I guessed that before even opening the article. He has a habit of writing misleading Washington Post pieces about government waste. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of government waste, but blame does not fall squarely on NASA. I complained about a piece he wrote last year:
David Fahrenthold's April 24, 2013 article "Feds spend at least $890,000 on fees for empty accounts" incorrectly states that the Pentagon spent $435 on a hammer. That claim has been repeatedly debunked for a number of years. The hammer was $15, and the the $420 represented R&D costs for a project spread evenly across all items. See, e.g.: http://www.govexec.com/federal-news/1998/12/the-myth-of-the-600-hammer/5271/
To which he responded:
Hello, Dave Fahrenthold here from the Washington Post. I wrote the story that dealt with the cost of “zero balance” accounts, and so I was forwarded the correction request you sent earlier. First, thank you for reading, and reading the story so closely.
At this point, I don’t see the need for a correction to the story. Here’s why: the story says that the Pentagon “paid” $435 for a hammer. I had written it that way consciously, since I’d seen the findings you referenced in that govexec story: the hammer’s cost to the Pentagon included $420 worth of overhead (which had been distributed evenly among all the items for which the Pentagon was charged in that same order). The cost of the hammer, at least on the Pentagon’s books, was $435. To me, it’s still correct to say that’s what the Pentagon “paid,” no matter how that cost had been calculated.
I’d welcome your thoughts, however. I’m grateful again for the feedback.
DF
Nice enough, but to me this shows that he very well knew the full story but chose to present it in a purposefully misleading way. Given that there is so much real waste, I don't understand the need to latch on to myths like this.
On one hand, it's overkill for little electronics projects where something like an Arduino would be much better suited.
Kind of. But if you want network connectivity for an Arduino, the cost starts to add up very fast. In contrast, you can get a Pi with a built-in ethernet port, or stick in a cheap WiFi dongle.
They recently released the A+, which is $20. You can get USB Wifi dongles for under $10, add $5 for an SD card, so for about $35 you've got a dev board with WiFi. Compare that to the Arduino ethernet shield, which by itself is over $45. The WiFi shield is even more.
The only thing comparable I can think of is the Electric Imp - I've been playing with one over the past few weeks. It's $25 for the unit, which includes built-in WiFi, and $12 for a breakout board. They provide an online IDE that is very easy to use. However, the whole platform is web-hosted, which makes me pretty uncomfortable.
"a blog post about the increased electricity costs, where they conclude it's about $8 per year in the mid-Atlantic area -- if it's being used." And this suit is being filed in CALIFORNIA, where the price of power is much higher.
I wouldn't put too much stock in an analysis that confuses kW with kWh (it's probably just a typo, but these things matter). FWIW I live in a state with the fourth highest average electricity costs in the country, so I'm very sensitive to electricity costs. But it's not fair to compare a year's usage at idle vs a year's usage at full load.
If they wanted to make this realistic, they should have estimated the average time one of these public hotspots is used, and then compared that additional cost to the average home usage of the private hotspot (while noting that at some points the usage may overlap, and so the electricity cost may be shared between the two).
Comcast gave me their Technicolor POS modem that came with a public hotspot. It was a terrible router in general, so I took it back and got an older model that has been far more reliable, plays nice with my own router, and doesn't have a public hotspot (or WiFi at all).
Concur that my initial Googling for R topics was sometimes frustrating. But lately I've had little difficulty. Stackoverflow or the R mailing list archive are usually the top results. Not sure if I've adjusted or what.
My experience is that if you have any experience programming, R makes far more sense than other common packages, like Stata or SPSS. After all, it's an actual programming language. My biggest adjustment was learning how to not use loops.
You do realize that people can list their former places of employment and habitation, even prior to the site's founding? To say "I worked at company X in country Y in 2000" does not require that the website you say it on have existed in 2000.
Not necessarily. I've no idea about remote starters; the window deal could probably be accomplished with basic electronics, though sounds like a pain. But you can get RPM readouts and many other stats through the ODB II interface required for all normal cars in the U.S. since 1996. There are bluetooth and USB adapters available; I imagine you could probably put together a project with an Arduino that would display RPM readout on whatever display device you want. It's probably already been done.
Whenever I need to boil something, I typically boil the water first in an electric kettle, then pour it into a pot on the stove. I'm also a big fan of the pressure cooker.
