Let's first fully exploit: - Solar, wind, wave, ocean-current, and deep geothermal, supplemented with
- large-scale grid-storage (not rocket-science, just some capital investment)
- transcontinental high-voltage DC transmission lines to move power across weather-systems, ground-temperature zones, and daylight timezones.
And let's invest 50x more funds to speed up fusion reactor research,
Then and only then let's invest in the safest new nuclear technologies if needed, given the known high-impact risks including nuclear weapons proliferation.
Ok so there's a small problem about lack of aesthetics in open source user interfaces.
But that problem pales in comparison to the poor usability of many FOSS applications.
I think the usability problem there is a lot to do with an Aspergers-like (focussed on own knowledge and context, non-empathetic) trait among developers. A developer often makes the mistake of developing a UI that they themselves find easy and fast to use. They can't or won't empathize with another, non-technical user. They can't or won't think "As that person(a), what do I know and not know? In general, and specifically as I approach and go through the UI) What are my goals? What is my vocabulary and set of concepts?" They can't or won't even put themselves in the place of a user who is another technical expert but doesn't have the particular same technical knowledge, goals, assumptions, or focus of attention that the developer does.
Non-FOSS software products often benefit because the company can afford to bring in UX specialists to work alongside the pure software developers, whereas many FOSS projects are pretty much software developers only.
How exactly does a carbon tax whose revenue is either a) given directly back to taxpayers in the form of other tax reductions or dividends, or b) spent on clean and renewable energy R&D enrich bankers and the elite?
You need to unload that huge (and racist) chip on your shoulder.
I don't want a world war. I want a world war's worth of effort.
If all that can seriously motivate large scale human populations to significant action is war, then we are truly pathetic. If we can't do rapid large scale action unless we're at war, well, to quote the good-looking replicant in Blade Runner: "then we're stupid and we'll die".
The magnitude of climate change to come if we continue business as usual cannot effectively be prepared for. It will be at least 4 degrees C and up to 9 degrees C warmer global average for 1000s of years. That my friend is a a whole different planet (or a whole different epoch).
Not suggesting that war is a good idea, but look what nations can accomplish quickly when they have to when they go to war. Look at the societal and production changes Britain and the US did for the six short years of world war 2. Look at the Manhatten project that developed nuclear weapons from scratch in a few years. Imagine if that sort of effort was put toward something constructive.
If we start working together in the right general direction, politically and technologically, change can happen fast. And we have political ways of helping people who are disrupted by the transition, and that's all part of it. The challenge is staggering, but that's when things get exciting and when the best people are required to step up.
We're not perfect but we try. The most important thing is we are fully willing to subject ourselves to a significant and steadily increasing simple carbon tax on all our fossil fuel use.
We've super-insulated and sealed air leaks in our small house and have double and triple-glazed windows. In late-October through April we set the thermostat to 19 or 20 C when we're in and awake, and 17 C at night, so using a lot less natural gas heating. May through Mid-Oct the gas is off, and no A/C just windows open and tree shading in summer. We're all LED lighting, and converted to a small electric hot water heater from gas. Our hydro-electricity bill is about $300 a year, and will be reduced to near nothing once we do our next two steps: Replace fridge with super-efficient DC fridge and DC freezer, and put in a 5-panel PV array on the roof to run a DC sub-panel through a lithium ion battery.
We ride our bikes and walk and take transit most of the time, reserving the vehicle mostly for weekend trips and occasional hauling items.
We've reduced our meat consumption (but not eliminated it). The reduction is a healthier choice anyway.
While it's hard to do as much as is needed while living in our current cities, with our oil-fueled supply chains, what's most important in my opinion is to advocate for tax-shift measures of a scale needed to significantly, steadily change behaviour through the operation of the (tilted-playing field) market; to be willing to be subjected to significant fossil-fuel taxation, and to work to come up with clever new ways of doing things that use less fossil-fuel.
It's not happening It's uncertain It may be happening but it's not us Ok it's happening, but it's all those poor people who are trying to catch up with us Ok it's happening, but there's nothing we can do about it. Ok it happened, but there was nothing we could have done about it.
