It's not "cleaner" CO2. Burning natural gas simply produces/less/ CO2 than burning coal to generate the same amount of electricity.
I'm old enough to remember when environmentalists viewed natural gas as a "bridge" fuel on a path to reducing CO2 emissions. Then of course fracking resulted in an abundance of natural gas supply and it became bad.
The summary cites 2018 for the growth figures, and as 2018 is not over, perhaps these are simply estimates. Perhaps this is a little misleading?
I have repeatedly read that CO2 emmissions in the U.S. have been declining in the past few years due to natural gas and the increased use of renewable power displacing coal for electricity generation. If you click through to the PDF on the Key Statistics (page 27) the U.S. shows negative growth for 2016-17. Why it would suddenly swing to an increase is beyond me.
And if they hadn't "covered it up" (going back to the 70's/80's, if I remember the claims correctly), what action would the cities have taken to mitigate the release of CO2?
If cities feel duped by oil companies that their product is destroying the environment and poses an existential threat, what would they have done differently had they known?
Ban cars, trucks, gasoline, oil, plastics and chemicals produced from crude oil?
IANAL and IANAJ, but I should think a logical requirement for the cities to prevail should be for the cities to demonstrate there is some reasonable action that they would have taken had this "fraud" not been committed.
In addition, check NYC bond offerings. Have they disclosed the known risks of climate change when they need to borrow money? Or are they hiding these risks from investors and committing some financial fraud?
If the known risks of climate change were disclosed surely borrowing costs would be higher.
In my neighborhood, it looks like Google Earth was processed through some kind of bad Instagram filter designed to make things look blurry. I can tell the images are new because of the solar panels on our house. And I noticed that all of the trees have had geometric shaped boundaries applied, all sharp edges and precise angles, curiously not applied to the shadows cast on the ground! Nearly everyone's lawn looks like a patch of dirt. It honestly looks like something out of a 10-15 year old video game.
I don't think the Silicon Beat article correctly conveys the results of the study. By using the phrase "well known U.S. gender wage gap" in the second paragraph it sounds like they are talking about all fields, not programming. (I would not characterize the gender gap specifically for programming jobs as being "well known".) But in fact the figures they cite are for programming jobs in that paragraph. If you click through to the glassdoor site, there is a table showing "Unadjusted" pay gap of 24.1% and "Adjusted" pay gap of 5.4% (both for U.S.).
The study is not saying that the gender pay gap is worse for programmers. A quick Google search turns up the following: "2009 Labor Department study showed was that when the proper controls are in place, the unexplained (adjusted) wage gap is somewhere between 4.8 and 7 cents." So it is right in line with other fields, and actually towards the lower end.
"Unlike traditional labor market surveys, Glassdoor salary data are not collected through the use of a probability sample of a representative sample of workers. Instead, Glassdoor collects data via a decentralized “crowd-sourcing” platform, using a process known as a “give to get” model."
I'm not familiar with the validation associated with the passport system, but the problem with relying on E-Verify as it is now is that it is not designed to detect identity theft. All E-Verify will do (at least the last time I looked at it) is tell you that the social security number, name, gender, birth date, match. If an illegal immigrant has stolen someone's identity and presents an employer with information that matches, then E-Verify is going to say the employee is ok.
I presume that the passport system is designed more strictly to identify your identity, so really what you are talking about is more like a national identity card? A picture ID at the least, a biometric ID card may be better. Although I've heard that will not go over so well in some quarters.
Now the government could modify the system to start flagging SSNs that get multiple uses, but that becomes problematic. What happens when a person who actually is the real person that belongs to the SSN gets flagged (and possibly denied employment or has employment delayed)? If the government starts keeping track of multiple hits on the same SSN, then the government now has "constructive knowledge" that one or more individuals are at a minimum engaging in identity theft and likely not citizens (the main reason for engaging in identity theft to obtain employment). Now the government will be expected to do something about it.
Several years ago the SSA was going to start sending out "no match" letters to employers when the SSN's didn't match the employee information provided on the W-2's. The employer was then supposed to contact the employee and give them instructions on what to do (depending on whether the employee maintained that the SSN was correct) which could include going down to the local SSA office to sort things out. That program never got off the ground.
