Secretary of Education. Arne Duncan is resigning and John King is Obama's nominee to replace him as the head of the Dept. of Education. I don't know much about John King, but I do know that the teachers' unions hate him, so on that basis alone he has my full support.
Well yeah. Because he is actually consistent on his positions. What he is saying today is the same thing he has been saying for 40 years.
Indeed. Bernie voted against the Patriot Act, against the DMCA, against the Iraq War, etc. He has taken principled stands against the legislation that has led to the erosion of civil liberties. Hillary was on the opposite side on all these issues, and only flip-flopped after it became clear that her earlier stance was unpopular.
I don't plan to vote for Bernie, because I think he would lead the economy off a cliff, but nonetheless, I admire his integrity.
Who on earth would buy batteries for a solar panel installation? Just buy a grid tie inverter and pray your area has net metering and that's IT.
Net metering is not available everywhere, and some places are scaling back. Hawaii has some of the highest electricity prices in the world (42c / kwh). So many people are installing solar, that there is a glut of electricity during the day, and the electricity company gets whipsawed at 7pm when the solar fades but the ACs are still on. Residential battery systems that could soak up even 20% of production, would shift demand by a couple hours and solve the problem.
And no, solar panels ARE NOT cheap. If you think they are, then give me your sources.
RTFA. It says that panels are now 65c/w. If you get a quote you will find that the installation costs and infrastructure are going to more than double that. The biggest cost is no longer the panels themselves.
Yes. Try this simple experiment: Put a globe on your desk. Hold a coin or other dense object against the south pole with your finger. Now let go. What happens? I falls *away* from the globe. That doesn't happen in the northern hemisphere, unless you flip the globe over, and there is no way to flip the entire earth. Of course, the south pole is the ideal launch point, but it is cold and logistically difficult. So New Zealand is about as good as you are going to get.
You need to reach escape velocity
Yes, of course. But you need to learn to use gravity instead of fighting it. We already do this with gravity assist off other planets, so there is no reason we can't do it with the earth as well.
They'll launch on time. For manned missions, you need six nines (99.9999%) reliability. But this is an unmanned mission, so even 99% is "good enough", especially when a delay will mean forfeiting the $20M X-Prize.
If only we force people to engage in a diverse, non-confrontational conversation
I know you are trying to be funny, but this is exactly what SF is failing to do. All of their effort is focused on changing driver behavior, when much of the effort should be on pedestrian behavior. When pedestrians step into traffic without even looking, the metal in my bumper isn't going to care that they "always have the right of way".
Another problem is that driving in SF can can very confusing, draining driver attention. Try to make a left turn onto Market Street on a busy day. Some streets should just be shut down and turn into pedestrian malls, such as Grant Street through Chinatown, since all the tourists are already oblivious to the cars.
even if you don't tell me the first 5 digits, if I know your birthday and place of birth and the last 4 digits, I know all 9. It's a public algorithm.
Not true. My sister and I were born two years apart and in different states. Our SSNs were issued on the same day, and are identical except for the last digit. They just pulled the next two numbers off the list. There is no "algorithm".
Because it will be interpreted as the Mark of the Beast prophesied in the Book of Revelations. If you still think your plan could work, then please write to CNBC and convince the moderator to ask about your scheme during the next Republican debate on Oct 28th.
You obviously have never seen this disease kill anyone you know and I hope you never will.
I have an uncle with ALS. Although he has lost much, he has never lost his sense of humor, and he frequently makes jokes about his condition. Lighten up. ALS is not caused by lame jokes.
To get back on topic: Instead of just treating this with anti-retroviral pills, we should look into editing out the viral DNA from the human germ line using CRISPR/Cas. Then instead of just treating the symptoms of ALS, we may be able to permanently eliminate it from future generations.
The potential problem with that is that a big part of the draw of having a gifted program is that the slowtards are not present
In practice, this is not a problem, because the "slowtards" don't sign up. At my local school, there is a $100 fee for GATE, but it is free for any kid that qualifies for free lunch. We didn't have a single "free" kid even apply to participate.