Yes. You could have done something. Finding yourself it a hole, you could have stopped digging. You could have kept your friggin' traps shut with your destructive obstructionist bullshit and got the hell out of the way of the smart and motivated people trying to solve the problem. You've already cost us 35 years of inaction since the problem was well known in scientific circles to exist. So I say again, shut up and get out of the way.
It's clear President Obama had and has the will to act significantly on reducing CO2 emissions.
He is fighting the fossils in an obstructionist, denialist, bought-and-paid-for Republican-controlled senate and congress for every inch of progress on this issue.
Which was the original, and still accurate, name by which this phenomenon was known, until right wing messaging diluted it to climate change concern so that it could be deliberately confused with natural climate change cycles.
Or if you want to be pedantic, we could call it "the climate changes associated with global warming".
"If you have (or are getting) a STEM degree, you are likely to get shunned" (by environmentalists)
Rubbish. Most environmental concern is BASED on the findings of science, whereas lack of environmental concern is based on either ignorance or selfish greed.
Procedure: 1. Browse in mobile browser to https://mynewencryptingwebpage... 2. write "top secret message" into text area in my newly hosted encrypting web page, 3. Enter email address or phone number I will be sending to in second field. 4. Press (encrypt) button, cleverly labelled (Post) instead. 5. Copy encrypted ciphertext from https://mynewencryptingwebpage... 6. Send ciphertext by email or sms 7. Recipient procedure is left as an exercise for the reader.
A technical and logistical and financial project whose primary goal is longevity (in the multi-hundred-year sense) of that which it stores. It should not be accomplished by individual media that are designed to last. Rather it should use network redundancy cleverly and have protocols designed to ensure enough geographically distributed copies always exist. It would have to carefully consider "readability, interpretability" assurances, such as very standard simple formats and protocols, and the methodology of storing the displaying / interpreting environment and code as well as the data. Emulated 1980s arcade games, now available and playable online, are good examples of this. Sort of an Internet Archive on steroids. Crowdfunded?
I believe the Americans call this principle "Eminent Domain" which means, not to put too fine a point on it: "Although we allowed you to have guns, we have way more of them, so f**k off your land. This is our lawn now. Get off it."
Just remember that a right is something given by the one with might. It may not be how things should be, but see quoted text above. Civilization? Snivelization!
It may become economically feasible if and when most large mining concerns on Earth get stopped from expanding due to environmental concerns, such as protecting shrinking ecosystems, avoiding polluting shrinking fresh-water sources etc.
Just like clean renewable energy could become economically feasible in a hurry if a significant carbon tax was imposed.
It's called the law of the World Wide Web, and it comes down to us from the writings of the global prophet Tim.
The actual wording of the law is too technical for mere mortals, being as it is written in ancient C code found on an artifact we think was called a hard drive dug up from the buried ruins of a cyclotron in what was once Switzerland.
But the law can be paraphrased as:
If you deposit your writings or your pictures on an HTTP or HTTPS server without access control - and thus allow your work to be served, (that is freely transferred by the standard world wide web protocols)
to any of the computers attached to the great public Internet, - then you implicitly have created a holy URL by which your work can be accessed and copied, - and should you also allow the URL itself to be discovered over the Internet by the use of standard world wide web protocols, - THEN it is the law that: - any person or machine is allowed (as inherently enabled and implied by the fundamental nature of the technology as Tim intended it) - to republish that URL on any writings that they also cause to be served by the same standard protocols. - and to copy and read or view the writings or pictures that you made freely available by your action of publishing it on the World Wide Web.
Thus is created the fundamental Web network nature of creation that we know as the World Wide Web.
This is the first law of the Holy Interwebs. Bookmark it and do not lose it.
Wise, including admitting when you don't know something, is so much better a top-tier engineering quality than fast. Fast is completely irrelevant. If you have to fix something in half an hour because your company just released some crap into production, you're all already doing it wrong.