Growing up, we only got sugary cereals like Trix and Froot Loops one week out of the year when we stayed with our grandparents during summer break. I've always imagined that all of the artificial ingredients were the source of the distinctive smell that causes the "Ratatouille moment" I experience whenever I get a whiff of a freshly opened box of Trix.
It is not a matter of whether a future company's business model and technology is similar to Aereo's, if is whether it is similar enough to cable that is what is important going forward. And what this ruling effectively does is require the future technology and business models to be evaluated by the courts to see if the retransmission fees meant for cable companies should be applied. I dont think it provides any clarity for future innovators other than guidance to make their systems as unlike cable as possible to avoid "guilt by resemblance".
I did the calculations and it is around 1200 square feet per household that this project is powering. I'm not sure this type of land use could really scale.
They can sell it to California! I don't think they are building a lot of power plants here, and we'll definitely need some clean environmentally friendly energy to power the high speed train they are going to build. Besides PG&E and SCE get away with charging >.30/kWh to customers, so there is plenty of potential for profit there even at a wholesale cost of.14/kWh.
If you doubt they would do this, consider that California once imported (and may still be importing) clean hydroelectric power from Canada (B.C. IIRC) which in turn proceeded to burn coal to meet local power requirements.
Does it even "work" as a supplement? This article indicates at least one utility is thinking of relocating because their gas and coal plants are now/becoming unprofitable.
So what does the law say? I looked up Section 2701(a)(1)(A) where the two ratios are specified. 1.5:1 for tobacco use vs. non-tabacco use, and a maximum 3:1 ratio for adults. This section doesn't say anything about whether the age rating limit should be applied after or before the tobacco rating limit is applied. Someone should have thought of this when drafting the law.
You might be able to make an argument that it should work either way. Did HHS ever issue guidance on how to apply this section of the law or was it intentionally or unintentionally left vague?
This is just the way the rules are written. The ratios between prices for policies for younger people and older people are checked after the smoking penalty is added on. The ratio cannot exceed 3x. So it is not possible to charge a much smaller penalty to younger smokers than for older smokers without breaking that rule.
It may be more of a case of unintended consequences, or legislators and bill writers that can't do math. The article says a fix will take a year, but doesn't say why. I suspect it is because either a legislative fix will be required or HHS will just rewrite the rule on it's own and has to go through the regular proposed rule-making/comment period/final rule-making rig-amoral.
Well, businesses now have to decide whether or not they continue with plans to provide health insurance to their employees or cancel plans if they have already signed up. The mandate is still there, it is just that without any reporting requirement in place, the government has no way of determining the penalties that apply.
Imagine you are a business owner in a highly competitive industry where payroll overhead costs are one of the major factors in the prices you charge your customers. Do you provide coverage, jacking up your prices, and risk being undercut by competitors who don't provide coverage to their employees?
One of the first things I've wondered is would it be possible for employees to file suit against their employers for not providing health insurance coverage as per the law requires. The initial report from Bloomberg indicated that the law provides flexibility for the government to determine when to start enforcing provisions in section 1513. A quick skimming of the section though indicates it goes into effect for all months after Dec. 31, 2013. I couldn't find any such flexibility. By law the mandate remains--can employers be held liable for not complying with it even though the government is not enforcing penalties? This needs to be clarified.
At the individual level: employees up until now may have been able to assume that their employer would provide coverage. Now that is up in the air, and many people who don't have coverage and might have been planning on signing up for coverage through their employer have to assume that they will either not get insurance and have to pay a penalty, or they will have to sign up for coverage through an exchange. For the later option, will they get a subsidy to help pay for coverage? No one can tell a this point.
Well that, and I looked at the store snack section last night, and the Hostess products are twice the price of other options available. So, if you want a Twinkie fix and the store brand is just as good (I don't know if that's the case, I don't eat Twinkies) why pay more especially with the economy being so bad right now? Same with the fruit pies, Ho-Ho's et al.
