It was an Apple IIc. There wasn't much concern of things being snooped on since we each had our own floppy disks and we could take those from the computer and hide them. There was no "online" with that computer. At the time it was technically possible to get connected to the early internet but phone charges and the cost of a modem made that not feasible.
Or does your garage door opener require that the manual release be disengaged at the exact same location that it was engaged from?
It does. Some garage doors have a manual door lock on the door to lock it shut, as does mine but the lock was broken by my house's previous occupant. The only means to lock the door shut was the garage door opener, although I had considered a means to block it shut as a last resort.
By closing the door with the garage door opener with power from my inverter I had reset the system to its normal state. If I had locked the door with the manual backup (which was broken in my case), or jamming it shut with something blocking the track, then I'd be unable to open the door normally with my remote when I got home from work that evening. As I was on my lunch break when this happened I didn't want to spend a lot of time on the problem either. I had a long extension cord at hand, a large inverter within reach of the cord, and as tall as I am I can reach the power cord to the garage door opener easily. The longest part in the process was waiting for the door to close.
I just did a search on the gender makeup of the California legislature, and I find only one woman for every four men. I demand gender equality within the California legislature! How dare they make such demands on corporations within their state without first making this demand upon themselves!
Here's an idea, maybe this just might work. Let's let the people of California choose who they wish to represent them in the legislature AND let corporations choose who they wish to be on their executive boards. I know, that's just crazy talk. I'm thinking it might just work out for the best though.
Here's another idea, California can pass this law and they have it get shredded to pieces in the courts. This is a step too far, it violates so many levels that make up freedom of choice and equal protection under the law.
Here's some other "equality" laws that California should consider. I believe that there are too many Democrats in the legislature, we should have a law that all political parties need to be represented equally. Let's also have racial equality in the legislature. We should also work on equality of time served in the legislature. If this "equality" is good for business then it is good for government, no?
Considering that women are, what 50% of the population, I find it hard to believe that woman are not being discriminated in one way or another
Really? Women are being discriminated against, that's the only possible explanation?
Dr. Jordan Peterson spoke about this in a number of his lectures and interviews on YouTube. His explanation for this is that women are more sane and therefore less likely to take on the insane job of being a board member. I'm not quoting him, as he puts it more "diplomatically" for lack of a better word, I just paraphrased what I heard.
To be a board member means being hyper-competitive, exhibiting anti-social behavior, having poor work/life balance, and generally being a very unhealthy and unfriendly person. Women are less likely to be board members because women are generally of a better mental health to not even try to become one.
I have to wonder just how much women would want to be around people of such poor mental health. There's no doubt that some women would enjoy this, but on the average women tend to be of better mental health and choose to be with people that also are of good mental health, just like any man of good mental health would want to avoid a board meeting.
It is not only women whom are left out of the board room, but race should also be a part of the discussion.
Perhaps leaving other races out of this would be best for their mental health as well.
Government is there is do what is good for everyone.
Maybe it would be best for everyone to leave these white middle aged men to their high rates of depression, substance abuse, suicide, heart and liver disease (no doubt a result from stress, bad diet, drinking and smoking), and the early death that comes with it all.
If that's all it takes to dismiss his religion on the hierarchy of the oppressed then I could just as easily claim Sanders is a dishonest actor, and therefore gets no "points" based on his age, gender, religion, or whatever. What proof do I have that Sanders is dishonest? He's a politician for Vectron's sake!
Just making them choose more women for their board is offensive to pretty much everyone.
Women should take the most offense to this. If women are to claim that they are as able to do anything as any man then they will have to be able to prove it without the government clearing a path for them. This isn't a "victory" for equality, this is making some people "more equal than others".
I'm all for states regulating companies that do business within them. I mean, I get that all of Silicon Valley decided to incorporate in Delaware, but they live in California. Let California regulate them.
You do realize that they can chose to not live in California, no? California already drove out a handful of aerospace companies because of their stupid laws. They wanted to regulate "rocket fuel" as a toxic substance. I don't know if they realized this or not but "rocket fuel" is no different than jet fuel, fuel oil, gasoline, or any other hydrocarbon fuel. There are already rules on this on the state and federal level. But it's "rocket fuel" now and so the state wanted all kinds of paperwork to burn "rocket fuel" in their state. Well, that just meant they lost a lot of future business in the space launch industry to Texas, Colorado, Florida, Arizona, etc.