That's really all these stupid things are assessing.
I've forgotten all the details about b-tree implementation (and R+ trees for spatial data, and, and, and...) but that shouldn't matter, as long as I know general programming principles and quality aspects, and know how to methodically go about looking up the details from appropriate sources, then copying and modifying existing code.
Design creativity, and pros/cons design decision tree exploration, and getting the gist of some fundamental programming concepts (like complexity, maintaining simplicity, refactoring, encapsulation, importance of good naming, importance of good comments etc) should be much more important skills than rote memorization of some 50 year old algorithm.
Companies should be much more interested in what you have already programmed, when you had a month or more to do it, and time to concentrate and research and refine, than what you can program under duress before the USS Enterprise falls into the black hole right ahead.
A simple at-source carbon tax on fossil fuels, with gradual increases built in is what the most intelligent people who think and talk about the problem propose as the major solution. It allows the free market to operate to find the most efficient way around high fossil-fuel prices. GHG emissions therefore go down efficiently.
The most elegant and effective version of the carbon tax would put the revenue toward fundamental research on new energy technologies, and possibly toward short-term subsidies for development and adoption of alternatives, such as EV rebates, solar feed-in-tariff programs, etc.
The most politically palatable version just gives the carbon-tax money back to citizens as a dividend, allowing some to still buy gas, and others to make smarter alternative decisions and benefit financially.
for companies like Google, Apple etc to make their communication software accept plug-ins that perform end-to-end encryption on the emails or whatever. For example, plug-ins that implement one-time-pad encryption or some other currently non-known-breakable encryption invented by any random "non-corporate" "amateur" with a PhD in comp sci. ?
Maybe that's what this law would encourage. The support for pluggable end-to-end encryption into common cloud/net apps.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean cute little quadcopter drones with extra-big batteries (and a happy face painted on the underside).
with loudspeakers on them?
Not trying to give anyone any ideas.
Let's first fully exploit:
- Solar, wind, wave, ocean-current, and deep geothermal, supplemented with
- large-scale grid-storage (not rocket-science, just some capital investment)
- transcontinental high-voltage DC transmission lines to move power across weather-systems, ground-temperature zones, and daylight timezones.
And let's invest 50x more funds to speed up fusion reactor research,
Then and only then let's invest in the safest new nuclear technologies if needed, given the known high-impact risks including nuclear weapons proliferation.
that our {s}most brilliant minds{/s} are fighting IS online.
That if they F*** up the Internet we'll just build another one.
Ok so there's a small problem about lack of aesthetics in open source user interfaces.
But that problem pales in comparison to the poor usability of many FOSS applications.
I think the usability problem there is a lot to do with an Aspergers-like (focussed on own knowledge and context, non-empathetic) trait among developers.
A developer often makes the mistake of developing a UI that they themselves find easy and fast to use.
They can't or won't empathize with another, non-technical user. They can't or won't think "As that person(a), what do I know and not know? In general, and specifically as I approach and go through the UI) What are my goals? What is my vocabulary and set of concepts?"
They can't or won't even put themselves in the place of a user who is another technical expert but doesn't have the particular same technical knowledge, goals, assumptions, or focus of attention that the developer does.
Non-FOSS software products often benefit because the company can afford to bring in UX specialists to work alongside the pure software developers, whereas many FOSS projects are pretty much software developers only.
How exactly does a carbon tax whose revenue is either
a) given directly back to taxpayers in the form of other tax reductions or dividends, or
b) spent on clean and renewable energy R&D
enrich bankers and the elite?
You need to unload that huge (and racist) chip on your shoulder.
I don't want a world war. I want a world war's worth of effort.
If all that can seriously motivate large scale human populations to significant action is war, then we are truly pathetic.
If we can't do rapid large scale action unless we're at war, well, to quote the good-looking replicant in Blade Runner:
"then we're stupid and we'll die".
The magnitude of climate change to come if we continue business as usual cannot effectively be prepared for.
It will be at least 4 degrees C and up to 9 degrees C warmer global average for 1000s of years.