We just talked to a sales rep from Verango, they do just this type of system. Sunrun buys the panels and maintains them. Quoted us 27.5 cents/kwh to start in the first year to replace the 131%+ tier power that we are charged higher rates in California on.
I created a spreadsheet to calculate our average cost/kwh over the last year in the upper tiers, and it worked out to 32.5 cents. So we could save 5 cents/kwh, or $31 per month if our usage stayed the same the last year. Not enough for me to bite, even if it costs us nothing. I'd rather find ways to reduce usage and cut our bill by more than that. We'd planned on doing that, which means the savings would be even smaller because our usage in the top tiers would be going down anyway.
Incidentally, part of his pitch is that energy costs increase 6.9% per year. The 20 year solar contract locks in increases of 2.9%. So part of the argument is that over time, solar costs will go up at a much slower pace than electricity costs from PG&E. The only thing is, there has apparently been so much outrage over electricity costs in California that last year they got the highest tier rates lowered from around 40.4 cents/kwh to 34.2 cents/kwh, and the next highest tier also had a decrease from around 33 cents/kwh to around 31 cents/kwh. (Baseline and 101-130% tier rates went up a little) Which kind of negates the argument that energy costs go up every year, and reinforces the fact that energy companies are regulated by the government, so there are ultimately some political factors involved (aside from market forces, etc) in determining rates that are charged.
Our high school had a small computer lab (a small room between classrooms probably originally meant as a teacher office/work area) with 4-5 C64s and an Apple II, IIRC. A couple of times I remember it made a great place for students to meet up and exchange pirated software.
"On The Edge" explains the problem. The plan was to use the serial shifter in the CIA chip. But the lines from the CIA chip to the serial port that was in the final schematic was cut by the production layout guys in California, and hundreds of thousands of PCBs were already in production. So it had to be solved in software.
Slashdot Mirror
In the real world of course you can't stockpile strawberries in silos.
It's not "cleaner" CO2. Burning natural gas simply produces /less/ CO2 than burning coal to generate the same amount of electricity.
I'm old enough to remember when environmentalists viewed natural gas as a "bridge" fuel on a path to reducing CO2 emissions. Then of course fracking resulted in an abundance of natural gas supply and it became bad.
The summary cites 2018 for the growth figures, and as 2018 is not over, perhaps these are simply estimates. Perhaps this is a little misleading?
I have repeatedly read that CO2 emmissions in the U.S. have been declining in the past few years due to natural gas and the increased use of renewable power displacing coal for electricity generation. If you click through to the PDF on the Key Statistics (page 27) the U.S. shows negative growth for 2016-17. Why it would suddenly swing to an increase is beyond me.
And if they hadn't "covered it up" (going back to the 70's/80's, if I remember the claims correctly), what action would the cities have taken to mitigate the release of CO2?
If cities feel duped by oil companies that their product is destroying the environment and poses an existential threat, what would they have done differently had they known?
Ban cars, trucks, gasoline, oil, plastics and chemicals produced from crude oil?
IANAL and IANAJ, but I should think a logical requirement for the cities to prevail should be for the cities to demonstrate there is some reasonable action that they would have taken had this "fraud" not been committed.
In addition, check NYC bond offerings. Have they disclosed the known risks of climate change when they need to borrow money? Or are they hiding these risks from investors and committing some financial fraud?
If the known risks of climate change were disclosed surely borrowing costs would be higher.
The multitasking system on the Amiga was preemptive vs. the cooperative systems on 16-bit Windows and the original Mac OS.
In my neighborhood, it looks like Google Earth was processed through some kind of bad Instagram filter designed to make things look blurry. I can tell the images are new because of the solar panels on our house. And I noticed that all of the trees have had geometric shaped boundaries applied, all sharp edges and precise angles, curiously not applied to the shadows cast on the ground! Nearly everyone's lawn looks like a patch of dirt. It honestly looks like something out of a 10-15 year old video game.
I don't think the Silicon Beat article correctly conveys the results of the study. By using the phrase "well known U.S. gender wage gap" in the second paragraph it sounds like they are talking about all fields, not programming. (I would not characterize the gender gap specifically for programming jobs as being "well known".) But in fact the figures they cite are for programming jobs in that paragraph. If you click through to the glassdoor site, there is a table showing "Unadjusted" pay gap of 24.1% and "Adjusted" pay gap of 5.4% (both for U.S.).
