sverige

I predict the vast majority of people will never again understand that new decades, centuries, and millenia begin on January 1st of years ending in '1' and not '0' because there never was a Year 0. Everyone knew that 50 years ago, which is why Kubrick didn't call it '2000: A Space Odyssey.'

Can't wait to see what happens when systemd-homed becomes entrenched across all distros. What's left after that? Systemd-gccd?

The yield increases have mainly come from two sources: increased use of chemicals for pest control and fertilizer, and genetic engineering. Both of those are problematic, with consequences only now slowly dawning on most people, and heavy resistance by the industry to any naysaying in public places.

One day, we may recognize the problem and pass laws to limit or prohibit the use of chemicals. (I think the horse is out of the barn on genetic modification.) That will mean lower yields. Further, if California's droughts continue, the Midwest may need to start growing a greater variety of crops beyond corn and soybeans. There is no other place in the U.S. with soil as potentially productive and useful. Wasting it on wind farms when literally any other place will have less potential impact on agriculture is ridiculous.

So all the available land suitable for wind turbines has been used? There's no more capacity?

Have you invited the wind farmers to put a turbine on your acreage?

When you do the research, you discover that wind is not the panacea it has been portrayed to be. Building and placing turbines is not carbon neutral, the cleanup costs of decommissioned turbines are completely ignored because they are 40 years out, and they are not very profitable without subsidies. There are better alternatives that are less destructive to the environment.

This also ignores the other part of my original comment, which was to build turbines nearer to population centers. Why aren't the hills east of Oakland and southwest of SV filled with wind turbines?

Why can't we build them nearer to the population centers with high energy demands, then? Why not build them on vacant land near big cities?

There is a lot of prime wind farms land on the hills east and southwest and northwest of the Bay Area. There is a lot of vacant land in the hills above Los Angeles. The Olympic peninsula and western slopes of the Cascades have plenty of room for wind farms to serve Seattle. Same on the east coast: Cape Cod actually had a proposed wind farm that was stopped by the moneyed interests that live there, but that could supply Boston with all the power they need.

What is the answer for not pursuing those areas?

I grew up in Iowa. I inherited 160 acres of prime farmland from my grandparents and parents. I actively participated in the successful lobbying of the county commissioners in the county where my property is located to change the offset rules for wind turbines to make life livable for the people directly affected by them. I personally turned down the offer to build turbines on my land.

What skin do you have in the game?

Do you think that the accountants at Google, Apple, et al. have failed to foresee this sort of pushback? I personally don't doubt they've been planning alternative tax-avoidance scenarios for years. That would include lobbying other jurisdictions for favorable tax treatment in any rational scenario.

To date, they have suffered no serious financial or reputational consequences for tax evasion, so there's no reason to think they won't continue to avoid taxes as part of their overall financial strategy.

Each turbine consumes a minimum of one acre of farmland, and should be offset by at least a half mile from any homes. The problem there is that there are often homes every mile in rural Iowa.

Iowa is a terrible place to build wind farms since it still has some of the most valuable soil on the planet.

Better to build these things on land with steady wind, less agricultural value and nearer big population centers, such as Wyoming and Colorado (near the I-25 corridor from Cheyenne to Colorado Springs) or the barren hills on either side of the Bay Area.

That initial 'if' is extremely unlikely. There are hundreds of jurisdictions that would love to be persuaded to pass favorable laws.

I just gave up on discord last night. Third or fourth time I came across a link to what sounded like an interesting server, then couldn't log in with existing credentials. I want to like it and use it, but frankly it's very tiresome to get going.

I'm not clicking on the link inviting me to your server any more. Have fun with those who fight through the silly spinning spider thing.

This is a welcome development. ProtonMail has worked well for me. Now if I could only find a way to make a Pixel phone accept that email address instead of one of my several one-off fake name gmail addresses that I use for such things.

Now, now, don't get too frisky there or these same people might get the idea to uninstall the spyware put on their phones by the manufacturer, the carrier, the OS provider, and the app devs. Then where would we end up? [/s]

OK, yes, but it's still the rhythm of the flashes that are being interpreted, not _ .... .. ...

Plus, I am willing to bet that far more messages using Morse are sent over radio than with lights.

The best is G4FON's Morse Trainer, requires Windows, works on Wine.

http://www.g4fon.net/

Edit: You'll have to navigate to the Morse Trainer link from the main page.

Also, it's the best because it has knobs for all the variables -- speed, number of characters sent, even options to add QRM (interference) and variable sending speed (imitating very well someone with an unsteady fist).

As an aside, it's pointless to learn code visually. It's only really useable as an auditory messaging system.

Whose security? If Google can track everything I do online, that's not 'secure' in my book, so Chrome is out.

The six sides of the three record album 'Sandinista!' had a quote from the movie Alien written in the runout, "IN SPACE ... NO ONE ... CAN ... HEAR ... YOU ... CLASH!"

Not a program, but I remember being oddly satisfied when I noticed it the first or second time I played it.

Having spent a year homeless on the streets and sometimes on friends' couches, I would say 'Fuck you.' But that would be rude.

With his Amazon warehouses, for most of his employees he's created the terrible future of poverty and misery that he allegedly dreams of saving humanity from with his space colonies. And his success isn't built on any innovation other than relentlessly keeping as much as he can for himself.

Interesting article. I thought Bezos was just another greedy, power-mad megalomaniac. That he's also a dewy-eyed Trekkie who rationalizes his greed with dreams of space colonization makes it even sillier. Who knew Gene Roddenberry was more dangerous than any economic theorist?

This is the lunch I grew up eating in the U.S. Personally, I much prefer it over all the crap most people eat for lunch. But then again, my family is Swedish, so no surprise I guess.

I don't think the plaintiff's bar is going to allow standardized payouts on deaths or injuries. That would ruin their business model, and they have a lot of influence. The question will be whether the inevitable losses due to jury awards can be sustained by any of the manufacturers.

Re: 1. above, who do we sue when the autopilot kills someone? The owner of the vehicle? The manufacturer? The driver behind the wheel (if there is one and it's not the same as the owner)?

"Things break at random for reasons you can't understand and the only way to fix it is to find terminal commands from discussion forums, type them in and hope for the best."

> The goal (at first) is dealing slightly better with the average predictable situation than the average human driver.

The average human driver is terrible at driving. The goal should be higher; i.e., to be slightly better than the top 10% of human drivers. One of those skills will be refusing to drive when the weather is too bad.

It's highly unlikely that a wealthy NYC bookstore owner who is married to Ron Wyden is also conservative.

Fifteen years hasn't been enough of a chance?

If they were serious about 'giving away their power too,' they would let someone else sit in a coffee shop while taking notes on a laptop.