If a few students are there and can't keep up, either things have to be explained twice, or they will not be taught.
It doesn't work that way. There is very little "explaining" and even less "teaching". We just give them the stuff, and the kids just explore, experiment, and learn on their own. I intervene only if they ask for help, or if there is a safety issue. Otherwise, it is noisy, messy, fun, and chaotic, and very different from a regular classroom.
I would say behaviour learned from the parents is at least as important.
There is plenty of evidence that says you are wrong. The correlation between genetic siblings is strong (0.6). The correlation between unrelated adoptive siblings, raised by the same parents, is zero.
Being "gifted" is affected very little by what your parents do, but is strong affected by who your parents are. Many people find this hard to accept, because it doesn't seem "fair", but being politically incorrect isn't the same as being factually incorrect.
That sounds nice, but it will NOT fix the problem. Like it or not, intelligence is heritable and being dumb is highly correlated with being poor.
No he doesn't understand how to read or math but he has the potential to be gifted if given a chance.
Except they have been given a chance. The gifted program starts in third grade. That means they already have 3 years of free education. If they failed to learn the basics of reading and mathematics, then they are not "gifted", regardless of what their mothers think.
If the program enrollment is limited, there are two choices: 1. Have a gifted program that is skewed by income and race. 2. Use quotas.
Personally, I think the best solution is to expand the gifted program so any willing child can participate. My local school has a GATE (gifted and talented enrichment) program, and I have helped out as a parent volunteer. It costs almost nothing to run. Unpaid parents do most of the work. We use computers, and Mindstorms kits that the school already has. The kids do things like dissecting cow eyeballs, which cost less than $1 each, or experiments with soap bubbles and wire loops. There is no good reason that any kid that is willing to stay after school for a couple hours should be excluded.
I'm pretty sure that, taken across the planet and in smaller scales, you'll find humans are pretty much constantly killing one another.
There are 7 billion people. So even a very low level of violence is going to mean someone somewhere is killing someone. The chance of a human dying at the hands of another human is less than 1%. In many other species, including most apes, it is an order of magnitude more likely, and is often the leading cause of death.
I'm betting the number of people who will die today from human to human violence is probably a staggering number.
The only really big conflict in the world today is the civil war in Syria, which averages a few hundred deaths per day. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are smaller. Worldwide, there are about 1200 murders per day. So the overall death toll from humans intentionally killing humans, is probably under 2000 per day. In a population of 7 billion, I don't think that is "staggering", especially compared to heart disease, cancer, or even vehicle accidents.
Will we ever see "internet sanctions" where nations have their Internet access to the US limited or blocked?
Building a wall to keep out your enemies didn't work with the Picts or the Manchus. It won't work here either. Most security threats are domestic, and many compromises are internal. Snowden didn't penetrate the NSA. He worked for them. The solution is more pervasive encryption (something the US opposes), better compartmentalization, better endpoint security, better penetration testing of both software and human factors, and taking critical information offline. The emergence of "ransomware" also helps, because it gives more people a motivation to improve their habits and demand more secure systems.
What is really remarkable about modern humans, compared to other species, is how rarely we kill each other. Intra-species violence is more common in most other animals. Another remarkable trait of humans, is that when we do have conflict, how much we cooperate in doing so. A band of a dozen chimps may attack a neighboring band, but humans form armies of millions. Only ants are in the same league.
It's not new technology. Electric cars were available in the early 1900s.
Those early electrics used different technology.
Conventional vehicles can be fully refueled in a matter of minutes. Electric cars?
So? If your use case involves frequent long road trips then don't buy an electric. If your long trips are infrequent, just rent a gas car, or drive your family's other car. Or take a 30 minute break every 4 hours at a supercharger.
My wife has a Tesla, and for normal day-to-day use, it is more convenient than a gas car. It charges overnight in our garage, so the range almost never dips below 200 miles. We have taken a few road trips, and we plan ahead to locate superchargers near nice restaurants or a park where we can go for a 30 minute hike.