The study is not saying that the gender pay gap is worse for programmers. A quick Google search turns up the following: "2009 Labor Department study showed was that when the proper controls are in place, the unexplained (adjusted) wage gap is somewhere between 4.8 and 7 cents." So it is right in line with other fields, and actually towards the lower end.
They didn't pick the group, it is self reported:
"Unlike traditional labor market surveys, Glassdoor salary data are not collected through the use of a probability sample of a representative sample of workers. Instead, Glassdoor collects data via a decentralized “crowd-sourcing” platform, using a process known as a “give to get” model."
I'm not familiar with the validation associated with the passport system, but the problem with relying on E-Verify as it is now is that it is not designed to detect identity theft. All E-Verify will do (at least the last time I looked at it) is tell you that the social security number, name, gender, birth date, match. If an illegal immigrant has stolen someone's identity and presents an employer with information that matches, then E-Verify is going to say the employee is ok.
I presume that the passport system is designed more strictly to identify your identity, so really what you are talking about is more like a national identity card? A picture ID at the least, a biometric ID card may be better. Although I've heard that will not go over so well in some quarters.
Now the government could modify the system to start flagging SSNs that get multiple uses, but that becomes problematic. What happens when a person who actually is the real person that belongs to the SSN gets flagged (and possibly denied employment or has employment delayed)? If the government starts keeping track of multiple hits on the same SSN, then the government now has "constructive knowledge" that one or more individuals are at a minimum engaging in identity theft and likely not citizens (the main reason for engaging in identity theft to obtain employment). Now the government will be expected to do something about it.
Several years ago the SSA was going to start sending out "no match" letters to employers when the SSN's didn't match the employee information provided on the W-2's. The employer was then supposed to contact the employee and give them instructions on what to do (depending on whether the employee maintained that the SSN was correct) which could include going down to the local SSA office to sort things out. That program never got off the ground.
Growing up, we only got sugary cereals like Trix and Froot Loops one week out of the year when we stayed with our grandparents during summer break. I've always imagined that all of the artificial ingredients were the source of the distinctive smell that causes the "Ratatouille moment" I experience whenever I get a whiff of a freshly opened box of Trix.
It is not a matter of whether a future company's business model and technology is similar to Aereo's, if is whether it is similar enough to cable that is what is important going forward. And what this ruling effectively does is require the future technology and business models to be evaluated by the courts to see if the retransmission fees meant for cable companies should be applied. I dont think it provides any clarity for future innovators other than guidance to make their systems as unlike cable as possible to avoid "guilt by resemblance".
I did the calculations and it is around 1200 square feet per household that this project is powering. I'm not sure this type of land use could really scale.
They can sell it to California! I don't think they are building a lot of power plants here, and we'll definitely need some clean environmentally friendly energy to power the high speed train they are going to build. Besides PG&E and SCE get away with charging >.30/kWh to customers, so there is plenty of potential for profit there even at a wholesale cost of .14/kWh.
If you doubt they would do this, consider that California once imported (and may still be importing) clean hydroelectric power from Canada (B.C. IIRC) which in turn proceeded to burn coal to meet local power requirements.
Does it even "work" as a supplement? This article indicates at least one utility is thinking of relocating because their gas and coal plants are now/becoming unprofitable.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/08/19/german-utility-revolts-against-renewable-energy-threatens-to-relocate-in-turkey/?ss=business:energy
This article just appeared in the NYT about German "energy poverty":
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/world/europe/germanys-effort-at-clean-energy-proves-complex.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Or it might be an inadequate spec.
So what does the law say? I looked up Section 2701(a)(1)(A) where the two ratios are specified. 1.5:1 for tobacco use vs. non-tabacco use, and a maximum 3:1 ratio for adults. This section doesn't say anything about whether the age rating limit should be applied after or before the tobacco rating limit is applied. Someone should have thought of this when drafting the law.
You might be able to make an argument that it should work either way. Did HHS ever issue guidance on how to apply this section of the law or was it intentionally or unintentionally left vague?