I'm an apartment dweller, so many of the home upgrades aren't possible for me, though when I do buy appliances, energy efficiency is a top concern (recently got a front-loading washer). Line-drying was a no-brainer - why pay when the sun and air will do it for free:-)
Just replaced an energy-hogging server with a low-power version (about 30 watts with little load, 45 with heavy load). It's normally on S3 suspend, and I use WOL to wake it whenever I need it, including remotely (it also wakes itself twice daily, once to do a backup, and once to update a household energy usage chart online).
Bake more instead of frying. Turn off the oven in the last few minutes.
Now that one surprises me. I do have an electric range/oven, and I would have thought that pan-frying would use less electricity than baking - especially since I'm usually baking for at least 30 minutes, whereas cooking in a pan can often be done in 20 minutes or less. I get that the heat is well-retained in the oven whereas a lot is lost on the range, but I don't have a way to actually measure the stove's usage. I do generally put baked items in before the oven's preheated and turn off the oven before the time has elapsed, except when I'm doing breads.
IIRC, the four most expensive states for electricity in the U.S. are Hawaii, Alaska, New York, and Connecticut. I live in the latter, and pay 22 cents per kWh, though I chose a slightly more expensive option - I could get it for 21 cents / kWh.
I moved from Virginia, which matches the national average of 12 cents per kWh, and it was built into my rent. Since moving I'm dramatically reduced usage - down to less than 200 kWh per month for a two-person household. All the low-hanging fruit is taken, though - not sure what I'd cut if rates were double.
This whole thing is a Tom Coburn-style piece of propaganda. It is an NSF GRANT to researchers at a UNIVERSITY. This has nothing to do with the federal government or NSA studying anything.
If you don't know how the NSF funding process works, grant proposals are peer reviewed in a competitive process by scientific experts for their merit and potential contributions. Obama had nothing to do with this. Presidents have better things to do than review grant proposals.
This only has to do with the government in that NSF provides money, and these researchers happen to be a public (state, not federal) university. You know when we all complain about lack of government support for basic research? That is a lot of what the NSF does.
Very disappointing that an FCC commissioner is trying to create a fake scandal based on what are essentially outright lies. Now THAT deserves your attention.
One could argue that a true free trade proponent would not engage in trade negotiations, since it does not really matter what the other party does - even if they continue to impose tariffs and quotas, you will be better off if they are able to sell to you without restriction.
Of course that's politically impossible, but also the quid pro quo of an agreement can be used to convince the other party (who may not be convinced of the value of free trade) to open their market more than they otherwise would have.
Finally, today's "free trade agreements" have very little to do with tariffs and quotas, and have far more to do with regulatory harmonization. Where the U.S. is concerned, this basically means trying to convince other countries to adopt our regulatory system as it stands at the time of the negotiation, without much thought given for how well it functions, whether it might change, and whether there might be goods reasons for other countries to have different systems.
When you haggle over a price, do you immediately reveal the maximum you are willing to pay? And do you expect the seller to immediately reveal the minimum they are willing to accept? Or do you keep "secret", at least for a time, these amounts?
Nope, it works both ways. None of the negotiating parties are willing to reveal up front the maximum concessions they are willing to make without first knowing something about what the other parties are willing to concede.
There is some place for secrecy in negotiation. If our negotiators are trying to get the best deal for us, they don't want to reveal what concessions they are willing to make until they have a sense of the concessions other parties are willing to make.
The problem is that, at least in the US, the trade negotiating agency has its priorities set by a limited number of industry advisory groups, and these groups are not representative of US interests. The composition of the groups is about 20 years behind the times, so as a result you have a trade agency pushing for copyright restrictions without thinking about how they will affect the technology industry.
The trade agency also expends a disproportionate amount of bargaining capital on intellectual property, thus reducing what it is able to accomplish in other areas, such as labor and environmental standards.
Finally, the trade agency writes its own interpretation of US law into free trade agreements. It's usually pretty close to what US law actually says, but sometimes it misinterprets it, or US law changes and the FTA text ends up saying something completely different.
Probably contravenes typical/. viewpoint, but smart meters are great. I have one and love it. I get a feed of its data and create a daily plot based on that information (see here).
Smart meters allow accurate time of day pricing, which can help reduce overall consumption and reduce costs for everyone, customers included. It allows the utility company to know more about where demand is and how it varies, and have a better sense of the condition of the grid (especially useful in outages).