It is markets' God-given right to force us to consume maximum levels of advertising,
Nobody is being "forced". If you don't like it, turn off the TV. Also, this isn't about maximizing the amount of advertising, but about maximizing the effectiveness, by showing you ads for things they predict you will be interested in. If the predictions are accurate, then this is a GOOD THING, and I look forward to plenty of ads featuring scantily clad women demonstrating machine tools (Note to Comcast: I need a new lathe).
The Model 3 doesn't quite hit your targets - price US$35k, range 320km.
Over the life of the car, you will easily save at least $10k by using electricity instead of gasoline. If you take that into account, you hit his $25k target.
Only if you can recharge at least 50% in about the same amount of time as it takes to refill a car with gas.
This is only needed on long trips. For that, just rent a gas car, or rent a booster battery and put it in the trunk.
For day-to-day commuting use, an electric car is more convenient, because you can just recharge at home, at work, or at the mall, etc. So there is no need to go to a gas station at all. Also, there is no oil to change, no transmission to break, no gaskets, no air filter. You don't even need to replace the brake pads, because regenerative braking means they don't wear out.
I would like to see what the range is in non ideal conditions. With the radio on/ phone charging/ GPS running + heating/cooling the car
The radio, phone, and GPS use a negligible amount of electricity.
The heater and AC use far more power, but still don't affect the range as much as you might think, because they do very little heating/cooling. My wife has a Tesla, and you can barely tell that the AC is even turned on. This isn't a big deal for us, because we live in San Jose, where the weather is perfect 90% of the time.
Slashdot Mirror
What the fuck is an "Ed Chief"?
Secretary of Education. Arne Duncan is resigning and John King is Obama's nominee to replace him as the head of the Dept. of Education. I don't know much about John King, but I do know that the teachers' unions hate him, so on that basis alone he has my full support.
Well yeah. Because he is actually consistent on his positions. What he is saying today is the same thing he has been saying for 40 years.
Indeed. Bernie voted against the Patriot Act, against the DMCA, against the Iraq War, etc. He has taken principled stands against the legislation that has led to the erosion of civil liberties. Hillary was on the opposite side on all these issues, and only flip-flopped after it became clear that her earlier stance was unpopular.
I don't plan to vote for Bernie, because I think he would lead the economy off a cliff, but nonetheless, I admire his integrity.
Who on earth would buy batteries for a solar panel installation? Just buy a grid tie inverter and pray your area has net metering and that's IT.
Net metering is not available everywhere, and some places are scaling back. Hawaii has some of the highest electricity prices in the world (42c / kwh). So many people are installing solar, that there is a glut of electricity during the day, and the electricity company gets whipsawed at 7pm when the solar fades but the ACs are still on. Residential battery systems that could soak up even 20% of production, would shift demand by a couple hours and solve the problem.
And no, solar panels ARE NOT cheap. If you think they are, then give me your sources.
RTFA. It says that panels are now 65c/w. If you get a quote you will find that the installation costs and infrastructure are going to more than double that. The biggest cost is no longer the panels themselves.
Not in the politically correct portions of Northern Europe.
Not in Europe, or anywhere else. This device created far bigger human-made waves more than half a century ago.
....what? "falls" into space?
Yes. Try this simple experiment: Put a globe on your desk. Hold a coin or other dense object against the south pole with your finger. Now let go. What happens? I falls *away* from the globe. That doesn't happen in the northern hemisphere, unless you flip the globe over, and there is no way to flip the entire earth. Of course, the south pole is the ideal launch point, but it is cold and logistically difficult. So New Zealand is about as good as you are going to get.
You need to reach escape velocity
Yes, of course. But you need to learn to use gravity instead of fighting it. We already do this with gravity assist off other planets, so there is no reason we can't do it with the earth as well.
Because first launches *never* happen on time...
They'll launch on time. For manned missions, you need six nines (99.9999%) reliability. But this is an unmanned mission, so even 99% is "good enough", especially when a delay will mean forfeiting the $20M X-Prize.