This is just the way the rules are written. The ratios between prices for policies for younger people and older people are checked after the smoking penalty is added on. The ratio cannot exceed 3x. So it is not possible to charge a much smaller penalty to younger smokers than for older smokers without breaking that rule.
It may be more of a case of unintended consequences, or legislators and bill writers that can't do math. The article says a fix will take a year, but doesn't say why. I suspect it is because either a legislative fix will be required or HHS will just rewrite the rule on it's own and has to go through the regular proposed rule-making/comment period/final rule-making rig-amoral.
Even better, there's a bronze plan too. And a catastrophic plan (tin?) that is even cheaper, although there is an age cutoff for that plan.
Well, businesses now have to decide whether or not they continue with plans to provide health insurance to their employees or cancel plans if they have already signed up. The mandate is still there, it is just that without any reporting requirement in place, the government has no way of determining the penalties that apply.
Imagine you are a business owner in a highly competitive industry where payroll overhead costs are one of the major factors in the prices you charge your customers. Do you provide coverage, jacking up your prices, and risk being undercut by competitors who don't provide coverage to their employees?
One of the first things I've wondered is would it be possible for employees to file suit against their employers for not providing health insurance coverage as per the law requires. The initial report from Bloomberg indicated that the law provides flexibility for the government to determine when to start enforcing provisions in section 1513. A quick skimming of the section though indicates it goes into effect for all months after Dec. 31, 2013. I couldn't find any such flexibility. By law the mandate remains--can employers be held liable for not complying with it even though the government is not enforcing penalties? This needs to be clarified.
At the individual level: employees up until now may have been able to assume that their employer would provide coverage. Now that is up in the air, and many people who don't have coverage and might have been planning on signing up for coverage through their employer have to assume that they will either not get insurance and have to pay a penalty, or they will have to sign up for coverage through an exchange. For the later option, will they get a subsidy to help pay for coverage? No one can tell a this point.
Well that, and I looked at the store snack section last night, and the Hostess products are twice the price of other options available. So, if you want a Twinkie fix and the store brand is just as good (I don't know if that's the case, I don't eat Twinkies) why pay more especially with the economy being so bad right now? Same with the fruit pies, Ho-Ho's et al.
We just talked to a sales rep from Verango, they do just this type of system. Sunrun buys the panels and maintains them. Quoted us 27.5 cents/kwh to start in the first year to replace the 131%+ tier power that we are charged higher rates in California on.
I created a spreadsheet to calculate our average cost/kwh over the last year in the upper tiers, and it worked out to 32.5 cents. So we could save 5 cents/kwh, or $31 per month if our usage stayed the same the last year. Not enough for me to bite, even if it costs us nothing. I'd rather find ways to reduce usage and cut our bill by more than that. We'd planned on doing that, which means the savings would be even smaller because our usage in the top tiers would be going down anyway.
Incidentally, part of his pitch is that energy costs increase 6.9% per year. The 20 year solar contract locks in increases of 2.9%. So part of the argument is that over time, solar costs will go up at a much slower pace than electricity costs from PG&E. The only thing is, there has apparently been so much outrage over electricity costs in California that last year they got the highest tier rates lowered from around 40.4 cents/kwh to 34.2 cents/kwh, and the next highest tier also had a decrease from around 33 cents/kwh to around 31 cents/kwh. (Baseline and 101-130% tier rates went up a little) Which kind of negates the argument that energy costs go up every year, and reinforces the fact that energy companies are regulated by the government, so there are ultimately some political factors involved (aside from market forces, etc) in determining rates that are charged.
Our high school had a small computer lab (a small room between classrooms probably originally meant as a teacher office/work area) with 4-5 C64s and an Apple II, IIRC. A couple of times I remember it made a great place for students to meet up and exchange pirated software.
"On The Edge" explains the problem. The plan was to use the serial shifter in the CIA chip. But the lines from the CIA chip to the serial port that was in the final schematic was cut by the production layout guys in California, and hundreds of thousands of PCBs were already in production. So it had to be solved in software.
No, the bill the Senate passed is more complicated than that.