I don't much care what the restriction is on a business, so long as a company can free themselves from a state restriction by moving out of the state then California will lose businesses. I believe that if California did not have such great weather that they'd have gone bankrupt a long time ago by now. There's only so much that beaches and sunshine can buy.
Maybe someone could argue that this rule serves some "greater good" but it won't. Here's why, can you define a "woman" for me? Seems simple enough, right? Well, there was a story going around the internet a week or a month ago on how a Canadian man got himself a discount on his car insurance by declaring himself a woman. He didn't take any hormones, he didn't undergo any surgery, he didn't change his name or his "pronouns". He simply wanted the lower insurance rates that women get and so found a physician willing to sign a form and got his sex changed on paper. So, legally speaking, he's a "woman".
I don't know if it's the same people that are trying to hold these two conflicting ideas at once, or two different sides of this debate trying to make conflicting points, but whatever this is it will end up eating itself in the nonsense. If gender is just a social construct then there is no man and there is no woman. Men cannot oppress women if this is a social construct because then women can gain the same "male privileges" by declaring themselves men. If gender is not just a social construct then they will have to admit that men and women are different, not that men are better, only different.
If men are different than women then there are things that men will excel in that women will not. Also, there will be things that women excel at that men will not. If men and women are different then this will be exposed in things like men being more prominent in being on corporate boards.
If this nonsense continues then we'll see board members leave as "Bruce" one day and only return the next in a dress and lipstick as "Cait". And who will dare to say this person is not a woman?
We live in the sticks so we use propane, but lots of places you're not allowed to stockpile fuels, mostly in cities.
I recognized that in my previous post. Even so there are other means to store energy, like batteries. Again I recognize this may not be practical for people that rent. If you own your home and live in an area where the electrical utilities are asking for the ability to shut off your home appliances then planning for impending outages may be wise. I don't know how practical it is for a battery backup on a water heater or air conditioner but other devices might need a battery backup, because rolling blackouts are likely to be in your future.
In the end these utility controlled remote shut-off devices are band-aids on bullet wounds. They are having serious infrastructure problems, likely had them for a long time before they considered offering home owners the option for reduced rates for time shifting their loads, and may not have a plan to actually resolve the problem any time in the future.
If this is happening to you then get battery backups for your refrigerators and freezers, your computers and other electronics, maybe even your garage door opener, before the blackouts start. There was a day I went home for lunch and to get in the house I just opened the garage door remotely from my truck to walk in. While I was making myself a sandwich the power went out. This wasn't much of a concern as I planned for power outages, except closing the garage door. I could lower the door with the manual release but that would not lock it shut. I was able to run an extension cord to the garage door opener from one of my inverters and lower the door shut and locked again. It's little things like this one might not think about until it happens to them, and there are garage door openers with a built in backup battery.
It's coming sooner or later, whether you like it or not. The power companies are already remotely controlling commercial HVAC, in exchange for a small discount on power for same. Eventually, they'll extend that offer to residential users. Some time later, they will probably make it mandatory, first for commercial users, then later, residential ones. Unless, of course, some kind of power comes along that's too cheap to meter;)
You mean like natural gas? Well, not too cheap to meter but cheap enough that it's not likely anyone would bother trying to time shift access.
I realize that not everyone can do this, because they don't own their own home and such, but propane tanks are still a thing. Heating oil is a bad word any more but it's also an option. If you have a tank on your property for fuel then no one is going to be able to control your ability to draw from it as you wish. If the utilities get too controlling then people will simply choose to disconnect from it, and it's not that hard to do.
I was also going to ask about AC and regular Central heat, but then I did think that some people have them controllable and accessible through apps.
Frankly, I'd not want to have any of my utilities type things connected in the house, I see no benefit from it, but I can see many negatives.
My brother has a detached shed that he fixed up to be a garage for his cars and playroom for the kids. He got himself an internet connected thermostat for the heaters inside so he could preheat the shed on cold days so it would be warm by the time he got home with the kids. That way they could play in a warm space and he'd not have to pay for heat any longer than he needed. When it's time to bring the kids in the house for supper then he could turn everything off with his phone. If there was any concern on forgetting to turn something off then he could check it at any time from any where. As the shed has overhead doors to park his cars it can still be a heated garage for when it's simply too cold outside for the kids to play there.
What's the negative to this? I suppose someone could crank up the heat if they were able to bypass the security, but that would only mean running up his utility bill. the heaters sill have their own mechanical thermostats, and he uses the shed regularly, so they can run the heat up only so high. If he's in the shed at the time he still has the ability to override things manually.