In theory I could deduce all sorts of things about you based on your energy usage given enough resolution. Yes, maybe the police will order the utility company to produce records for a person they suspect is running a grow operation in their basement (though probably just the total usage would be enough to deduce that).
I don't care for a TV that will record audio all the time, so I won't buy one. Funny that the device I don't have choice over (the meter) actually provides me with real benefits, while other companies are trying to sell me devices that don't offer nearly as much benefit.
When I lived in Virginia, I saw two launches from Wallops - one at night, which was spectacular, and one during the day, which I could barely make out but was still fun to try and spot. Viewed them from Arlington and DC respectively. I've since moved to Connecticut, but I'm going to try and spot it tonight.
You're assuming that sound recordings are treated in the same manner as other copyrighted works. They're not. Read up on pre-1972 sound recordings. They're covered by a messy patchwork of state laws, with the result that probably neither you nor I nor anyone here can know exactly how long those recordings are protected by copyright law.
Welcome to the wacky world of intellectual property.
Can you point to a modern governor's race in which the governor does not run on a platform chock-full of legislative initiatives?
Some people say the same thing about the President - that it's Congress' job to pass laws, so the President shouldn't be proposing legislation. Technically true, but that is not how our government actually works in practice.
The bill's exceptions, however, appear to be too narrow and could impose requirements beyond what is required by either the 4th Amendment or the privacy provisions in the California Constitution.
Wait, so we reject it because it provides more protections than the bare minimum required by law?
The alternative is a phone filled with either the OEM's additions, or the carrier's crappy branded apps.
The cleanest phone you can buy is probably the Nexus 5.
Those of us who want more control will be smart buyers and purchase hardware that is easy to load with custom ROMs, then we can decide exactly how much of gapps we want.
In Virginia, I forget if it was state or county law, but my local Autozone or Advance has a sign in their parking lot citing an ordnance prohibiting you from doing work on your vehicle.
Slashdot Mirror
I guessed that before even opening the article. He has a habit of writing misleading Washington Post pieces about government waste. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of government waste, but blame does not fall squarely on NASA. I complained about a piece he wrote last year:
David Fahrenthold's April 24, 2013 article "Feds spend at least $890,000 on fees for empty accounts" incorrectly states that the Pentagon spent $435 on a hammer. That claim has been repeatedly debunked for a number of years. The hammer was $15, and the the $420 represented R&D costs for a project spread evenly across all items. See, e.g.: http://www.govexec.com/federal-news/1998/12/the-myth-of-the-600-hammer/5271/
To which he responded:
Hello, Dave Fahrenthold here from the Washington Post. I wrote the story that dealt with the cost of “zero balance” accounts, and so I was forwarded the correction request you sent earlier. First, thank you for reading, and reading the story so closely. At this point, I don’t see the need for a correction to the story. Here’s why: the story says that the Pentagon “paid” $435 for a hammer. I had written it that way consciously, since I’d seen the findings you referenced in that govexec story: the hammer’s cost to the Pentagon included $420 worth of overhead (which had been distributed evenly among all the items for which the Pentagon was charged in that same order). The cost of the hammer, at least on the Pentagon’s books, was $435. To me, it’s still correct to say that’s what the Pentagon “paid,” no matter how that cost had been calculated. I’d welcome your thoughts, however. I’m grateful again for the feedback. DF
Nice enough, but to me this shows that he very well knew the full story but chose to present it in a purposefully misleading way. Given that there is so much real waste, I don't understand the need to latch on to myths like this.
On one hand, it's overkill for little electronics projects where something like an Arduino would be much better suited.
Kind of. But if you want network connectivity for an Arduino, the cost starts to add up very fast. In contrast, you can get a Pi with a built-in ethernet port, or stick in a cheap WiFi dongle.
They recently released the A+, which is $20. You can get USB Wifi dongles for under $10, add $5 for an SD card, so for about $35 you've got a dev board with WiFi. Compare that to the Arduino ethernet shield, which by itself is over $45. The WiFi shield is even more.
The only thing comparable I can think of is the Electric Imp - I've been playing with one over the past few weeks. It's $25 for the unit, which includes built-in WiFi, and $12 for a breakout board. They provide an online IDE that is very easy to use. However, the whole platform is web-hosted, which makes me pretty uncomfortable.
