better Food through Science: This is the past. We've been doing this for hundreds of years.

    10. Computerized Medicine: Which will be useless unless our social policies surrounding the relationships between medical costs and medical profits aren't addressed.

    11. A New Space Age: This is where the drones comes in. Today's governments are spending more money on keeping their populations healthier and prolonging lives. As they invest more, there will be less money for exploration (and 99% of exploration is funded by governments). It is, and will continue to be for a long time, to just send drones to do our exploration for us.

  15. Elon has lots of goals. Lots and lots of goals. Eventually, he'll accomplish one of them. Hopefully. Because a lot of tax money has been invested in his goals and that'd be really disappointing if nothing permanent came of it.

  16. But in this case, not only is the customer paying, but other people are as well. A single Level 2 charging station with two ports costs $5,000-$7,000. Add to that the cost installation (variable depending on the amount of trenching) and the cost of electricity and you get actual cost. That either comes from somewhere. And if the customer's not paying anything, then everyone is paying something.

  17. I read the title as saying, "... Faster Processor and Better Waterboarding" and didn't blink an eye. I thought to myself, "Well, at least it's getting better."

  18. Your honor, consider all the people I didn't kill. on Man Says Tesla Autopilot Saved His Life By Driving Him To the Hospital (cnbc.com) · · Score: 2

    We'll probably see these stories highlighted non-stop until some sort of legal decision is made on the liability of the actions genuinely autonomous vehicles. Google, Tesla, and everyone else working on the tech will need constant need investor support and public reaction to happy stories otherwise they'll have to face the real question of liability.

    The problem at hand: It doesn't matter how many people a car's autonomous driving doesn't kill, what matters is the number of people it fails to save. The same rule applies to humans: People cannot defend negligent or murderous actions by a listing of all the people that they didn't kill. What matters is harm committed, not harm evaded.

    Moreover, can any company survive the of full liability of the loss of more than a few lives? Over 30,000 people per year are killed on American roads. Even if autonomous vehicles reduced that to 10,000 people per year (a 66% reduction!), their manufacturers/programmers would still be responsible for the death of 10,000 people! What industry could survive that liability? That many civil law suits?

  19. Re:Public Admission of Stupidity on Tesla's Autopilot Mode Reportedly Saves Pedestrian's Life (electrek.co) · · Score: 1

    The driver of an automobile has a responsibility of care on the road. This is why ALL pedestrians must be yielded to in the road regardless of clothing, time of day, type of vehicle being driven, or if the pedestrian is jaywalking or crossing legally at an intersection. "Did you see the pedestrian before you struck him and thus maliciously assault him with your motor vehicle or were you negligent of your duty of care?" These automated braking systems are there to make up for when negligence would have resulted in damage to person or property.

  20. Re:Public Admission of Stupidity on Tesla's Autopilot Mode Reportedly Saves Pedestrian's Life (electrek.co) · · Score: 1

    Actually, many states do require this. It's called an "audible warning" and can be a bell, horn, or voice saying, "Passing on your left." It's up to the bicyclist to use the warning. If collision results from the lack of warning, the bicyclist can be held liable for negligence.

  21. Re:New kind of pickup truck? on Tesla's 'Master Plan, Part Deux' Includes Trucks, Buses and Ride-Sharing (latimes.com) · · Score: 2

    Very much this. I'm actually in the market for replacing a large number of small (Ford Ranger) and medium (Ford F-150) pickups with trucks using more sustainable fuel tech. I'll take a simple hybrid, but would prefer a plug-in hybrid or pure electric if possible. And you're right. They don't exist yet. Drinkypoo is talking out his arse. Similarly, I think Musk is talking out his arse and creating hype to bolster stock prices.

  22. Not 100% true. John Zimmer, founder of Lyft, actually have a real rideshare platform before selling it to Enterprise (car rental, vanpool, etc.) to focus on Lyft. Zimride, as it was called, was widely adopted by a number of cities and university campuses to facilitate carpool matching with the option of reimbursement. Lyft was founded to make money.

  23. Old Article & Three-Mile, Fukushima, or Cherno on There's A 50% Chance of Another Chernobyl Before 2050, Say Safety Specialists (technologyreview.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First off, the article is dated as "April 17, 2015". So, "Not News".

    The headline says "Chernobyl" (a stupid set of human errors leading to meltdown). The summary says "Fukushima" (the results of old tech meeting an extreme natural disaster". The article's own summary says it's a 50:50 chance of a "Three-Mile Island" (where no one was harmed). Or are we just talking an expensive incident? Or an actual meltdown?

    I'm an abject Slashdot apologist and I'll confidently say that this submission is crap.

  24. I'm always suspicious of the term "User" when people say they have X number of users. Does "user" mean unique people? Does it mean "account"?

    Because I have a hard time believing that 1/7 of the world population is actively on Facebook and I also know full well that there are millions of bot accounts whose likes are purchased.

  25. Re:Someone Please Explain The Glitch on A Google Maps Glitch Turned This Korean Fishing Town Into a 'Pokemon Go' Haven (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    You, ma'am/sir, would win my points were I able to score posts after having made a post.