This is not a house but it uses the same kind of internet connected thermostat that people use in a house. He's quite fond of automating things and getting them connected but he's still not ready to have the house heating controlled remotely.
There are still "low efficiency" water heaters available that require no electricity, they just use gas for heat and a mechanical thermostat with a pilot light to switch the heat on and off. There is a need for a chimney, the exhaust is carried away by some of the heat. I like these kinds of water heaters as they have very few moving parts to fail, still give hot water in an electrical outage, and because they are cooking with gas they heat the water quickly. Oh, and they are cheap. Maybe a "high efficiency" gas water heater is marginally cheaper to run long term but the "low efficiency" water heaters are cheaper to buy.
I've had people ask why it's important to me to have a water heater that works during a power outage. I live in the American Midwest, and here we still have a lot of overhead power lines. Power lines that like to come down in ice storms. Meaning there's generally once per year the power will go out. This happens often at night, when it's coldest. This "low efficiency" water heater pays for itself in allowing to stay "civilized" with a hot shower when you want it. The electricity may go out but the natural gas and water rarely do, those are underground and driven by stored up pressure. Natural gas fireplaces are common around here for much of the same reason, they work in a power outage. They look nice too.
4. Gun owning households have significantly higher suicide rates.
Gun owners tend to be white, male, and middle aged. Most suicides are committed by... that's right, white middle aged men. How about we look into why white middle aged men men decide to kill themselves instead of using some correlation is causation bullshit excuse to disarm people?
Restrictions on gun ownership won't solve the mental health problems we have. We've seen this attempted in other nations, like UK, Canada, and Australia. They didn't see a reduction in suicides, only a reduction in the use of firearms to commit suicides.
I agree. I had setup my old Apple laptop to dual boot but then quickly realized that I'd need Windows for one thing and then MacOS for something else, usually at the same time. I could duplicate some functions on both so that I would not have to switch as often but then I'd have to find a way to keep those things synchronized. As soon as I was able to get a computer capable enough to run Windows in a VM and not have it compromise what I wanted to do in MacOS I never dual booted again. I just keep the Windows VM running in the background, and when I need Windows I can bring it full screen with a key combo. Switching back to MacOS is another key combo. If I want Linux then I can bring that up in a VM too, and now I have three operating systems running simultaneously on one computer and I'm able to switch between them all with a key combo.
I used to dual boot my desktop computers all the time. Now I have a couple old computers I keep in Windows (which I honestly don't use often, at least not for work), one running Linux, and one running MacOS. Computers are so cheap and powerful now that I don't see much utility in dual booting any more. I'd think people with a need for more than one operating system would rather just get another computer or run what they need in a VM.
Religion causes poor thinking, and removes critical thinking skills.
I'm an avid consumer of several podcasts. A couple of which are atheist and a few others are religious. Each one at one time talked of the utility of religion, specifically the Jewish and Christian tradition. They all said roughly the same thing, even if there is not a god there is utility in believing in a god for the sake of a productive society. Many intelligent people can through study, thought experiment, and other means, find what works for a peaceful and prosperous society. Some of the rules are pretty basic, like don't steal, don't murder, don't fuck your neighbor's wife. These rules for a prosperous society are basically the 7 out of 10 Commandments from the Torah/Bible.
These rules can be derived over time by people intelligent enough and with enough self control. But what do you do with people that lack this intelligence and self control? Such as a child? What of someone with sufficient intelligence to derive these rules but lacking the education to see what has failed in the past? Well, you create this imaginary friend that watches over them and can punish them for behaving badly and grant rewards for behaving well, and has created rules for everyone to follow. This imaginary friend can be Santa Claus, which rewards good behavior with gifts at the end of the year. This imaginary friend can be karma, where good deeds are rewarded with good luck. This imaginary friend can be a god, which rewards good deeds in the afterlife. So long as the rules make sense to even a child then intelligent adults can find the wisdom in following the rules as well.
Maybe religion does in fact remove critical thinking, but if religion is based on a foundation of rules that are good for creating a peaceful and prosperous society then this is not necessarily a bad thing. There are religions that cause poor thinking, such as a religion that calls for killing nonbelievers and then defining nonbelievers to include people of the same religion that failed to interpret the rules of their prophet EXACTLY as you did. That's just asking for the creation of centuries of civil war.