"a blog post about the increased electricity costs, where they conclude it's about $8 per year in the mid-Atlantic area -- if it's being used." And this suit is being filed in CALIFORNIA, where the price of power is much higher.
I wouldn't put too much stock in an analysis that confuses kW with kWh (it's probably just a typo, but these things matter). FWIW I live in a state with the fourth highest average electricity costs in the country, so I'm very sensitive to electricity costs. But it's not fair to compare a year's usage at idle vs a year's usage at full load.
If they wanted to make this realistic, they should have estimated the average time one of these public hotspots is used, and then compared that additional cost to the average home usage of the private hotspot (while noting that at some points the usage may overlap, and so the electricity cost may be shared between the two).
Comcast gave me their Technicolor POS modem that came with a public hotspot. It was a terrible router in general, so I took it back and got an older model that has been far more reliable, plays nice with my own router, and doesn't have a public hotspot (or WiFi at all).
Concur that my initial Googling for R topics was sometimes frustrating. But lately I've had little difficulty. Stackoverflow or the R mailing list archive are usually the top results. Not sure if I've adjusted or what.
My experience is that if you have any experience programming, R makes far more sense than other common packages, like Stata or SPSS. After all, it's an actual programming language. My biggest adjustment was learning how to not use loops.
Don't even get me started on SAS.
You do realize that people can list their former places of employment and habitation, even prior to the site's founding? To say "I worked at company X in country Y in 2000" does not require that the website you say it on have existed in 2000.
Some law-enforcement experts say the NYCLU is going beyond civics lessons and doling out criminal-defense advice.
So wait, we're assuming that they're all criminals to begin with?
Poor form, but here are some examples.
Not necessarily. I've no idea about remote starters; the window deal could probably be accomplished with basic electronics, though sounds like a pain. But you can get RPM readouts and many other stats through the ODB II interface required for all normal cars in the U.S. since 1996. There are bluetooth and USB adapters available; I imagine you could probably put together a project with an Arduino that would display RPM readout on whatever display device you want. It's probably already been done.
Whenever I need to boil something, I typically boil the water first in an electric kettle, then pour it into a pot on the stove. I'm also a big fan of the pressure cooker.
I'm an apartment dweller, so many of the home upgrades aren't possible for me, though when I do buy appliances, energy efficiency is a top concern (recently got a front-loading washer). Line-drying was a no-brainer - why pay when the sun and air will do it for free :-)
Just replaced an energy-hogging server with a low-power version (about 30 watts with little load, 45 with heavy load). It's normally on S3 suspend, and I use WOL to wake it whenever I need it, including remotely (it also wakes itself twice daily, once to do a backup, and once to update a household energy usage chart online).
Bake more instead of frying. Turn off the oven in the last few minutes.
Now that one surprises me. I do have an electric range/oven, and I would have thought that pan-frying would use less electricity than baking - especially since I'm usually baking for at least 30 minutes, whereas cooking in a pan can often be done in 20 minutes or less. I get that the heat is well-retained in the oven whereas a lot is lost on the range, but I don't have a way to actually measure the stove's usage. I do generally put baked items in before the oven's preheated and turn off the oven before the time has elapsed, except when I'm doing breads.
IIRC, the four most expensive states for electricity in the U.S. are Hawaii, Alaska, New York, and Connecticut. I live in the latter, and pay 22 cents per kWh, though I chose a slightly more expensive option - I could get it for 21 cents / kWh.
I moved from Virginia, which matches the national average of 12 cents per kWh, and it was built into my rent. Since moving I'm dramatically reduced usage - down to less than 200 kWh per month for a two-person household. All the low-hanging fruit is taken, though - not sure what I'd cut if rates were double.
This whole thing is a Tom Coburn-style piece of propaganda. It is an NSF GRANT to researchers at a UNIVERSITY. This has nothing to do with the federal government or NSA studying anything.
If you don't know how the NSF funding process works, grant proposals are peer reviewed in a competitive process by scientific experts for their merit and potential contributions. Obama had nothing to do with this. Presidents have better things to do than review grant proposals.
This only has to do with the government in that NSF provides money, and these researchers happen to be a public (state, not federal) university. You know when we all complain about lack of government support for basic research? That is a lot of what the NSF does.
Very disappointing that an FCC commissioner is trying to create a fake scandal based on what are essentially outright lies. Now THAT deserves your attention.
Read more here.