If only we force people to engage in a diverse, non-confrontational conversation
I know you are trying to be funny, but this is exactly what SF is failing to do. All of their effort is focused on changing driver behavior, when much of the effort should be on pedestrian behavior. When pedestrians step into traffic without even looking, the metal in my bumper isn't going to care that they "always have the right of way".
Another problem is that driving in SF can can very confusing, draining driver attention. Try to make a left turn onto Market Street on a busy day. Some streets should just be shut down and turn into pedestrian malls, such as Grant Street through Chinatown, since all the tourists are already oblivious to the cars.
Did Yelp just get bought out by China?
This app was compared to Yelp in TFA and TFS. But Yelp has nothing to do with it. This is being done by a completely different company.
It's got zero credibility and is never going to get any.
It could have plenty of credibility if accusations are backed up by links to the evidence (photos, arrest records, etc.).
I can see checking this site becoming part of standard due diligence before hiring someone.
What could go right? It could encourage people to behave better.
Honestly, compared to Happy Meals, sodas, and the general crap North American kids eat ... they should be so lucky as to start eating like the French.
France is McDonald's 2nd biggest market, and the French eat at McDonald's about as often as Americans do.
even if you don't tell me the first 5 digits, if I know your birthday and place of birth and the last 4 digits, I know all 9. It's a public algorithm.
Not true. My sister and I were born two years apart and in different states. Our SSNs were issued on the same day, and are identical except for the last digit. They just pulled the next two numbers off the list. There is no "algorithm".
Any thoughts on why this might not work?
Because it will be interpreted as the Mark of the Beast prophesied in the Book of Revelations. If you still think your plan could work, then please write to CNBC and convince the moderator to ask about your scheme during the next Republican debate on Oct 28th.
You obviously have never seen this disease kill anyone you know and I hope you never will.
I have an uncle with ALS. Although he has lost much, he has never lost his sense of humor, and he frequently makes jokes about his condition. Lighten up. ALS is not caused by lame jokes.
To get back on topic: Instead of just treating this with anti-retroviral pills, we should look into editing out the viral DNA from the human germ line using CRISPR/Cas. Then instead of just treating the symptoms of ALS, we may be able to permanently eliminate it from future generations.
Then again, maybe we shouldn't be basing mission planning on a bunch of cheezy fucking sci-fi movies.
You know our space program is in trouble when Slashdot discussions are considered "mission planning".
The potential problem with that is that a big part of the draw of having a gifted program is that the slowtards are not present
In practice, this is not a problem, because the "slowtards" don't sign up. At my local school, there is a $100 fee for GATE, but it is free for any kid that qualifies for free lunch. We didn't have a single "free" kid even apply to participate.
If a few students are there and can't keep up, either things have to be explained twice, or they will not be taught.
It doesn't work that way. There is very little "explaining" and even less "teaching". We just give them the stuff, and the kids just explore, experiment, and learn on their own. I intervene only if they ask for help, or if there is a safety issue. Otherwise, it is noisy, messy, fun, and chaotic, and very different from a regular classroom.
I would say behaviour learned from the parents is at least as important.
There is plenty of evidence that says you are wrong. The correlation between genetic siblings is strong (0.6). The correlation between unrelated adoptive siblings, raised by the same parents, is zero.
Being "gifted" is affected very little by what your parents do, but is strong affected by who your parents are. Many people find this hard to accept, because it doesn't seem "fair", but being politically incorrect isn't the same as being factually incorrect.
can't they just test for potential?
That sounds nice, but it will NOT fix the problem. Like it or not, intelligence is heritable and being dumb is highly correlated with being poor.
No he doesn't understand how to read or math but he has the potential to be gifted if given a chance.
Except they have been given a chance. The gifted program starts in third grade. That means they already have 3 years of free education. If they failed to learn the basics of reading and mathematics, then they are not "gifted", regardless of what their mothers think.
If the program enrollment is limited, there are two choices:
1. Have a gifted program that is skewed by income and race.
2. Use quotas.
Personally, I think the best solution is to expand the gifted program so any willing child can participate. My local school has a GATE (gifted and talented enrichment) program, and I have helped out as a parent volunteer. It costs almost nothing to run. Unpaid parents do most of the work. We use computers, and Mindstorms kits that the school already has. The kids do things like dissecting cow eyeballs, which cost less than $1 each, or experiments with soap bubbles and wire loops. There is no good reason that any kid that is willing to stay after school for a couple hours should be excluded.