Good religion creates good people and a good society. Bad religion destroys people and society.
The US National Guard has better fighter planes than most of the world's air forces. Why does a National Guard need F15s?
I don't know, maybe in case some suicidal asshole decides to hijack a plane and threaten to crash it?
Are they planning on taking on the US Air Force or is it somewhere that USAF planes go to retire?
A bit of both, at least in theory. The National Guard is a dual role service. The first role is as a state defense force, to combat threats "both foreign and domestic". One can assume this means having to go up against the federal forces if things break down that far. The second role the National Guard serves is that as a reserve force for the regular forces. The National Guard does get a lot of second hand gear, as do the federal reserve forces.
I had a medic in the Army tell me that you can tell how close you are to danger by the quality of the gear you've been issued. If you have a shiny new radio and rifle then expect to have to use them. You don't want the new gear if you just want to pay off your college loans in the military.
Seems to me that most any murder-suicide by plane would have a higher body count than even the deadliest murder-suicide by firearms. While we're at it we can compare this to murder-suicide by bombs, cars, poison gas, or whatever else the insane have come up with.
Seems to me that the lesson here is we should be looking to put criminals in prisons and the insane in mental hospitals instead of trying to bubblewrap the world.
Plus of course there is more money going around to be skimmed if you build a new carrier to replace it.
This has been repeated over and over in this discussion, not only do I doubt this is relevant (since there is plenty of room to skim off refuel and refit), I'm quite certain the Navy doesn't much care so long as they get newer and more capable ships.
Compare Enterprise CVN-65 with Enterprise CVN-80. Both ships carry about 90 aircraft, and displace about 100,000 tons. CVN-80 has a magnetic catapult which is capable of launching light drones to heavy fighters, which CVN-65 cannot. CVN-80 has a reduced radar cross section over CVN-65. CVN-80 has a crew of 2600, compared to CVN-65 with a crew of 3000. That's the same warfighting capability with 400 fewer mouths to feed.
I recall reading that the US Navy has had retention problems and the biggest complaint of sailors leaving was the time spent on scraping off rust and painting. CVN-65 has a lot of rust, and it will keep rusting. CVN-80 uses more durable materials and therefore needs fewer sailors to scrape off rust and apply paint. Even if there are a lot of contractors skimming off the top the US Navy sees a new ship with greater capability, fewer and happier sailors on board, and generally decades of future savings from modern equipment to counteract whatever skimming off the top the contractors take.
You cut them up into pieces and feed them into a Gen IV reactor. The radioactive bits get turned into energy and valuable medical isotopes. https://articles.thmsr.nl/the-...
New reactors solve the problems of radioactive waste, energy shortages, and provide cures for nasty diseases that previous treatments have proven ineffective. Then there is the US Navy project to synthesize jet fuel and fuel oil from CO2 and hydrogen, both of which would be extracted from the sea. https://www.nrl.navy.mil/news/...
Synthesized fuel using CO2 from the environment closes the carbon loop. This means no addition of CO2 to the atmosphere to fly a plane or propel a ship.
That's 100 million gun owners. If 1/10th of them are NRA members than that's 10 million NRA members. Recent polling suggests it's closer to 6 million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Is that a "massive number" compared to the general population?
The margin of votes between President Trump and Secretary Clinton in 2016 was less than 4 million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So, yes, that is a "massive number" compared to the general population.
No, they are taking the jobs of the immigrants because, as seems to be common knowledge, is that there are some jobs that Americans simply will not do.
What we are doing here is turning jobs Americans won't do, picking up trash, and turning them into jobs Americans will do, bird trainer.
Let's do this for other jobs. Instead of immigrants mowing lawns we'll have Americans herding goats to trim the grass. (Yes, there are in fact people that hire goat herders to trim lawns.) Then we can have people build robots to pick up the manure left behind. (And again I'm not joking, there are "pooper scooper" robots for picking up the droppings of dogs and horses, and presumably goats as well.)
Just think of the possibilities! Or maybe we could instead convince the precious snowflake generation that jobs of any nature is a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Rose rose to put rose roes on her rows of roses. English is strange.
English are strange. Strange for having such a strange language.
It was an Apple IIc. There wasn't much concern of things being snooped on since we each had our own floppy disks and we could take those from the computer and hide them. There was no "online" with that computer. At the time it was technically possible to get connected to the early internet but phone charges and the cost of a modem made that not feasible.