One could argue that a true free trade proponent would not engage in trade negotiations, since it does not really matter what the other party does - even if they continue to impose tariffs and quotas, you will be better off if they are able to sell to you without restriction.
Of course that's politically impossible, but also the quid pro quo of an agreement can be used to convince the other party (who may not be convinced of the value of free trade) to open their market more than they otherwise would have.
Finally, today's "free trade agreements" have very little to do with tariffs and quotas, and have far more to do with regulatory harmonization. Where the U.S. is concerned, this basically means trying to convince other countries to adopt our regulatory system as it stands at the time of the negotiation, without much thought given for how well it functions, whether it might change, and whether there might be goods reasons for other countries to have different systems.
When you haggle over a price, do you immediately reveal the maximum you are willing to pay? And do you expect the seller to immediately reveal the minimum they are willing to accept? Or do you keep "secret", at least for a time, these amounts?
Nope, it works both ways. None of the negotiating parties are willing to reveal up front the maximum concessions they are willing to make without first knowing something about what the other parties are willing to concede.
There is some place for secrecy in negotiation. If our negotiators are trying to get the best deal for us, they don't want to reveal what concessions they are willing to make until they have a sense of the concessions other parties are willing to make.
The problem is that, at least in the US, the trade negotiating agency has its priorities set by a limited number of industry advisory groups, and these groups are not representative of US interests. The composition of the groups is about 20 years behind the times, so as a result you have a trade agency pushing for copyright restrictions without thinking about how they will affect the technology industry.
The trade agency also expends a disproportionate amount of bargaining capital on intellectual property, thus reducing what it is able to accomplish in other areas, such as labor and environmental standards.
Finally, the trade agency writes its own interpretation of US law into free trade agreements. It's usually pretty close to what US law actually says, but sometimes it misinterprets it, or US law changes and the FTA text ends up saying something completely different.
In a sense, we've always had real-time reporting, since you've always been free to go outside and look at your meter whenever you want.
Probably contravenes typical /. viewpoint, but smart meters are great. I have one and love it. I get a feed of its data and create a daily plot based on that information (see here).
Smart meters allow accurate time of day pricing, which can help reduce overall consumption and reduce costs for everyone, customers included. It allows the utility company to know more about where demand is and how it varies, and have a better sense of the condition of the grid (especially useful in outages).
In theory I could deduce all sorts of things about you based on your energy usage given enough resolution. Yes, maybe the police will order the utility company to produce records for a person they suspect is running a grow operation in their basement (though probably just the total usage would be enough to deduce that).
I don't care for a TV that will record audio all the time, so I won't buy one. Funny that the device I don't have choice over (the meter) actually provides me with real benefits, while other companies are trying to sell me devices that don't offer nearly as much benefit.
When I lived in Virginia, I saw two launches from Wallops - one at night, which was spectacular, and one during the day, which I could barely make out but was still fun to try and spot. Viewed them from Arlington and DC respectively. I've since moved to Connecticut, but I'm going to try and spot it tonight.
You're assuming that sound recordings are treated in the same manner as other copyrighted works. They're not. Read up on pre-1972 sound recordings. They're covered by a messy patchwork of state laws, with the result that probably neither you nor I nor anyone here can know exactly how long those recordings are protected by copyright law.
Welcome to the wacky world of intellectual property.
Too bad they didn't notice OS X is currently at 10.9...
Also, isn't the rule of thumb that it's every other version of Windows that's the good one? By skipping 9, are skipping straight to another bad one?
Can you point to a modern governor's race in which the governor does not run on a platform chock-full of legislative initiatives?
Some people say the same thing about the President - that it's Congress' job to pass laws, so the President shouldn't be proposing legislation. Technically true, but that is not how our government actually works in practice.
The bill's exceptions, however, appear to be too narrow and could impose requirements beyond what is required by either the 4th Amendment or the privacy provisions in the California Constitution.
Wait, so we reject it because it provides more protections than the bare minimum required by law?
The alternative is a phone filled with either the OEM's additions, or the carrier's crappy branded apps.
The cleanest phone you can buy is probably the Nexus 5.
Those of us who want more control will be smart buyers and purchase hardware that is easy to load with custom ROMs, then we can decide exactly how much of gapps we want.
In Virginia, I forget if it was state or county law, but my local Autozone or Advance has a sign in their parking lot citing an ordnance prohibiting you from doing work on your vehicle.