That my friend is a a whole different planet (or a whole different epoch).
Not suggesting that war is a good idea, but look what nations can accomplish quickly when they have to when they go to war.
Look at the societal and production changes Britain and the US did for the six short years of world war 2.
Look at the Manhatten project that developed nuclear weapons from scratch in a few years. Imagine if that sort of effort was put toward something constructive.
If we start working together in the right general direction, politically and technologically, change can happen fast. And we have political ways of helping people who are disrupted by the transition, and that's all part of it. The challenge is staggering, but that's when things get exciting and when the best people are required to step up.
We're not perfect but we try. The most important thing is we are fully willing to subject ourselves to a significant and steadily increasing simple carbon tax on all our fossil fuel use.
We've super-insulated and sealed air leaks in our small house and have double and triple-glazed windows. In late-October through April we set the thermostat to 19 or 20 C when we're in and awake, and 17 C at night, so using a lot less natural gas heating. May through Mid-Oct the gas is off, and no A/C just windows open and tree shading in summer. We're all LED lighting, and converted to a small electric hot water heater from gas. Our hydro-electricity bill is about $300 a year, and will be reduced to near nothing once we do our next two steps: Replace fridge with super-efficient DC fridge and DC freezer, and put in a 5-panel PV array on the roof to run a DC sub-panel through a lithium ion battery.
We ride our bikes and walk and take transit most of the time, reserving the vehicle mostly for weekend trips and occasional hauling items.
We've reduced our meat consumption (but not eliminated it). The reduction is a healthier choice anyway.
While it's hard to do as much as is needed while living in our current cities, with our oil-fueled supply chains, what's most important in my opinion is to advocate for tax-shift measures of a scale needed to significantly, steadily change behaviour through the operation of the (tilted-playing field) market; to be willing to be subjected to significant fossil-fuel taxation, and to work to come up with clever new ways of doing things that use less fossil-fuel.
It's not happening
It's uncertain
It may be happening but it's not us
Ok it's happening, but it's all those poor people who are trying to catch up with us
Ok it's happening, but there's nothing we can do about it.
Ok it happened, but there was nothing we could have done about it.
Yes. You could have done something. Finding yourself it a hole, you could have stopped digging.
You could have kept your friggin' traps shut with your destructive obstructionist bullshit and got the hell out of the way of the smart and motivated people trying to solve the problem.
You've already cost us 35 years of inaction since the problem was well known in scientific circles to exist.
So I say again, shut up and get out of the way.
It's clear President Obama had and has the will to act significantly on reducing CO2 emissions.
He is fighting the fossils in an obstructionist, denialist, bought-and-paid-for Republican-controlled senate and congress for every inch of progress on this issue.
The targeting of this lawsuit is misplaced.
Which was the original, and still accurate, name by which this phenomenon was known, until right wing messaging diluted it to climate change concern so that it could be deliberately confused with natural climate change cycles.
Or if you want to be pedantic, we could call it "the climate changes associated with global warming".
"If you have (or are getting) a STEM degree, you are likely to get shunned" (by environmentalists)
Rubbish.
Most environmental concern is BASED on the findings of science,
whereas lack of environmental concern is based on either ignorance or selfish greed.
Procedure:
1. Browse in mobile browser to https://mynewencryptingwebpage...
2. write "top secret message" into text area in my newly hosted encrypting web page,
3. Enter email address or phone number I will be sending to in second field.
4. Press (encrypt) button, cleverly labelled (Post) instead.
5. Copy encrypted ciphertext from https://mynewencryptingwebpage...
6. Send ciphertext by email or sms
7. Recipient procedure is left as an exercise for the reader.
A technical and logistical and financial project whose primary goal is longevity (in the multi-hundred-year sense) of that which it stores.
It should not be accomplished by individual media that are designed to last.
Rather it should use network redundancy cleverly and have protocols designed to ensure enough geographically distributed copies always exist.