Or does your garage door opener require that the manual release be disengaged at the exact same location that it was engaged from?
It does. Some garage doors have a manual door lock on the door to lock it shut, as does mine but the lock was broken by my house's previous occupant. The only means to lock the door shut was the garage door opener, although I had considered a means to block it shut as a last resort.
By closing the door with the garage door opener with power from my inverter I had reset the system to its normal state. If I had locked the door with the manual backup (which was broken in my case), or jamming it shut with something blocking the track, then I'd be unable to open the door normally with my remote when I got home from work that evening. As I was on my lunch break when this happened I didn't want to spend a lot of time on the problem either. I had a long extension cord at hand, a large inverter within reach of the cord, and as tall as I am I can reach the power cord to the garage door opener easily. The longest part in the process was waiting for the door to close.
I just did a search on the gender makeup of the California legislature, and I find only one woman for every four men. I demand gender equality within the California legislature! How dare they make such demands on corporations within their state without first making this demand upon themselves!
Here's an idea, maybe this just might work. Let's let the people of California choose who they wish to represent them in the legislature AND let corporations choose who they wish to be on their executive boards. I know, that's just crazy talk. I'm thinking it might just work out for the best though.
Here's another idea, California can pass this law and they have it get shredded to pieces in the courts. This is a step too far, it violates so many levels that make up freedom of choice and equal protection under the law.
Here's some other "equality" laws that California should consider. I believe that there are too many Democrats in the legislature, we should have a law that all political parties need to be represented equally. Let's also have racial equality in the legislature. We should also work on equality of time served in the legislature. If this "equality" is good for business then it is good for government, no?
Considering that women are, what 50% of the population, I find it hard to believe that woman are not being discriminated in one way or another
Really? Women are being discriminated against, that's the only possible explanation?
Dr. Jordan Peterson spoke about this in a number of his lectures and interviews on YouTube. His explanation for this is that women are more sane and therefore less likely to take on the insane job of being a board member. I'm not quoting him, as he puts it more "diplomatically" for lack of a better word, I just paraphrased what I heard.
To be a board member means being hyper-competitive, exhibiting anti-social behavior, having poor work/life balance, and generally being a very unhealthy and unfriendly person. Women are less likely to be board members because women are generally of a better mental health to not even try to become one.
I have to wonder just how much women would want to be around people of such poor mental health. There's no doubt that some women would enjoy this, but on the average women tend to be of better mental health and choose to be with people that also are of good mental health, just like any man of good mental health would want to avoid a board meeting.
It is not only women whom are left out of the board room, but race should also be a part of the discussion.
Perhaps leaving other races out of this would be best for their mental health as well.
Government is there is do what is good for everyone.
Maybe it would be best for everyone to leave these white middle aged men to their high rates of depression, substance abuse, suicide, heart and liver disease (no doubt a result from stress, bad diet, drinking and smoking), and the early death that comes with it all.
If that's all it takes to dismiss his religion on the hierarchy of the oppressed then I could just as easily claim Sanders is a dishonest actor, and therefore gets no "points" based on his age, gender, religion, or whatever. What proof do I have that Sanders is dishonest? He's a politician for Vectron's sake!
Shouldn't we get to know each other a little better first? Maybe have dinner? Go see a movie? We just met.
Just making them choose more women for their board is offensive to pretty much everyone.
Women should take the most offense to this. If women are to claim that they are as able to do anything as any man then they will have to be able to prove it without the government clearing a path for them. This isn't a "victory" for equality, this is making some people "more equal than others".
I'm all for states regulating companies that do business within them. I mean, I get that all of Silicon Valley decided to incorporate in Delaware, but they live in California. Let California regulate them.
You do realize that they can chose to not live in California, no? California already drove out a handful of aerospace companies because of their stupid laws. They wanted to regulate "rocket fuel" as a toxic substance. I don't know if they realized this or not but "rocket fuel" is no different than jet fuel, fuel oil, gasoline, or any other hydrocarbon fuel. There are already rules on this on the state and federal level. But it's "rocket fuel" now and so the state wanted all kinds of paperwork to burn "rocket fuel" in their state. Well, that just meant they lost a lot of future business in the space launch industry to Texas, Colorado, Florida, Arizona, etc.
I don't much care what the restriction is on a business, so long as a company can free themselves from a state restriction by moving out of the state then California will lose businesses. I believe that if California did not have such great weather that they'd have gone bankrupt a long time ago by now. There's only so much that beaches and sunshine can buy.