I'm pretty sure that, taken across the planet and in smaller scales, you'll find humans are pretty much constantly killing one another.
There are 7 billion people. So even a very low level of violence is going to mean someone somewhere is killing someone. The chance of a human dying at the hands of another human is less than 1%. In many other species, including most apes, it is an order of magnitude more likely, and is often the leading cause of death.
I'm betting the number of people who will die today from human to human violence is probably a staggering number.
The only really big conflict in the world today is the civil war in Syria, which averages a few hundred deaths per day. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are smaller. Worldwide, there are about 1200 murders per day. So the overall death toll from humans intentionally killing humans, is probably under 2000 per day. In a population of 7 billion, I don't think that is "staggering", especially compared to heart disease, cancer, or even vehicle accidents.
Will we ever see "internet sanctions" where nations have their Internet access to the US limited or blocked?
Building a wall to keep out your enemies didn't work with the Picts or the Manchus. It won't work here either. Most security threats are domestic, and many compromises are internal. Snowden didn't penetrate the NSA. He worked for them. The solution is more pervasive encryption (something the US opposes), better compartmentalization, better endpoint security, better penetration testing of both software and human factors, and taking critical information offline. The emergence of "ransomware" also helps, because it gives more people a motivation to improve their habits and demand more secure systems.
The nature of mankind is conflict.
What is really remarkable about modern humans, compared to other species, is how rarely we kill each other. Intra-species violence is more common in most other animals. Another remarkable trait of humans, is that when we do have conflict, how much we cooperate in doing so. A band of a dozen chimps may attack a neighboring band, but humans form armies of millions. Only ants are in the same league.
It's not new technology. Electric cars were available in the early 1900s.
Those early electrics used different technology.
Conventional vehicles can be fully refueled in a matter of minutes. Electric cars?
So? If your use case involves frequent long road trips then don't buy an electric. If your long trips are infrequent, just rent a gas car, or drive your family's other car. Or take a 30 minute break every 4 hours at a supercharger.
My wife has a Tesla, and for normal day-to-day use, it is more convenient than a gas car. It charges overnight in our garage, so the range almost never dips below 200 miles. We have taken a few road trips, and we plan ahead to locate superchargers near nice restaurants or a park where we can go for a 30 minute hike.
It is markets' God-given right to force us to consume maximum levels of advertising,
Nobody is being "forced". If you don't like it, turn off the TV. Also, this isn't about maximizing the amount of advertising, but about maximizing the effectiveness, by showing you ads for things they predict you will be interested in. If the predictions are accurate, then this is a GOOD THING, and I look forward to plenty of ads featuring scantily clad women demonstrating machine tools (Note to Comcast: I need a new lathe).
The Model 3 doesn't quite hit your targets - price US$35k, range 320km.
Over the life of the car, you will easily save at least $10k by using electricity instead of gasoline. If you take that into account, you hit his $25k target.
Only if you can recharge at least 50% in about the same amount of time as it takes to refill a car with gas.
This is only needed on long trips. For that, just rent a gas car, or rent a booster battery and put it in the trunk.
For day-to-day commuting use, an electric car is more convenient, because you can just recharge at home, at work, or at the mall, etc. So there is no need to go to a gas station at all. Also, there is no oil to change, no transmission to break, no gaskets, no air filter. You don't even need to replace the brake pads, because regenerative braking means they don't wear out.
I would like to see what the range is in non ideal conditions. With the radio on/ phone charging/ GPS running + heating/cooling the car
The radio, phone, and GPS use a negligible amount of electricity.
The heater and AC use far more power, but still don't affect the range as much as you might think, because they do very little heating/cooling. My wife has a Tesla, and you can barely tell that the AC is even turned on. This isn't a big deal for us, because we live in San Jose, where the weather is perfect 90% of the time.