It would have to carefully consider "readability, interpretability" assurances, such as very standard simple formats and protocols, and the methodology of storing the displaying / interpreting environment and code as well as the data. Emulated 1980s arcade games, now available and playable online, are good examples of this.
Sort of an Internet Archive on steroids. Crowdfunded?
All's fair in love and war.
I believe the Americans call this principle "Eminent Domain" which means, not to put too fine a point on it: "Although we allowed you to have guns, we have way more of them, so f**k off your land. This is our lawn now. Get off it."
Just remember that a right is something given by the one with might. It may not be how things should be, but see quoted text above. Civilization? Snivelization!
It may become economically feasible if and when most large mining concerns on Earth get stopped from expanding due to environmental concerns, such as protecting shrinking ecosystems, avoiding polluting shrinking fresh-water sources etc.
Just like clean renewable energy could become economically feasible in a hurry if a significant carbon tax was imposed.
Well, one can always dream.
It's called the law of the World Wide Web, and it comes down to us from the writings of the global prophet Tim.
The actual wording of the law is too technical for mere mortals, being as it is written in ancient C code found on an artifact we think was called a hard drive dug up from the buried ruins of a cyclotron in what was once Switzerland.
But the law can be paraphrased as:
If you deposit your writings or your pictures on an HTTP or HTTPS server without access control
- and thus allow your work to be served,
(that is freely transferred by the standard world wide web protocols)
to any of the computers attached to the great public Internet,
- then you implicitly have created a holy URL by which your work can be accessed and copied,
- and should you also allow the URL itself to be discovered over the Internet by the use of standard world wide web protocols,
- THEN it is the law that:
- any person or machine is allowed
(as inherently enabled and implied by the fundamental nature of the technology as Tim intended it)
- to republish that URL on any writings that they also cause to be served by the same standard protocols.
- and to copy and read or view the writings or pictures that you made freely available by your action of publishing it on the World Wide Web.
Thus is created the fundamental Web network nature of creation that we know as the World Wide Web.
This is the first law of the Holy Interwebs. Bookmark it and do not lose it.
So they hire on the basis of pompous ass-ery now?
Wise, including admitting when you don't know something, is so much better a top-tier engineering quality than fast.
Fast is completely irrelevant.
If you have to fix something in half an hour because your company just released some crap into production, you're all already doing it wrong.
That's really all these stupid things are assessing.
I've forgotten all the details about b-tree implementation (and R+ trees for spatial data, and, and, and...) but that shouldn't matter, as long as I know general programming principles and quality aspects, and know how to methodically go about looking up the details from appropriate sources, then copying and modifying existing code.
Design creativity, and pros/cons design decision tree exploration, and getting the gist of some fundamental programming concepts (like complexity, maintaining simplicity, refactoring, encapsulation, importance of good naming, importance of good comments etc) should be much more important skills than rote memorization of some 50 year old algorithm.
Companies should be much more interested in what you have already programmed, when you had a month or more to do it, and time to concentrate and research and refine, than what you can program under duress before the USS Enterprise falls into the black hole right ahead.
from an at-source carbon-tax?
A simple at-source carbon tax on fossil fuels, with gradual increases built in is what the most intelligent people who think and talk about the problem propose as the major solution.
It allows the free market to operate to find the most efficient way around high fossil-fuel prices. GHG emissions therefore go down efficiently.
The most elegant and effective version of the carbon tax would put the revenue toward fundamental research on new energy technologies, and possibly toward short-term subsidies for development and adoption of alternatives, such as EV rebates, solar feed-in-tariff programs, etc.
The most politically palatable version just gives the carbon-tax money back to citizens as a dividend, allowing some to still buy gas, and others to make smarter alternative decisions and benefit financially.
for companies like Google, Apple etc to make their communication software accept plug-ins that perform end-to-end encryption on the emails or whatever.
For example, plug-ins that implement one-time-pad encryption or some other currently non-known-breakable encryption invented by any random "non-corporate" "amateur" with a PhD in comp sci. ?
Maybe that's what this law would encourage. The support for pluggable end-to-end encryption into common cloud/net apps.