Maybe someone could argue that this rule serves some "greater good" but it won't. Here's why, can you define a "woman" for me? Seems simple enough, right? Well, there was a story going around the internet a week or a month ago on how a Canadian man got himself a discount on his car insurance by declaring himself a woman. He didn't take any hormones, he didn't undergo any surgery, he didn't change his name or his "pronouns". He simply wanted the lower insurance rates that women get and so found a physician willing to sign a form and got his sex changed on paper. So, legally speaking, he's a "woman".
I don't know if it's the same people that are trying to hold these two conflicting ideas at once, or two different sides of this debate trying to make conflicting points, but whatever this is it will end up eating itself in the nonsense. If gender is just a social construct then there is no man and there is no woman. Men cannot oppress women if this is a social construct because then women can gain the same "male privileges" by declaring themselves men. If gender is not just a social construct then they will have to admit that men and women are different, not that men are better, only different.
If men are different than women then there are things that men will excel in that women will not. Also, there will be things that women excel at that men will not. If men and women are different then this will be exposed in things like men being more prominent in being on corporate boards.
If this nonsense continues then we'll see board members leave as "Bruce" one day and only return the next in a dress and lipstick as "Cait". And who will dare to say this person is not a woman?
So are young Jewish men, like Ben Shapiro, bad?
Inquiring minds want to know.
We live in the sticks so we use propane, but lots of places you're not allowed to stockpile fuels, mostly in cities.
I recognized that in my previous post. Even so there are other means to store energy, like batteries. Again I recognize this may not be practical for people that rent. If you own your home and live in an area where the electrical utilities are asking for the ability to shut off your home appliances then planning for impending outages may be wise. I don't know how practical it is for a battery backup on a water heater or air conditioner but other devices might need a battery backup, because rolling blackouts are likely to be in your future.
In the end these utility controlled remote shut-off devices are band-aids on bullet wounds. They are having serious infrastructure problems, likely had them for a long time before they considered offering home owners the option for reduced rates for time shifting their loads, and may not have a plan to actually resolve the problem any time in the future.
If this is happening to you then get battery backups for your refrigerators and freezers, your computers and other electronics, maybe even your garage door opener, before the blackouts start. There was a day I went home for lunch and to get in the house I just opened the garage door remotely from my truck to walk in. While I was making myself a sandwich the power went out. This wasn't much of a concern as I planned for power outages, except closing the garage door. I could lower the door with the manual release but that would not lock it shut. I was able to run an extension cord to the garage door opener from one of my inverters and lower the door shut and locked again. It's little things like this one might not think about until it happens to them, and there are garage door openers with a built in backup battery.
It's coming sooner or later, whether you like it or not. The power companies are already remotely controlling commercial HVAC, in exchange for a small discount on power for same. Eventually, they'll extend that offer to residential users. Some time later, they will probably make it mandatory, first for commercial users, then later, residential ones. Unless, of course, some kind of power comes along that's too cheap to meter ;)
You mean like natural gas? Well, not too cheap to meter but cheap enough that it's not likely anyone would bother trying to time shift access.
I realize that not everyone can do this, because they don't own their own home and such, but propane tanks are still a thing. Heating oil is a bad word any more but it's also an option. If you have a tank on your property for fuel then no one is going to be able to control your ability to draw from it as you wish. If the utilities get too controlling then people will simply choose to disconnect from it, and it's not that hard to do.
I was also going to ask about AC and regular Central heat, but then I did think that some people have them controllable and accessible through apps.
Frankly, I'd not want to have any of my utilities type things connected in the house, I see no benefit from it, but I can see many negatives.
My brother has a detached shed that he fixed up to be a garage for his cars and playroom for the kids. He got himself an internet connected thermostat for the heaters inside so he could preheat the shed on cold days so it would be warm by the time he got home with the kids. That way they could play in a warm space and he'd not have to pay for heat any longer than he needed. When it's time to bring the kids in the house for supper then he could turn everything off with his phone. If there was any concern on forgetting to turn something off then he could check it at any time from any where. As the shed has overhead doors to park his cars it can still be a heated garage for when it's simply too cold outside for the kids to play there.
What's the negative to this? I suppose someone could crank up the heat if they were able to bypass the security, but that would only mean running up his utility bill. the heaters sill have their own mechanical thermostats, and he uses the shed regularly, so they can run the heat up only so high. If he's in the shed at the time he still has the ability to override things manually.
This is not a house but it uses the same kind of internet connected thermostat that people use in a house. He's quite fond of automating things and getting them connected but he's still not ready to have the house heating controlled remotely.
There are still "low efficiency" water heaters available that require no electricity, they just use gas for heat and a mechanical thermostat with a pilot light to switch the heat on and off. There is a need for a chimney, the exhaust is carried away by some of the heat. I like these kinds of water heaters as they have very few moving parts to fail, still give hot water in an electrical outage, and because they are cooking with gas they heat the water quickly. Oh, and they are cheap. Maybe a "high efficiency" gas water heater is marginally cheaper to run long term but the "low efficiency" water heaters are cheaper to buy.
I've had people ask why it's important to me to have a water heater that works during a power outage. I live in the American Midwest, and here we still have a lot of overhead power lines. Power lines that like to come down in ice storms. Meaning there's generally once per year the power will go out. This happens often at night, when it's coldest. This "low efficiency" water heater pays for itself in allowing to stay "civilized" with a hot shower when you want it. The electricity may go out but the natural gas and water rarely do, those are underground and driven by stored up pressure. Natural gas fireplaces are common around here for much of the same reason, they work in a power outage. They look nice too.
Then how will the internet get hot water?
By posting anti-SJW documents for public view, then they'll be in all kinds of hot water.
4. Gun owning households have significantly higher suicide rates.
Gun owners tend to be white, male, and middle aged. Most suicides are committed by... that's right, white middle aged men. How about we look into why white middle aged men men decide to kill themselves instead of using some correlation is causation bullshit excuse to disarm people?
Restrictions on gun ownership won't solve the mental health problems we have. We've seen this attempted in other nations, like UK, Canada, and Australia. They didn't see a reduction in suicides, only a reduction in the use of firearms to commit suicides.
Dual boot is out, sandboxing Windows is in.
I agree. I had setup my old Apple laptop to dual boot but then quickly realized that I'd need Windows for one thing and then MacOS for something else, usually at the same time. I could duplicate some functions on both so that I would not have to switch as often but then I'd have to find a way to keep those things synchronized. As soon as I was able to get a computer capable enough to run Windows in a VM and not have it compromise what I wanted to do in MacOS I never dual booted again. I just keep the Windows VM running in the background, and when I need Windows I can bring it full screen with a key combo. Switching back to MacOS is another key combo. If I want Linux then I can bring that up in a VM too, and now I have three operating systems running simultaneously on one computer and I'm able to switch between them all with a key combo.
I used to dual boot my desktop computers all the time. Now I have a couple old computers I keep in Windows (which I honestly don't use often, at least not for work), one running Linux, and one running MacOS. Computers are so cheap and powerful now that I don't see much utility in dual booting any more. I'd think people with a need for more than one operating system would rather just get another computer or run what they need in a VM.
Religion causes poor thinking, and removes critical thinking skills.
I'm an avid consumer of several podcasts. A couple of which are atheist and a few others are religious. Each one at one time talked of the utility of religion, specifically the Jewish and Christian tradition. They all said roughly the same thing, even if there is not a god there is utility in believing in a god for the sake of a productive society. Many intelligent people can through study, thought experiment, and other means, find what works for a peaceful and prosperous society. Some of the rules are pretty basic, like don't steal, don't murder, don't fuck your neighbor's wife. These rules for a prosperous society are basically the 7 out of 10 Commandments from the Torah/Bible.
These rules can be derived over time by people intelligent enough and with enough self control. But what do you do with people that lack this intelligence and self control? Such as a child? What of someone with sufficient intelligence to derive these rules but lacking the education to see what has failed in the past? Well, you create this imaginary friend that watches over them and can punish them for behaving badly and grant rewards for behaving well, and has created rules for everyone to follow. This imaginary friend can be Santa Claus, which rewards good behavior with gifts at the end of the year. This imaginary friend can be karma, where good deeds are rewarded with good luck. This imaginary friend can be a god, which rewards good deeds in the afterlife. So long as the rules make sense to even a child then intelligent adults can find the wisdom in following the rules as well.
Maybe religion does in fact remove critical thinking, but if religion is based on a foundation of rules that are good for creating a peaceful and prosperous society then this is not necessarily a bad thing. There are religions that cause poor thinking, such as a religion that calls for killing nonbelievers and then defining nonbelievers to include people of the same religion that failed to interpret the rules of their prophet EXACTLY as you did. That's just asking for the creation of centuries of civil war.
Good religion creates good people and a good society. Bad religion destroys people and society.
The US National Guard has better fighter planes than most of the world's air forces. Why does a National Guard need F15s?
I don't know, maybe in case some suicidal asshole decides to hijack a plane and threaten to crash it?
Are they planning on taking on the US Air Force or is it somewhere that USAF planes go to retire?
A bit of both, at least in theory. The National Guard is a dual role service. The first role is as a state defense force, to combat threats "both foreign and domestic". One can assume this means having to go up against the federal forces if things break down that far. The second role the National Guard serves is that as a reserve force for the regular forces. The National Guard does get a lot of second hand gear, as do the federal reserve forces.
I had a medic in the Army tell me that you can tell how close you are to danger by the quality of the gear you've been issued. If you have a shiny new radio and rifle then expect to have to use them. You don't want the new gear if you just want to pay off your college loans in the military.
Citation needed.
Seems to me that most any murder-suicide by plane would have a higher body count than even the deadliest murder-suicide by firearms. While we're at it we can compare this to murder-suicide by bombs, cars, poison gas, or whatever else the insane have come up with.
Seems to me that the lesson here is we should be looking to put criminals in prisons and the insane in mental hospitals instead of trying to bubblewrap the world.
Plus of course there is more money going around to be skimmed if you build a new carrier to replace it.
This has been repeated over and over in this discussion, not only do I doubt this is relevant (since there is plenty of room to skim off refuel and refit), I'm quite certain the Navy doesn't much care so long as they get newer and more capable ships.
Compare Enterprise CVN-65 with Enterprise CVN-80. Both ships carry about 90 aircraft, and displace about 100,000 tons. CVN-80 has a magnetic catapult which is capable of launching light drones to heavy fighters, which CVN-65 cannot. CVN-80 has a reduced radar cross section over CVN-65. CVN-80 has a crew of 2600, compared to CVN-65 with a crew of 3000. That's the same warfighting capability with 400 fewer mouths to feed.
I recall reading that the US Navy has had retention problems and the biggest complaint of sailors leaving was the time spent on scraping off rust and painting. CVN-65 has a lot of rust, and it will keep rusting. CVN-80 uses more durable materials and therefore needs fewer sailors to scrape off rust and apply paint. Even if there are a lot of contractors skimming off the top the US Navy sees a new ship with greater capability, fewer and happier sailors on board, and generally decades of future savings from modern equipment to counteract whatever skimming off the top the contractors take.
Right, lure all the pirates on board the Enterprise, then activate the self destruct. Problem solved. I saw that in a movie once.
Now what to do with those pesky spent reactors?
You cut them up into pieces and feed them into a Gen IV reactor. The radioactive bits get turned into energy and valuable medical isotopes.
https://articles.thmsr.nl/the-...
New reactors solve the problems of radioactive waste, energy shortages, and provide cures for nasty diseases that previous treatments have proven ineffective. Then there is the US Navy project to synthesize jet fuel and fuel oil from CO2 and hydrogen, both of which would be extracted from the sea.
https://www.nrl.navy.mil/news/...
Synthesized fuel using CO2 from the environment closes the carbon loop. This means no addition of CO2 to the atmosphere to fly a plane or propel a ship.
The NRA represents fewer than 1 in 10 gun owners.
There are over 300 million people in the USA and about 1/3rd of them own guns.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15...
That's 100 million gun owners. If 1/10th of them are NRA members than that's 10 million NRA members. Recent polling suggests it's closer to 6 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Is that a "massive number" compared to the general population?
The margin of votes between President Trump and Secretary Clinton in 2016 was less than 4 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So, yes, that is a "massive number" compared to the general population.
No, they are taking the jobs of the immigrants because, as seems to be common knowledge, is that there are some jobs that Americans simply will not do.
What we are doing here is turning jobs Americans won't do, picking up trash, and turning them into jobs Americans will do, bird trainer.
Let's do this for other jobs. Instead of immigrants mowing lawns we'll have Americans herding goats to trim the grass. (Yes, there are in fact people that hire goat herders to trim lawns.) Then we can have people build robots to pick up the manure left behind. (And again I'm not joking, there are "pooper scooper" robots for picking up the droppings of dogs and horses, and presumably goats as well.)
Just think of the possibilities! Or maybe we could instead convince the precious snowflake generation that jobs of any nature is a good thing.